Air Force Issues Explosives / Chemical Safety Submission Guidance
The Air Force released a guidance document designed for Munitions Response Program (MRP) Managers on preparing explosive and chemical safety documents for Air Force Safety Center (AFSC) and Department of Defense Explosive Safety Board (DDESB) review and approval. The document is presented as a guidebook that provides various real world examples of five Explosives Safety Submission (ESS) / Chemical Safety Submission (CSS) documents.
The guidebook presents six levels of sites starting from sites that have been strictly used for small arms where no ESS is required. For this category, the guidebook suggests that observance of the guidance may help if UXO is ultimately found at the site. The other levels are organized by relative risk and include Low Risk, Medium Risk, High Risk, and Worst Case Risk sites. The document provides five real world examples of ESS / CSS documents (one from each category of sites from low to worst case risk). Lessons learned from each real world example are provided along with copies of the comments and communications between command level personnel, AFSCA, DDESB and in some cases Stakeholders for reference.
The guidebook also explains when the various documents are required, how they are submitted, how they are amended, and how they are closed out through an after action report. The guidebook considers the examples and supplemental material as benchmarks for each of the five levels of risk sites for MRP site managers to use as an example of a good ESS / CSS.
It is interesting to note that the Air Force does not have a set format or standard for their ESS documents unlike the Navy. Instead, they discuss in the guidebook what types of information are needed including levels of detail required but leave it up to the author to organize and format the document. The explosive / chemical safety submission guidance document is very large (almost 29 MB) but is mostly made of the five real world safety document examples that make up Appendices A-E respectively.
Download the Air Force Explosives / Chemical Safety Submission Guidance from UXOinfo.com.
