Director's Perspective

Welcome to the Office of Environment, Safety and Health Evaluations

Thomas Staker, Director

The Office of Environment, Safety and Health Evaluations is one of the four subordinate offices to the Office of Independent Oversight (HS-60) under the Office of Health, Safety and Security (HS-1). Our mission is to determine whether our workers, the public, and the environment are adequately protected from the hazards associated with DOE activities and sites and to identify areas where improvements are needed.

Our goal is to provide accurate information to DOE managers and other stakeholders about environment, safety, and health policies and performance. We strive to provide balanced reports that identified areas of good performance as well as weaknesses. We also strive to efficiently analyze complex activities of a wide array of operations and to provide constructive and insightful assessments within a framework that helps line management to identify a path forward to make the needed improvements. We meet these challenges through the competence and dedication of our staff and our proactive efforts to coordinate with line management before, during, and after inspection activities.

Our evaluations of environment, safety, and health will continue to focus on performance using three basic approaches. First, we evaluate the integration of environment, safety and health into work planning and execution, primarily through observing work activities. This bottom up approach allows us to determine the effectiveness of environment, safety, and health programs and management systems in establishing hazards controls. Second, we evaluate the functionality of select facility engineered safety systems so that we can determine how nuclear safety programs and management systems work together to ensure protection from the hazards associated with nuclear facilities and operations. Third, we evaluate both Department line management and contractor feedback and improvement mechanisms to determine whether these systems are providing accurate information on performance and are effective in correcting deficient conditions.

In addition to the above three areas, we perform periodic crosscutting reviews of selected program areas to evaluate performance at sites and provide perspectives on Department performance. These areas are selected based on such factors as performance, changes in requirements, and significance of hazards. We will also provide an annual report in accordance with the Department's Integrated Safety Management Manual.

I hope that you find this web site helpful in understanding the role of our Office and the process we use to fulfill our mission. If you have any comments or questions regarding the content of our web site or our organization, please contact Thomas Staker, Director, Office of Environment, Safety and Health Evaluations at Thomas.Staker@hq.doe.gov.