DOE | Office of Health, Safety and Security | Facility Representative | 2001 Workshop Breakout Sessions - Configuration Management of Vital Safety Systems

May 15 - 17, 2001

Las Vegas, Nevada

Configuration Management of Vital Safety Systems - Status and Role of Facility Reps

Wednesday, May 16, 2001 (4:30 p.m. - 5:30 p.m.)

Session Leader: Michael Mikolanis (S-3.1)

The objective of this breakout session was to provide an overview of the Department’s actions to address configuration management/operational readiness issues related to vital safety systems. However, numerous questions regarding the role of the Facility Representative in establishing the federal safety system expertise were raised during previous workshop sessions. Facility Representatives expressed significant concern that the line managers working the federal expertise issue were going to primarily rely upon Facility Representatives to provide this expertise. An objective to clear up misconceptions regarding line management’s intentions regarding the role of Facility Representatives in demonstrating safety system expertise in federal personnel was added to this breakout session. This objective was addressed during the safety system expertise topical area.

Summary:
The breakout session provided a brief overview of the issues associated with Recommendation 2000-2 and the actions taken to develop an implementation plan. The presentation included an overview of the four topical areas of the Department’s 2000-2 Implementation Plan: 1) safety system assessments, 2) safety system expertise, 3) safety system ES&H assessment summaries, and 4) miscellaneous HEPA filter commitments. The overview included a discussion of the commitments made by the Secretary of Energy related to each of these four topical areas:

Safety System Assessments - The Department has made a commitment to assess the operational status and reliability of safety systems installed within defense nuclear facilities. Beginning with a list of vital safety systems, the Department will employ a phased approach to assess system status in a representative group of facilities. Phase I assessments are essentially administrative reviews of system functions, design and material status that are performed by knowledgeable personnel within those facilities. Line management will then evaluate the Phase I assessment results to determine where (systems and/or facilities) additional reviews are necessary in order to determine system status. Phase II assessments will then be scheduled for these systems/facilities.

Safety System Expertise – In this topical area the Department made commitments to demonstrate/establish safety system expertise within contractor and federal organizations. Earlier this year the Secretary issued interim direction to establish contractor system engineer programs. This interim guidance will be institutionalized with the Directives system.

The Federal Technical Capabilities Panel (FTCP), a corporate group of line managers that review technical competence issues, is addressing the federal systems expertise issue.The FTCP has put together a conceptual model to oversee the activities of contractor system engineers.The model consists of two elements: Facility Representatives and Subject Matter Experts. The FTCP proposes that the Department should take advantage of the experience and facility-specific expertise of the Facility Representative by using them to observe configuration management/operability issues within the facilities. This element is fairly consistent with the existing responsibilities currently defined for Facility Representatives. However, in order to avoid a situation where Facility Representatives would have to have significant amount of time researching design drawings or chasing down system-specific design issues, the FTCP model identifies the need for subject matter experts who would take these issues and chase down the answers. The FTCP is currently working to refine their model and identify the availability and sufficiency of subject matter experts at each site.

Safety System ES&H Assessment Summaries – The implementation plan describes a process for providing the Secretary with annual summaries of the results of safety and health assessments at each site.This process will be institutionalized within the Directives system.

Miscellaneous to high efficiency particulate air (HEPA) Filter Commitments – It was noted that the Department made several commitments related specifically HEPA filters. The most significant commitment, an update to the most frequently used reference document (i.e., the Nuclear Air Cleaning Handbook), is scheduled for completion later this year.

Summary of Action Items:

No action items were identified in this session.