Checking Out VPPPA's Big Show
We'll post reports from the national convention on our website, so be on the lookout during those late August days for items of interest about leadership keynotes and educational sessions.
- By Jerry Laws
- Aug 01, 2014
I'm scheduled to attend the Voluntary Protection Programs Participants' Association, Inc.'s 30th annual national convention this month at the Gaylord National Hotel, and I'm expecting it will be an excellent conference. VPPPA, now comprising more than 2,300 sites with upwards of 900,000 employees, expects about 3,000 people to attend the Aug. 25-28 event to check out some of the educational sessions and a big expo that I'm eager to visit. Looking over the listed exhibitors, I believe this conference's expo has grown as large as the AIHce conference's exhibits and is as eclectic as the ASSE conference's expos.
Our magazine has partnered with VPPPA for the past two years, trying to help them publicize their annual conference and offering a "supercast" of two webinars presented by experts who had also presented sessions at the one of the association's regional conferences. These have gone very well: While 932 people registered to attend our 2013 webinars, our June 25, 2014, webinars on emergency evacuation and incentives (both from the Region VI conference in May 2014) dwarfed that number, with a combined 1,388 people signed up in advance for them.
We'll post reports from the national convention on our website, so be on the lookout during those late August days for items of interest about leadership keynotes and educational sessions on topics that range from behavior-based safety and GHS to VPP for small companies, best practices for a VPP mobile workforce company, slip and fall safety, electrical safety PPE, lockout/tagout, OSHA's Special Government Employee program, confined spaces, contractor safety, and much more.
One session surely worth attending concerns OSHA's VPP Policy Memorandum #7, https://www.osha.gov/dcsp/vpp/policy_memo7.html, issued by Assistant Secretary Dr. David Michaels on May 29, 2013. It defined a new status of VPP/Mobile Workforce site participation during an OSHA inspection and enforcement action following a fatality or catastrophe at that site, and it explained that the assistant secretary's office and the Directorate of Cooperative and State Programs should be notified of any such fatality or catastrophe.
This article originally appeared in the August 2014 issue of Occupational Health & Safety.
About the Author
Jerry Laws is Editor of Occupational Health & Safety magazine, which is owned by 1105 Media Inc.