In industrial environments like those at Fleet Readiness Center East (FRCE), the proper use of personal protective equipment (PPE) is critical to workforce safety. From basic PPE like safety glasses and earplugs to more advanced equipment like respirators, each piece helps minimize an employee’s exposure to potential hazards associated with the maintenance, repair and overhaul of military aircraft and their components.
An ongoing initiative to improve understanding of PPE requirements at FRCE is ensuring employees can quickly and easily identify what type of protective equipment is needed to enter industrial areas of the depot. High-visibility, one-foot-wide yellow bars with simple black pictograms depicting an area’s PPE requirements have been painted on the floor at the entrances to hangars, component shops and other industrial spaces, providing the workforce with a simple reference point.
The new floor markings are standardizing communication and eliminating the potential for confusion, which improves overall workplace safety, said FRCE Commanding Officer Capt. James M. Belmont.
“These new PPE markings provide clear, concise communication about what PPE is required on our hangar decks and in our shops, and implementing this initiative is reflective of the healthy safety culture at FRC East,” Belmont said. “Safety is one of the command’s top priorities, and our team is continuously seeking ways to improve workplace safety and occupational health while aligning our processes and practices with forward-leaning aviation industry standards.
“Keeping our workforce safe and healthy affords the command a better opportunity to meet the mission, or even exceed expectations and return these aircraft and components to the Fleet with faster turnaround times,” Belmont continued. “It’s a win-win situation and it starts, at its very basic core, with employees knowing what protective gear to wear to keep themselves safe in their jobs.”
Since the depot’s construction during the World War II era, FRCE has seen decades of directives and regulations regarding safety signage, along with different interpretations of those regulations. Combine that with the wide variety of work areas encompassed by FRCE’s facilities, and the task of communicating the different PPE requirements in different areas can become increasingly challenging, explained FRCE Safety and Occupational Health Division Director Angelo Owens.
“One of the issues we have labored with here is trying to communicate to our employees when and where they should be wearing certain types of PPE, because we’re a very large facility and we have a vast number of shops with different requirements,” he said. “And as you transition from one shop to another, depending on the type of work being performed, there may be additional PPE requirements that weren’t present in the adjacent shop you were just in.
“Trying to label all of those things and put up signage is challenging,” Owens continued. “So the idea is to have a systematic, effective means of communication. We’ve made a concerted effort to keep things as simple as possible so we can effectively communicate changing PPE requirements as an individual transitions from one area to another. By having this throughout the facility, no matter where someone is at, the same signage and nonverbal communication about what PPE is required is readily available without having to speak to a shop supervisor or consult an industrial hygiene survey – one can know by what is displayed right in front of them on the floor markings.”
The industrial hygiene surveys serve as the starting point for the PPE marking process, Owens noted. An industrial hygiene survey analyzes, identifies and measures workplace hazards that can cause sickness, impaired health or significant discomfort in workers and helps eliminate or control them through appropriate mitigation efforts. FRCE’s Industrial Hygiene Branch has conducted surveys across the depot, and this information is used to label a diagram of the facility with the proper PPE markings for each area. This diagram is passed to FRCE’s Facilities Modernization Shop, which is part of the Facilities and Infrastructure Management Department’s General Facility Branch, and the “Mod Squad” takes on the tasks of prepping, painting and finishing the area.
Because the team needed to accomplish the job without interrupting production, choosing the right products for the job and prepping the areas for paint presented the biggest challenges, said General Facility Branch Head Mike Cundiff.
“We knew we couldn’t shut down our production areas to do this, but a lot of the floor coatings used in high-traffic areas have a lot of smell, or long curing times, or both,” Cundiff explained. “We ended up going with a coating that was basically invented for the Coast Guard. They paint boats and deckways with it, and the nice thing is that once you prep the area to be painted the first time, you never have to go back and sand it down again – you can paint directly over it.”
This feature is useful in a dynamic environment like FRCE, where shops might move from one location to another based on an aircraft line’s service life and changing workload requirements. It’s especially important considering the Modernization Shop has to prepare the areas for painting during off hours, in order to while keeping production moving on the aircraft and component lines.
“We can’t stop work on the aircraft lines or in the back shops, for that matter,” said Modernization Shop Supervisor Will Bradley. “There were a lot of challenges early on, and we pulled out all the stops to make it happen. We have a lot of team members with a lot of experience, and we relied on their input and good ideas, as well.”
The painting itself has gone smoothly, Cundiff noted. The team can easily paint the 12-inch yellow strip and then lay down the pictogram stencils, created by the depot’s graphic arts group, and paint over it. Once the paint is dry, they peel the stencil off and apply the topcoat, which cures in about four hours, Bradley said.
The facilities team has approached the enormous task of marking all of FRCE’s industrial areas by breaking it down into sections, and has already completed four out of a total of seven. The results of the effort have been clear to members of both the safety and facilities teams.
“We’ve gotten feedback from employees and they say they like the new system, because it’s no longer just a sign on the wall that becomes wallpaper when you see it every day,” said Lead Safety Specialist Brian Pounders. “This is bright, it's very easy to see and it helps them remember what PPE to wear when they walk into the shops.”
Owens said the simplified pictograms help explain things clearly, and also eliminate many potential obstacles to communication, including language or cultural barriers. Cundiff said the pictograms used in the markings were chosen with this in mind, and Bradley agreed that the universal nature of the new PPE markings was one of its biggest benefits.
“The new PPE markings come in line with what you’re seeing globally when it comes to safety systems, where they’ve gone to pictograms for immediate notification of hazards,” he said. “This isn’t just for industrial facilities, but it certainly makes sense here at FRC East. It’s definitely clarified some grey areas, and has put the command in line with global and industry best practices.”
In the end, the most important aspect of the new PPE marking system is that is helps keep employees safe, which helps the command accomplish its mission more effectively and efficiently, Owens explained.
“We’ve seen a significant decline in workplace injuries over the past 10 years and, at this point in 2023, we’re tracking lower, on average, than last year or the year before,” Owens said. “Using proper PPE has certainly helped contribute to that reduction in injuries.
“Employee safety is a self-serving initiative,” he continued. “Injuries equate to lost workdays for the command, so fewer injuries mean more days worked in support of our nation’s warfighters. When we look at our numbers, it’s clear that what we’re doing is working. This new marking system will only enhance that effort and provide additional support to the successful safety management system at FRC East.”