The meeting commenced at 2:35 p.m.
Bruce Madsen Presentation
Vern Madson reported that 358 staff attended the Bruce Madsen presentation. 75 people completed the evaluation at the end of the presentation, resulting in 67 perfect scores (all 5s), 7 above average scores (4s and 5s), and 1 negative score. Vern also reported that Bruce will be sending us a box of the exercise tapes, and we will only have to pay him for what we sell. We are looking to sell these tapes through the Battelle Staff Association.
The rough costs to VPP include $2200/day for the presentations, per diem of $50/day for hotel and $30/day for meals, $200 for the audio/visual support, approximately $300 flyers and $300 for printing the handouts, and $0.31/mile.
It was also noted by some of the committee members that some staff had to use vacation/flextime to attend the presentation and the presentation was not mandetory, both factors which may have kept the numbers down.
Another concern was that the BCO staff in LSL-II were not able to attend the presentation. Steve Barraclough mentioned that a number of these staff would have greatly benefitted from the presentation, as they are in a risk group for the injuries discussed. Russ Meicenheimer suggested holding a 1-hour staff meeting with this group using the handouts and tape. The VPP steering committee can present it ourselves.
Russ and Janice Haney presented a rough draft of a VPP pamphlet that they developed. This pamphlet will be distributed to staff and will serve to educate staff about VPP and its benefits. The steering committee members were asked to take a pamphlet and provide feedback to Russ and Janice. The pamphlet will be distributed hard copy sometime in January and will be scanned and placed on the VPP home page. We also agreed that now would be a good time to move the VPP home page to the external server and change the url (now determined to be www.pnl.gov/vpp/). This change will be made in early January.
VPP Survey
After the pamphlet is advertised and delivered to staff, Jeanie Dixon and Mary Ann Showalter will be developing an online questionnaire. This questionnaire will consist of four or five basic questions (e.g., What does VPP stand for? What are the five tenets?) that staff will have learned from the pamphlet. If the staff member gets the questions right, they will receive a nice prize (e.g., coffee mug). Mary Ann introduced Mythili Sriram, an E-Comm staff member who is responsible for the electronic survey tool. The cost to VPP will be between $400 and $500 to use this tool. With this tool, we can include job and building breakdown. The group agreed to use the survey tool. We also agreed that right now the questionnaire will be used as an educational tool, and down the road we will use it as a feedback tool (e.g., areas where safety is weak).
Concern was shared that staff would throw away the pamphlet before the survey comes out. We agreed to not only put the pamphlet on the VPP home page, but to also send out an all-staff message telling the staff about the pamphlet and survey.
Committee for VPP Safety Recognition Awards
Vern mentioned that Gary Louie of the Battelle Staff Association has agreed to help identify these awards. Vern also asked committee members to send any ideas for awards by email to him, Todd Hart, or Mary Ann Showalter. A price range for these awards will be determined at a later date.
Hanford Safety Expo
This safety expo will be held May 2 through 4, 2000. We are planning to have a booth set up advertising PNNL VPP. Planning meetings have already started, and John Reck is attending these. The next meeting is scheduled for January 13, 2000.
Waste Isolation Project Visit
The VPP steering committee is tentatively planning a visit to this site in March or April. This site is a triple crown winner, and we would like individuals to visit and get ideas how this site accomplished this and how we can do it.
Region X VPP Conference
This conference will be held May 10 through 12, 2000, in Seattle. Vern would like us to start thinking about attending. It was also stated that last year's conference was very good. The national conference will also be in Seattle.
Roby Enge mentioned that we need to keep an eye on our travel budget due to new Laboratory constraints. We are being held to 61% of the travel that we did last year.
The meeting adjourned at 4:00 p.m.
