Estill Springs resident Vicki Peters enjoys her job at AEDC

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Arnold Air Force Base, Tenn. --  Arnold Engineering Development Center (AEDC) employees get them in their email inbox everyday cov¬ering a variety of safety, health and security topics.

They see her name, Vicki Peters, Aerospace Testing Alliance (ATA) Safety and Health, but do they ever wonder who she really is?

She's a wife and mom, a church teacher and volun¬teer and has been an employee at AEDC for more than 25 years.

In 1980 Peters began working for the Tullahoma office of Arnold Research Organization (ARO) which at that time was the AEDC prime con¬tractor.

She came to the base in 1982 working as a procedures analyst for mis¬sion support subcontractor Pan Am in the civil engineering department.

As a procedures analyst, Peters developed and updated maintenance, operating procedures and standard practice instructions and was involved in the transi¬tion to the first comput¬er-automated preventive maintenance system.

In 2003, when ATA took over the contract, she switched over to the Safe¬ty and Health Group and has been there ever since. There she works on toolbox topics, safety standards, award fee, trend analysis, audits and a variety of other safety-related projects.

The toolbox topics ini¬tially started during the first year of the ATA contract, but prior to that, Peters provided toolbox topic-type awareness notes to the supervisors in the civil engineering department of ACS.

"I get a lot of interesting questions from people asking if I can write a toolbox topic on something they noticed or experienced," she said. "That's where some of my ideas come from."

Peters tries to focus on AEDC-related topics which involve several areas including safety and health, industrial hygiene, fire and police and environmental. She also pulls ideas from seasonal-type topics and ones of national emphasis or concern.

"I do a lot of research on the Internet," she said. "It's like doing research papers every day--you have to do research and make sure you are accurate with what you are telling your audience."

Besides the Internet, Peters relies heavily on AEDC and Air Force standards and regulatory requirements. She also uses e-magazines, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Centers for Disease Con¬trol and National Fire Pro¬tection Agency regulations. Fire, police and emergency management personnel alternate providing topics on Wednesdays.

Her toolbox topics have also been used outside of AEDC gates and are not only applicable to on-the-job safety. Some are even shared with parent com¬pany Jacobs Technology, Inc., and other Air Force bases. In fact, toolbox topics were recognized as an Air Force Best Practice during the 2008 Unit Com¬pliance Inspection.

"One individual who works with Civil Air Pa¬trol uses some of the ge¬neric topics to have safety minutes with his cadets," she said. "Another person works with a Boy Scout troop and uses the topics in particular to camping and outdoor safety."

Peters admits that one of the most challenging parts of her job comes when is when an urgent topic requires the work force to be notified in a timely manner.

"Sometimes we are tasked to get information out quickly so I have to have things available to me in a moment's notice," she said. "We want to make sure everyone gets the right information."

Peters husband of more than 35 years Bill, works in ATA's IT department, son Zach lives in Huntsville, Ala., and daughter Elizabeth lives in Knoxville, Tenn.

Some of her hobbies include teaching a Sunday school class and volunteering time with the youth group at Estill Springs United Methodist Church, crocheting shawls for distribution by a women's church group and likes caring for house plants and has a lifetime U.S. Presidential Volunteer Service award representing over 4,000 hours of work with the Girl Scouts.

-AEDC-