Defence Physical Employment Standards Report: No. 2

Military operational tasks are physically demanding and incur the risk of injury. In order to address the issues and costs associated with the high injury rates and focus on ways to reduce the risk of injury to Australian Defence Force (ADF) personnel, the ADF Chiefs of Service Committee (COSC) has endorsed a number of injury prevention strategies aimed at examining, analysing and evaluating injury-related risks and hazards within the ADF. In line with those strategies, COSC has affirmed that ADF employment policy is to be competency based and agreed that physical employment standards should be developed for combat arms trades. The purpose of the Defence Physical Employment Standards Project (DPESP) is to develop these performance-based competency standards. The ADF has employed the services of the University of Ballarat (UB) to undertake the DPESP. This involves reviewing combat arms trade tasks (CATTs), establishing a set of criterion CATTs, developing a battery of simulation and predictive tests based on the criterion CATTs to be used to assess the physical competency of ADF combat personnel, and making recommendations for associated physical employment standards. In the initial phase, the study is focused on one Army corps - Infantry, and one Air Force mustering - Airfield Defence Guards (ADG)1. The aim of this work package was to identify a range of potential tests that may be used by the ADF to predict performance on trade tasks that involve a significant endurance component and potentially a significant strength-endurance component. The work package also aimed to identify a battery of kinanthropometric tests for use within the Defence Physical Employment Standards Project (DPESP). The method used was to review the relevant academic and Defence literature and to conduct a oneday workshop attended by subject matter experts from the UB team and the ADF. The workshop was conducted in a manner that enabled the participants to comment on the literature provided by way of a background briefing paper and to use their collective experience and expertise to identify a number of potential tests and measures in keeping with the overall aim of the work package. It was assumed that the criterion endurance trade task would be the 50 km pack march. The literature review identified a range of approaches to the selection or development of a test to predicted performance on the 50 km pack march. These approaches include the prediction of endurance capacity from: • a direct measure of a related trade task (e.g. a shorter pack march) (Approach A)