Greetings Safety Professionals!

Welcome to a new Chapter year. My name is Robin Barfield, and we have an exciting year of activities planned that will be beneficial for all. Most of our schedule will be virtual and we hope you can join us during our monthly EC meetings and technical presentations.

One major announcement that our Chapter has for you, for the 5^th consecutive year, we achieved the Platinum Level recognition for our annual COMT report. Special Thanks to our 2020-2021 EC Team for their guidance and Pat Reagan for leading us to the Platinum goal. Thanks Pat! It was indeed a year with so many new twists from routine normalcy. 

While we have tried to provide face to face options, we have been challenged with the new Delta variant’s increase in cases both here in NC as well as all the US. Unfortunately, more variants will most likely emerge as new strains continue to develop. For now, the direction we are headed is to remain virtual for at least the first part of the year and continue to make assessments as trends develop. We have an excellent plan for our Virtual Technical Meetings via Teams live. Our social media chair Bryce Lawlor and our Communications Team will be coordinating all the logistics to pull this together. We plan to archive our presenters and have them available for future use. Details are available on the NC Chapter Webpage under the News and Events, Events tab. https://nc.assp.org/event/. Here is our next quarter’s schedule:

September 9^th, 2021 (12:00 pm – 1:00 pm) Sam Fabolo, from FDR Safety, will be with us to discuss interview and hiring practices during a pandemic. What has changed is the question?

September 13-15, 2021. Safety 2021 ASSP Annual Conference in Austin Texas. In person and virtual is available.

On October 14^th, 2021, (12:00 PM – 1:00PM) Caleb Syvester will be with us from Boston Dynamics for a safety use case of the SPOT robot.

On November 10^th, 2021 (12:00 PM – 1:00PM) Eric Hendman will be presenting the SuitX, innovations in Exoskeleton technology with an emphasis on MSDs.  

On December 9^th, 2021 (12:00 PM – 1:00PM) Commissioner Josh Dobson will address the NC ASSP Chapter and share with us his vision for worker safety during the next several years.

We are excited about this new Chapter year and some new faces to assist us to continue to excel for our membership. Thank you for being a member and please reach out to anyone on our Team if we can support you in any way.

Information from ASSP

NC just completed the Safe and Sound Week, August 9-15.  We hope you were able to take advantage of this annual initiative to move your efforts forward.

Chapter Leadership Notices:

New face and new roles this year,

President Elect- Ogaga Jonathan Tebehaevu

Membership-Doug Gaylord

Program Chair-Monte Simpson

Communications-Eric Waagner

Academic Recruiting-Mike Conner

Communications Mentor-Anthony Dohmann

Member at Large- Jeff Medlin

Chapter Member Spotlight: If you know of a NC ASSP Member Safety Professional with a career path that might be an inspiration or validation to other safety professionals, please let us know.  We are looking for our October Member Spotlight and would love for current members input on a safety professional that deserves this recognition. 

Thanks all,

Robin

The Survey Says….

Soon you will be asked to complete the annual NC Chapter Member Feedback Survey. Unlike many opinion polls, we really do want and need to know what you think of and want from your NC ASSP Chapter.

Every year we learn many things from this survey that we use to shape the services we try to provide.  Most of the Technical Meeting Topics come directly from these surveys.  Admittedly 2020 and 2021 have had some non-survey driven topics about the Covid-19 issue.  We felt the need to adjust to that important changing unpredictable event.  The majority have however still been in line with feedback given in early 2020.

Consider this Chapter Survey to be your opportunity to vote for things you would like to see continue or change with our chapter.  Keep an eye on your email form the chapter and take the time to let us know how to better meet your needs.  In doing so improve our collective efforts to keep people from being hurt.

It is also a great time to take a look at your member profile.  The information in your profile is used for many ASSP related issues.  For instance, we use this information to know where to send the Annual Feedback Survey, monitor membership milestones, target geographic and industry areas that might need more attention.

Our members are the life blood of our professional organization.  If you know other safety professionals that are not yet members, please talk to them and suggest they give our chapter a look.  There is no better time to invite your friends, colleagues, and associates to ASSP than now that we have an ongoing Member-Get-A-Member Campaign Program.  The more of you r friends you get to join ASSP as Full members, the more you get rewarded in prizes.  For more details, please check out the… Member Get a Member Offer | ASSP

If you are working on getting your CSP.  NCDOT will begin offering study sessions for the CSP Examination starting in January 2021.The prep sessions can be tailored to specific needs or a general review. Please contact Mike Heminuk at mheminuk@ncdot.gov or via phone at 919-814-4904.

If you have had an important achievement or milestone let us know.  Published a paper, won an award let us know and we will get it up on our web page. Perhaps even be next month’s Safety Professional Member Spotlight.  Check it out…. Member Spotlight – ASSP North Carolina Chapter

Length of Service Recognition Awards – NC ASSP Chapter

45 Years of Service: Edward Moore, Albert Weaver, Philip Ulmer

25 Years of Service: David Meister, David Machles, Don Buckman, Frank Haag, Gerald Hodge, John Tassitino, Christopher Lott

15 Years of Service: Chad Schilling, Douglas Arndt, Jeffrey Hanson, Jeffrey Huneycutt, Jose Granillo, Lisa Foster-Morrow, Simon Tanner

5 Years of Service: Christopher Hinson, Daniel Gilleski, Darren Deonarine, Garnett Blackburn, Julio Delgadillo, Kelley Brown, Marc Bitner, Marcus Ingram, Ogaga Tebehaevu, Steven Strokis, Trevor Barrick, Tyler Nelson

Other benefits I would like to bring attention to in this month’s Message. 

• Don’t forget that we have a Job Opening and Resume Posting spot on the webpage.  If you are look for a job or need one to be filled check it out.  The more people that use it the more valuable it will be. Under the Jobs tab at the ASSP North Carolina Chapter – American Society of Safety Professionals page
• We also have a spot for Consultants to post their business and services.  We also think this is an important service for Safety Professionals that might be looking for those support services.  If you are a consultant or know one you think does a good job, please get the information on the tab.  It does carry a small fee ($50/yr.) but is well worth the exposure to 400+ other safety professionals.  https://nc.assp.org/local-ehs-consultants/

Thank you for choosing to be a safety professional.  The work is hard work but so important and rewarding.

Please do me a favor.  I am interested in getting a feel for how many people read this monthly document.   Please just send an email … president@nc.assp.org …letting me know you read this month’s President’s message.  If you want to provide comments or suggestions, I would appreciate that also.

Best Regards;

Patrick Ragan, MBA, CSP

NC ASSP Chapter PRESIDENT
president@nc.assp.org