Staff Reports
WC Monitor
8/28/2015
All indications are that safety culture at the Hanford Waste Treatment Plant, while not perfect, is improving, said Sean Sullivan, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board member who led a DNFSB public hearing on the matter this week.
But board Vice Chair Jessie Roberson was more critical. Numerous actions have been undertaken to improve safety culture but their effect is still unknown, she said. A 2011 board recommendation to improve the vitrification plant safety culture was driven by concerns about technical decisions involving safety matters, she said. “I have reviewed the sustainment plan for the project and it is a good plan for pursuit of an organic culture change which we all know will take many, many years,” according to Roberson. “But work and decisions are being made now and it is unclear what the key compensatory measures are that are being relied on in the interim so that they can be sustained while the project moves forward.”
Roberson said she appreciated the steps the Department of Energy has taken to improve the vitrification plant safety culture in response to the board’s 2011 recommendation. “However, these actions do not address the main concerns that led the board to issue the recommendation,” she said.
In 2011 the board concluded that DOE and contractor management behavior reinforced a culture deterring the timely reporting, acknowledgment, and resolution of technical concerns related to the future safe operation of the plant, which when finished will process millions of gallons of radioactive waste stored at the site. A report following an investigation triggered by complaints of Hanford whistleblower Walter Tamosaitis said a chilled atmosphere existed on safety issues and DOE and contractor management had suppressed technical dissent.
Both Roberson and Sullivan said safety culture is driven by leadership. “Leaders establish the working climate and climate drives the culture of their organization,” Roberson said. Top leaders on the Hanford vitrification plant project are new to the project since the board began addressing the safety culture issue in 2011.
The board took no action at the public meeting after it failed to assemble a quorum. Before the agenda was revised it included time for the board to discuss a staff proposal related to safety culture. Daniel Santos, the third board member expected at the meeting, was unable to attend.
A tremendous amount of work remains to be done regarding safety culture at the project, although the most recent data shows a positive trend, said Glenn Podonsky, the DOE director of the independent Office of Enterprise Assessments. Results of the third comprehensive look at the safety culture at the project were released in June, following results in 2014 that showed the safety culture unchanged since 2011, he said. “Improvements are in the early stages,” he said. “The program could stall if attention lapses, resources are diverted or management priorities shift.”
The June report found that Office of River Protection employees responded more positively in 2014 than previously to the statement “I can openly challenge management decisions,” and many workers who were interviewed indicated they had no apprehensions about reporting safety concerns. Employees with plant contractor Bechtel National who were interviewed for the assessment made more positive comments at all levels of the organization than in 2011 or 2014 reviews and said that new senior leaders were highly visible in the organization and had constructive leadership styles.
Work remains to be done across the DOE cleanup complex, said Mark Whitney, DOE principal deputy assistant secretary for environmental management. To improve the safety culture at the vitrification plant, Smith has adjusted the potential fee plant contractor Bechtel National may earn following its recent evaluations every six months to assign 50 percent of available fee to self-discovery and self-reporting of issues, said Kevin Smith, manager of the DOE Office of River Protection, which is overseeing the plant project. DOE is evaluating contractual language to maintain a positive safety culture, Whitney said. To encourage creativity, ORP has started a grand challenge program that allows new ideas to be pitched, Smith said.
The biggest safety culture challenge is maintaining the trust of employees, Smith said. “Once lost it takes a long time to restore,” he said. Building trust requires “good leadership, good management, consistency, and an unrelenting focus on getting technical issues identified and allowing everyone’s voice to be heard,” he said. Smith has seen a decrease in use of the employee concerns program, but many workers are taking advantage of a program that allows them to submit “differing professional opinions” for evaluation, he said. “It is a robust process,” he said. There still are employees who may not be happy that their proposal is not picked, but the program is working, he said. As a last resort for employees who cannot get their issue resolved any other way, Smith said he maintains a full, unfettered open door policy.
