VPPPA turns the big 4-0

It’s a milestone year for the VPPPA.

In August, VPPPA’s 2024 Safety+ Symposium in Aurora, Colorado, marked the 40th edition of the association’s biggest networking and professional development event. On top of that, VPPPA celebrated another birthday.

This one’s a milestone — VPPPA turned 40.

The official anniversary of VPPPA’s founding is in 2025, but this year’s Safety+ Symposium served as the kickoff to a yearlong celebration of VPPPA’s past, present and future. One that will culminate next August 11-14 during VPPPA’s 2025 Safety+ in St. Louis, Missouri. When you’ve been the leader in advancing health and safety excellence for 40 years, it takes a full year, and then some, to tell the story of how members have continually raised the standard for safety excellence — and what we’re doing to continue that improvement in workplaces around the world.

OSHA and the DOE’s Voluntary Protection Program have grown from that first site at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in southern California, where CalOSHA, Bechtel and the construction trades joined forces to pilot a revolutionary concept — employee involvement in every aspect of a site’s safety and health plan. This was coupled with management commitment to provide the resources, guidance and support to employee input, and regulatory oversight to ensure accountability and engagement from all parties.

VPPPA’s annual conference has evolved from 45 attendees in 1984 to more than 2,000 front-line workers, safety managers, senior leaders and stakeholders. And from a handful of VPP site members in 1985 to represent more than 1,400 high-performing companies and sites — both VPP and non-VPP — along with their employees and stakeholders in EHS&S.

Along the way, we’ve evolved processes, practices, equipment and even perceptions. Through collective effort by VPPPA members, OSHA, state departments of labor and fellow industry groups, we’ve helped change mindsets from viewing safety as a priority to making safety our core value upon which every operational decision is made. From "we want to work safe" to "we will work safe, and we’ll do whatever is necessary to send every worker home in the same — or better — condition than which they arrived."

And we’re not done.

As VPPPA has evolved to represent not just VPP sites, but those committed to continuous EHS&S improvement and sustained, high levels of performance, we’ve helped VPP and workplace safety as a whole evolve. Take VPP modernization, for example — VPPPA has taken a leading role in not only working alongside OSHA to identify areas where we can strengthen the components that make up the VPP, but also in building out the technology that OSHA and industry can use to make safety and health management systems more efficient.

Creating a platform for VPP sites to complete their annual self-evaluations has transformed into a year-round, collaborative evaluation tool used by companies outside of VPP. The online Special Government Employees (SGE) Application Form captures significantly more information from SGE than ever before. This form — created by VPPPA and open to all SGEs regardless of VPPPA membership status — will help OSHA more easily assign SGEs in audits and expand the opportunities available to the SGE pool.

We’ve also worked with our industry partners at the American Society of Safety Professionals to develop a draft VPP-Construction (VPP-C) framework that will be given to OSHA for potential implementation. This VPP-C won’t take the place of VPP’s Mobile Workforce, which is for employees who move between sites. Rather, it will create a new pathway for general contractors and specialty contractors into VPP, as well as allowing them to be recognized for exceptional EHS&S performance and programs focused on the foundational components of VPP.

VPPPA’s next 40 years will be impacted by advances in technology, practices and the structure of the workplace and workforce. And while change is good, one thing will remain the same: VPPPA will continue to lead the way in advancing health and safety excellence through collaboration, mentorship and education to raise the standard for a safe and healthy workplace.

It’s the foundation of our past, our present and our future.

For more information, visit vpppa.org.