In August Merrill E. Dickinson Jr. received the 2021 Department of Defense Safety and Occupational Health System Achievement Award for his outstanding service and accomplishments as the Installation Safety Manager at Marine Corps Logistics Base (MCLB) Albany where he serves as the senior safety professional on the installation.
When the COVID-19 pandemic began, it had a devastating impact on Dougherty County where MCLB Albany is situated. If the county was a country, it would have had the third highest infection rate in the world. The local hospital emergency room and intensive care unit were over capacity and there was a shortage of both health care workers and personal protective equipment (PPE), which had a crippling impact on the base and impeded its ability to sustain the mission and support the warfighter.
Mr. Dickinson leveraged his background in public health to advise base leadership and he began to apply what he learned when orchestrating the installation’s response to the H1N1 outbreak in 2009. He was instrumental in developing the installation’s face covering policies, cross-leveling and distributing PPE contingency stocks, coordinating and providing respirator fit testing for MCLB Albany Branch Health Clinic medical staff and first responders, developing the installation’s screen and barrier policy for locations where employees could not social distance, writing the temperature screening policy and numerous other initiatives to counter threats posed by COVID-19. He also worked closely with the emergency management team to ensure accurate information was collected and disseminated to the workforce. Mr. Dickinson closely monitored COVID-19 cases within the workforce to determine if there were case clusters that would indicate occupational exposures.
During this time, he continued to perform his duties as the safety manager to ensure there were no disruptions or delays to core safety service delivery. His responsibilities included completing all scheduled facility inspections, convening quarterly virtual safety councils, delivering required safety training and continuously improving the installation’s safety program by revising the command’s Explosive Safety Self-Assessment base order and Blood-borne Pathogen Exposure Control Plan.
One of his most notable deliverables provided under his leadership was the COVID-19 Safety Reset, which provided workplace sanitation and behavior standards to reduce coronavirus transmission, important elements of the command safety program, Voluntary Protection Program (VPP) refresher topics, the command’s 2020 safety goal, relevant training and web-based resources. The educational booklet was distributed throughout the Marine Corps as a best practice for other commands to edit and implement.
Mr. Dickinson has worked at MCLB Albany as a safety professional since 1994, and since he has managed the program, the command has been recognized for safety excellence nearly every year and has received 19 awards since Fiscal Year 2003. He has also been active in Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s VPP since 2009 and has participated in numerous worksite evaluations. Last year, he worked diligently to procure forklift simulators for MCLB Albany, Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort and Marine Corps Support Facility Blount Island, which were delivered in April of this year. These efforts illustrate how Mr. Dickinson always strives for safety excellence, not only for MCLB Albany but for the Marine Corps.
| Date Taken: | 09.29.2021 |
| Date Posted: | 09.29.2021 13:05 |
| Story ID: | 406300 |
| Location: | US |
| Web Views: | 126 |
| Downloads: | 2 |
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