Employees may be asked questions about their work, how they identify environment, safety, and health hazards and controls, and how their facilities operate as part of a biannual review by the Department of Energy’s Office of Heath, Safety, and Security that runs through December.
In particular, those who work in Chemistry (C) Division, the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research (CMR) Building, the Weapons Engineering Tritium Facility, the Threat Reduction Directorate (ADTR) and at Technical Areas 50 and 54 will be affected.
Interviews, facility walk-downs, work observations, and document reviews will be used to evaluate the Laboratory’s management of environment, safety and health activities. Inspectors will focus on implementation of the five core functions of Integrated Safety Management (ISM), functionality of select nuclear safety systems, and feedback and improvement systems.
"It is important that the Laboratory demonstrate progress in the areas of ISM, integrated work control, formality of operations, and facility safety systems," said Barbara Hargis, ISM/Worker Safety Rules (WSR) program manager.
The inspection plan and DOE’s 2005 findings are available at http://int.lanl.gov/orgs/adeshq/hss.shtml online.
Associate Director for Environment, Safety, Health, and Quality (ADESHQ) Dick Watkins, and Hargis are serving as counterparts for the inspection team lead. They explained that, since the 2005 inspection, the Laboratory has made significant improvements in defining conduct of engineering, operations, and maintenance requirements, as well as the safety basis. The inspectors will be evaluating implementation of the new requirements.
For more information, contact Hargis at 7-0811 or hargisb@lanl.gov by electronic mail.
