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Titusville fire chief earns Green Belt after project targeting fitness-related injuries
Summary
Fire Chief Sanger presented a Lean Six Sigma Green Belt project that isolated physical-fitness injuries as the primary cause of lost work time and proposed certified trainers, protected rest, and controlled workout environments to cut lost hours by 20% and produce measurable savings.
Fire Chief Sanger presented his Lean Six Sigma Green Belt project to council, showing a data-driven effort to reduce firefighter lost work time and overtime costs. He reported that, over five years, injuries led to an average of 454.4 lost hours annually and overtime tied to these injuries averaged about 8,681.72 hours per year. Sanger said the project narrowed hundreds of incidents to eight high–lost-time injuries and found physical-fitness activities, fatigue, body type and distractions as leading contributors.
Sanger set a clear goal: "My goal is to reduce lost work time in hours by 20%." His recommended measures include creating a certified fitness-training team, piloting protected rest periods so personnel aren’t exercising when fatigued, and establishing controlled workout environments and 5S practices to reduce risk. He estimated a conservative saving of roughly $10,000 annually from fewer injuries and an approximate project return on investment of $8,700, while noting that medical and salary impacts vary by case.
The council and staff recognized the work; Vicky Rose of Lace Consultant presented Sanger with his green belt certification and described the requirements for the credential (40 hours of training, an exam and a led project). Sanger said some benefits are already visible: the department had gone roughly 13 weeks without a lost-work-time injury at the time of his presentation, a sign he attributed to workplace focus on prevention.
