The Blue Grass site project manager opened a June 13 quarterly public meeting by introducing program vision and mission statements.
“We’re using these to help focus the entire workforce, the government and contractor working collaboratively together, and doing everything we can to move forward with the efficient and safe destruction of the stockpile,” said Jeff Brubaker, site project manager, Blue Grass Chemical Agent-Destruction Pilot Plant. “We want to familiarize everyone with those statements.”
The Program Executive Office, Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternatives mission is to destroy the chemical weapons stockpile and its vision is to be chemical weapons free by 2023, Brubaker said. This entails everyone on the project working safely toward those goals.
Ron Hink, project manager, Bechtel Parsons Blue Grass, the joint venture company responsible for the systemization and operation of the Blue Grass plant, then spoke about the project’s core value of keeping the workforce safe, as safety is a joint effort owned by everyone at every level on the project.
“We focus a lot on safety. It’s very important to us and important to our mission,” Hink said. “We’ve been going almost four years now without a lost-time injury. As a matter of fact, in two weeks we should cross the 10 million man-hours [without a lost-time injury] mark.”
A lost-time accident includes injuries that result in medical treatment beyond first aid and days away from work, according to the Occupational Health and Safety Administration.
To learn more about the project to destroy the chemical weapons stockpile in Kentucky, the quarterly meetings of the Kentucky Chemical Demilitarization Citizens’ Advisory Commission and Chemical Destruction Community Advisory Board are open to the public. The next meeting will be held Sept. 12 at 1:30 p.m. at the Eastern Kentucky University Carl D. Perkins Building, Rooms A and B.
