The Pantex Plant has underreported its maintenance backlog by 69 percent despite properly identifying the condition of its infrastructure, the Department of Energy Inspector General’s Office (IG) said in a report Tuesday.
Pantex reported 4,002 backlogged tasks as of Jan. 19, 2015, it said. However, the IG’s review of the system the plant uses to manage maintenance work requests found that Pantex omitted 8,714 other maintenance tasks.
The majority of requested maintenance tasks at the plant, then, were not reported to National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) management through the performance metric reporting, the report said, which means “NNSA management does not have a true indicator of the site infrastructure’s overall condition.”
Pantex officials attributed the backlog to reduced maintenance budgets. “Pantex required $228.9 million to fund infrastructure in fiscal year 2015, but NNSA funded only $133.3 million,” the report said.
Tasks considered important to safety that went unreported in the backlog included the repair of roof ladders and installation of lockable gates, with a scheduled start date of Sept. 8, 2014, the IG said. The tasks, intended for a mission-critical facility to block roof access during radiography work, had not been started or reported in the maintenance backlog as of Jan. 19, 2015, it said, noting that “administrative controls” such as a physical barrier and signage were instead used to restrict access to the roof.
The IG discovered that Pantex only reported maintenance tasks in the backlog if the task was in “Ready” or “Working” status – meaning the task was either approved or had already begun – and if the hours spent on incomplete tasks did not exceed the hours that had been estimated for completion.
