Recently, we provided an article about a DoD Agency, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, which promoted a safety official within the agency to the rank of Environmental, Safety, and Occupational Health (ESOH) Chief. The article, DoD Agency Appoints ESOH Chief with No Environmental Experience, may be found here.
In the article, we noted that the safety officer promoted to lead the ESOH Office had little to no environmental experience or training. While our sources informed us the job posting for the ESOH Office Chief position did not contain any requirement for environmental experience, we recently uncovered the original job posting, dated November 14, 2007, and discovered a few new facts.
Interestingly, the job description states that the ESOH Chief is responsible for overseeing the implementation of a wide variety of environmental duties. However, in the requirements section, the ad rates environmental management as low on the priority scale. This means candidates will not be expected to have much of an environmental background. Essentially, it tells human resource officials that environmental experience isn't very relevant for the Environmental, Safety and Occupational Office Chief.
We've included the job posting for you to review. Below is the description of the position. This tells the candidate what they will be required to do on the job. Note the number of environmental duties listed.
DTRA-08-428
Supervisory Safety and Occupational Health Specialist
Additional Duty Location Info:1 vacancy - Fairfax, Ft Belvoir, Manassas
MAJOR DUTIES:
BackToTop();
The
incumbent serves as the Chief, Environment, Safety & Occupational
Health (ESOH) Office, Business Enterprise. The incumbent manages the
environmental, safety and occupational health staff, through
subordinate supervisors, performing technical work, and is the top
authority for ESOH with DTRA. Responsible for the development,
oversight and management of a comprehensive environmental, safety and
occupational health program; establishment of policies and objectives;
staff supervision, coordination and evaluation of environmental
protection, environmental remediation, industrial hygiene and safety at
all DTRA elements; deployment health and medical consultation as it
relates to occupational health such as overseas travel, military
deployments, reasonable accomodations, workers compensation, work
related illness. Provides safety and environmental engineering services
and occupational health evaluation, advisory and oversight to all
echelons of the DTRA. Advises and counsels the Director and other key
officials on all environmental, safety and occupational health
considerations pertaining to the varied programs and missions of DTRA.
Represents the Director and serves as the ESOH consultant to key
officials of various organizations and agencies.
On the next section, the requirements section, candidates are informed how they will be evaluated. This section, in essence, tells the applicant what their resumes must look like in order to have a chance at the job.
A close look at the DTRA job post reveals that those who created the position made sure not to make the environmental background of their future ESOH Chief very important. Instead, they placed a much higher value on the candidates safety background. This seems strange, given the amount of environmental responsibilities the position clearly entails.
HOW YOU WILL BE EVALUATED:
The basis
for rating is an automated system that searches the applicant database
for skills identified through a documented job analysis. All DLA
Vacancies: All candidates applying against a Merit Promotion
announcement will be evaluated against the criteria identified in the
announcement.
Evaluation Factors:
Quality of Experience Point Value: 78
Awards Point Value: 2
Education Point Value:10
Training Point Value:10
Desired Skills
Weight Description
High Occupational Safety
High Safety Management
High Health&Safety Reg
Average Occupational Health
Average Leadership
Low Environmental Mgmt
Low Industrial Hygiene
The question is, given the need for the ESOH Chief to supervise so many environmental responsibilities, as listed in the job posting, why would anyone minimize the importance of environmental experience? Wouldn't DTRA want to make sure that it's ESOH leader had experience in all matters of the office he/she supervised? It seems irresponsible to assume an individual with limited or no environmental knowledge could understand and sign off on complicated documents like an environmental impact statement, environmental engineering analysis, or environmental remediation project.
And it is precisely these kinds of seemingly small and benign decisions which lead to large disasters down the road. If you've ever read the Tipping Point, you understand the profound impact small events can end up having.
Imagine if the infamous memo entitled "Bin Laden determined to attack inside the U.S." sent to the President in May 2001 had actually been taken seriously and circulated properly to all intelligence agencies and airlines. We might be living very differently today. Small events - big impacts.