The Department of Energy weapons complex might consider adopting safety practices other agencies use to reduce on-the-job contractor accidents and learn from such incidents, according to a new report.
That’s a key takeaway included in a contractor safety analysis for fiscal years 2019 through 2023 done by DOE’s Office of Enterprise Assessments. The agency’s investigative wing published the report Wednesday.
The report recommends the DOE Office of Environment, Health, Safety, and Security set high expectations and “clearly and concisely specify the goals and requirements that must be met” for identifying and fixing problems. “Contractors and DOE field/site offices should assess the contractor’s issues management” especially for “high-risk areas,” according to the report.
“A total of nearly 4,000 issues from contractors of the DOE Offices of Environmental Management, Science, and Nuclear Energy, and the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were evaluated,” according to the document.
Although the reviewed DOE contractors “adequately managed three of every four reviewed issues, they demonstrated significant weaknesses impeding the identification of precursors to systematic issues,” which can point to larger problems in the future.
For example, one unidentified DOE contractor seemed to downplay the significance of a “near miss to fatal injury from a falling object,” according to the report. “Subsequently, two additional near misses to fatalities from falling objects occurred in the next three months, while contractor personnel performed only an apparent cause analysis rather than a root cause analysis.” The two additional near-misses might have been averted “by appropriately categorizing the first near miss” coupled with corrective actions.
Meanwhile, six contractors failed to identify or resolve 25 adverse trends in nuclear safety management programs, according to the report.
“Given the broad extent of the significant weaknesses identified, as well as common misunderstandings of the vague requirements in DOE directives” it is possible safety weaknesses exist with other contractors, the assessments office said.
The Enterprise Assessments branch also talked to the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and NASA, among others, to discuss their efforts to protect workers, the public, and the environment.
These organizations tend to “have a much lower threshold” for entering workplace incidents into tracking systems, which result in more problems being caught and corrected early. These government branches do “more causal analyses” and often complete them sooner. Likewise, the other departments looked at by the Office of Enterprise Assessments “set more aggressive goals for the completion of corrective actions.”
The report also recommends DOE contractors make increased use of Energy Facility Contractors Group meetings to share best safety practices.
The nine big DOE contractors that were examined by the Enterprise Assessments office are Battelle Energy Alliance, Bechtel, Consolidated Nuclear Security, Lawrence Livermore National Security, Mission Support and Test Services, Savannah River Nuclear Solutions, University of Tennessee and Battelle, Washington River Protection Solutions and Los Alamos National Security, which was succeeded by Triad National Security early in fiscal 2019.
