Lab's Safety Short program wins prestigious DOE Innovation Award

LANL wins Safety Short award

Photo by LeRoy Sanchez of IRM-RMMSO.

October 6, 2010—The Laboratory recently received the Department of Energy Voluntary Protection Program’s Innovation Award for its Safety Short program of videos, fliers, and posters at a DOE-VPP conference in Orlando, Florida. The Safety Short videos were shown during and following the awards ceremony.

Outstanding performance

According to wording on the plaque, the Innovation Award recognizes Los Alamos for “Outstanding industry performance and leadership in furthering the advancement of the principles of the Department of Energy Voluntary Protection Program.”

During the DOE-VPP Headquarters Assessment at Los Alamos, the Safety Short program and videos were recognized as “Best-in-Class” and helped to contribute to the Lab receiving its “VPP Merit Site” status, said the Lab’s Health and Safety Communications Project Leader Rob Nicholas, who helped produce the videos. 

VPP Lead Bethany Rich of the Lab’s Environment, Safety, and Health Integration Office added, “DOE awarded the Lab with the VPP Innovation Award because, in their words, ‘They've never seen a site use the approach of having a worker with a technical scientific background who is creative, theatrical, and entertaining to help create best-in-class approaches to delivering affective safety messages.’” She continued, “Rob Nicholas has successfully accomplished this feat, and it's been a distinct pleasure for the VPP Office to work with him on this effort.”

Sharing with the DOE complex

As part of its VPP Merit status, Los Alamos will share its Safety Short Program, whose overall theme is to “Take care of ourselves and each other…at work and at home,” with other DOE sites, Nicholas said. The videos are intended to be accessible to a broad audience and last from two to six minutes. Several of the videos have supporting fliers, posters, and presentation slides.

Safety Short topics are chosen specifically to address safety practices that can be applied both at work and at home, supporting the entire well-being of every Lab worker throughout each day, Nicholas added.

Previous awards

The videos have received numerous awards, including the International Telly Awards, the International Summit Creative Awards, and the Aegis Awards. The two most recent videos, “Being Human — What happens before mistakes?” and “Stairs and Handrails” received 2010 Telly Awards.

Click to enlarge

The Lab receives the Innovation Award at the VPP conference in Orlando, Florida on August 22. From left to right: Evelyn Mullen of Global Security, Rob Nicholas, Brad Davy of DOE, and Bethany Rich.