Job Summary

This Safety and Occupational Health Specialist position is located within the Facilities Management Service at the Providence VA Healthcare System in Providence, Rhode Island. It is permanent and full-time at 40 hours per week.

Job Description

To qualify for this position, applicants must meet all requirements by the closing date of this announcement, 12/09/2025. Time-In-Grade Requirement: Applicants who are current Federal employees and have held a GS grade any time in the past 52 weeks must also meet time-in-grade requirements by the closing date of this announcement. For a GS-11 position you must have served 52 weeks at the GS-09. The grade may have been in any occupation, but must have been held in the Federal service. An SF-50 that shows your time-in-grade eligibility must be submitted with your application materials. If the most recent SF-50 has an effective date within the past year, it may not clearly demonstrate you possess one-year time-in-grade, as required by the announcement. In this instance, you must provide an additional SF-50 that clearly demonstrates one-year time-in-grade. Note: Time-In-Grade requirements also apply to former Federal employees applying for reinstatement as well as current employees applying for Veterans Employment Opportunities Act of 1998 (VEOA) appointment. You must qualify based on your experience and/or education as described below: Specialized Experience: You must have one year of specialized experience equivalent to at least the next lower grade (GS-09) in the normal line of progression in (or related to) safety and occupational health that provided the specific knowledge, skills, and abilities to perform successfully the duties of the position. Examples of qualifying specialized experience include, but are not limited to: Applying safety and occupational health laws, regulations, principles, theories, practices, and procedures to advise on or resolve technical matters dealing with occupational safety and health requirements; Analyzing or evaluating new and existing jobs, processes, products, or other systems to determine the existence, severity, probability, and outcome of hazards; Designing or modifying workplaces, processes, products, or other systems to control or eliminate hazards; Inspecting or surveying workplaces, processes, products, or other systems for compliance with established safety and occupational health policies or standards and to identify potential new hazards; Training of workers, supervisors, managers, or other safety and occupational health personnel in safety or occupational health subjects; and/or Work in occupational fields such as industrial hygienist, safety engineer, fire prevention engineer, health physicist, and occupational health nurse. OR, Education: Applicants may substitute education for the required experience. To qualify based on education for this grade level you must have: a Ph.D. or equivalent doctoral degree, or 3 full years of progressively higher level graduate education leading to such a degree, or LL.M., if related OR, Combination: Only graduate education in excess of the amount required for the next lower grade level may be used to qualify applicants for a GS-11. (When crediting education that requires specific course work, prorate the number of hours of related courses required as a proportion of the total education to be used.) *Note: Major study must be related to safety or occupational health fields (safety, occupational health, industrial hygiene), or degree in other related fields that included or was supplemented by at least 24 semester hours of study from among the following (or closely related) disciplines: safety, occupational health, industrial hygiene, occupational medicine, toxicology, public health, mathematics, physics, chemistry, biological sciences, engineering, and industrial psychology. Transcripts are required to use education to qualify for this position. *You will be rated on the following Competencies for this position: Communications Planning and Evaluating Safety Engineering Self Management Experience refers to paid and unpaid experience, including volunteer work done through National Service programs (e.g., Peace Corps, AmeriCorps) and other organizations (e.g., professional; philanthropic; religions; spiritual; community; student; social). Volunteer work helps build critical competencies, knowledge, and skills and can provide valuable training and experience that translates directly to paid employment. You will receive credit for all qualifying experience, including volunteer experience. Note: A full year of work is considered to be 35-40 hours of work per week. Part-time experience will be credited on the basis of time actually spent in appropriate activities. Applicants wishing to receive credit for such experience must indicate clearly the nature of their duties and responsibilities in each position and the number of hours a week spent in such employment. Physical Requirements: The work involves the frequent performance of surveys and onsite visits to laboratory and maintenance shops necessitating prolonged periods of walking and standing. Work Environment: The specialist is frequently exposed to mechanical hazards ranging from power tools to operating machinery and chemical and biological hazards while performing medical facility surveys.For more information on these qualification standards, please visit the United States Office of Personnel Management's website at https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/classification-qualifications/general-schedule-qualification-standards/.