The American Society of Safety Engineers (ASSE) first live Virtual Symposium titled “Best-in-Class Safety Management: U.S. and International Practices and Approaches,” to be held online April 20 to 24, 2009, will focus on implementing and managing safety programs to meet the needs of the U.S. and global business environment.

The virtual symposium is a new service offered by ASSE in an effort to reach a greater audience, as ASSE understands that diverse and active audiences in the global marketplace require flexibility in education offerings, which a virtual symposium provides.

Symposium highlights include former National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) Director John Howard discussing the history of safety management, where we are today and the challenges we face in a global environment. Tom Krause, chairman of the board at BST Inc., will focus on safety best practices — and an organization’s ability to execute them successfully. Robert Pater, managing director of Strategic Safety Associates and Anil Mather, CEO of BP’s Alaska Tanker Company, will discuss progressive strategies for safety performance and culture in their session, “Propelling Next Level Safety Culture.”

James “Skipper” Kendrick, director of EHS Training at Textron Inc., will share how Textron, a multinational organization, is enhancing its positive safety culture on a path to premier safety performance. Also, Frank White, senior vice president at ORC Worldwide will look at worker health and safety and the expectations of the new U.S. Administration.

The virtual symposium will include examples and case studies from industry leaders on a variety of safety management systems, information on U.S. and international standards — and how to deal with the standards and regulations of other countries, sessions that explore how to communicate a safety philosophy, discussions on how to integrate safety into corporate ethics and social responsibility, ways to benchmark an organization against a variety of indicators of safety excellence, and techniques for accurately measuring the safety performance of an organization.

The virtual symposium, developed by ASSE, is a new conference format that is part webinar and part social networking, using Web 2.0 applications to reach a global audience. Participants will experience the feel of being in a live, multi-session conference but will be able to join the sessions as their schedule permits and view sessions they missed as a recording later in the day. There will be more than 15 live evens on best-in-class safety and participants will have the opportunity to network and share ideas with an international audience of speakers and attendees.

For more information, call 847/699-2929 or visit www.asse.org.

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