EH&S 1996 IFA Final Report: Occupational Safety

                                                                                  

Organization and management

The LBNL Environment, Health and Safety Division's primary mission is to provide professional and technical expertise to support and enhance the Laboratory's research and development program.

The EH&S Division is organized into departments and groups to align closely with Laboratory organizational structure. There are two departments, each representing a major functional area: Environment, Health, and Safety. Reporting to these two departments are seven groups. A division administrator, matrixed to EH&S from the Office of the Associate Laboratory Director, Administration, is charged with overall fiscal and personnel management within the Division.

Reporting to the division director, each department head has leadership responsibility for a major functional unit, usually including three or four subordinate group leaders, plus professionals and technical staff, varying in number from 30 to 50 individuals. Each department head is responsible for management of the department, including planning, staffing, and budgeting, and for the development and implementation of Laboratory policies and procedures in their functional area. Each department head represents the department in contacts with internal and external organizations and individuals on matters of major significance to the success of Laboratory programs and activities. The department head directs the work of subordinate managers in the groups within the department.

Reporting to the division director or a department head, each group leader has supervisory responsibility for an EH&S technical or professional section, project, or function. An EH&S group comprises several professionals and/or technical experts (typically 10 to 25 people), organized to achieve goals in a specific, focused EH&S specialty area.

David Mc Graw is the LBNL EH&S division director. He is responsible for developing forward looking policies that support the Lab's Vision 2000 statement and for the day to day operations that articulate Lab policies on protection of the public, and the environment, and eliminate potential compliance exposures to the lab. The EH&S divisional Charter provides a roadmap for the rest of the division and is found in the Division Function Notebook.

The division is made up of two departments, the Field Support Department and the Services Department. The Field Support Department is responsible for provding a complete suite of seamless EH&S services and support to all other Lab programs and is managed by Jeffrey Chung. This department is the interface between the Lab programs provding organizational breadth while the Services Department provides depth and support. Occupational safety is a function whose accountability is distributed throughout the lab as described in PUB 3000. Occupational safety technical support is provided by the Bio / Energy Sciences Group and the General Sciences and Operations Group. These groups are managed by Jack Salazar and Don Bell respectively. Technical lead is provided by Matt Kotowski.

Performance Expectation and objectives

1) Research Program Management Responsibility for Safety.

At the Berkeley Laboratory the following documents establish the policy and provide the implementation guidance that makes line management is effectively accountable for protection of workers, the public and the environment:

Operations Assurance Plan (OAP) - 1996

Self Assessment Manual - 1992

Supplement - 1996

Publication 3000 - Environment Health and Safety Manual - 1995

Chemical Hygiene and Safety Plan - 1992

Waste Generator Guidelines - 1996

Employee Performance/Progress Review (Section III) - 1996

2) Clear Roles and Responsibilities.

Each Division making up the Berkeley Laboratory has clearly defined lines of responsibility down to the working level. Each division designates a research investigator to represent its views and concerns on the Laboratory Safety Review Committee and a full time employee to act as the ES & H Coordinator. This Coordinator acts as the interface between ES & H concerns and compliance in the workplace and the EH & S technical professionals. The organizational information is updated every 60 days and is retained in the Functional/Facility Notebooks as appropriate (see OAP).

3) Competence Commensurate with Responsibilities.

Job assignments, including hires, are reviewed by line management and by the compensation group within Human Resources to ensure that the requirements and responsibilities of a job are matched by the experience, knowledge and skills of individuals selected for assignment. A performance expectation for managers and supervisors in the Division of Environment, Health and Safety is how well the talents, knowledge and skills of staff are matched to work assignments and responsibilities

The Laboratory's training program ensures that each staff member, including participating guests, is adequately trained to do participate safely in Laboratory activities. Staff, with supervisor participation, fill out the Jobs Hazards Questionnaire (JHQ) describing the hazards associated with their job assignment and work area. Evaluation of the responses by the Training Coordinator and the cognizant supervisor determines the training regimen needed to carry out work in a manner that protects the employee, co-workers, the public and the environment.

4) Balanced Priorities.

All environment, safety and health activities in the Laboratory are described in technical terms with budgetary information included. Each year this information is updated, reviewed and prioritized on the basis of risk to workers, public, and the environment by a Laboratory wide committee selected to represent programmatic line management and ES & H professionals. This document is utilized by Laboratory Senior Management in strategically planning the immediate focus and long term goals of the environment, safety and health program at the Laboratory.

5) Hazard Controls Tailored to Work Being Performed.

Chapter 6 of the Environment, Health and Safety Manual clearly defines the steps for each line manager to develop the appropriate engineering and administrative controls to mitigate hazards in the workplace. The Laboratory's Self Assessment Program, including Functional Appraisals by ES & H professionals, and the UC/DOE Contract 98 Performance Measures provide assurance that implementation of hazards control is adequate to protection the worker, the public and the environment.

6) Identification of Safety Standards and Requirements.

The Laboratory is dedicated to following the Necessary and Sufficient Closure Process (DOE 450.3) on an iterative basis at all levels of activities in the Laboratory to ensure the Safety Standards are adequate to provide protection to workers, the public and the environment. This process is completed by to commencement of work in those situations where current work is significantly modified, new work is proposed or substantial facility modifications are being made (Chapter 6, Environment Health and Safety Manual).

7) Operations Authorization.

Conditions and requirements for facilities determined to be of higher risk based on the Preliminary Hazards Analysis are contained in a Safety Analysis Document. Activity Hazard Documents are the basis for meeting this requirement for specific operations and activities falling into the higher risk category at the Berkeley Laboratory. Internal Agreements describing the performance expectations by each party are used for operations between two functional areas where the quality of performance might adversely impact the Laboratory's ability to meet its responsibility to protect workers, the public and the environment.

What Actions will be performed

Occupational Safety personnel provide services that target all concerns relating to physical safety. They administer the Lockout tagout program, confined space program, ergonomics and repetitive motion program, and investigate and report on OSHA or DOE accidents relating to physical safety (falls, trips, accute and chronic injury initiators).

Physical Conditions where the work is performed

Occupational Safety (OS) personnel conduct business in their offices, and possibly at all other sitewide, including offsite locations. OS personnel offices are located in buildings 48 and 90. Sitewide working conditions can vary from office environments that are a low level concern to laboratory's or construction areas that are a high level of concern. It should be noted that OS personnel can encounter hazardous off-normal conditions involving physical, chemical or radioactive hazards.

Materials and conditions that could cause adverse consequences

Occupational Safety personel potentially conduct their business in any onsite or LBNL offiste location consequently there is the potential for exposure to any of the hazards identified in the attached work sheet. The level of concern for all these hazards is low.

Uncertainties about the work

There are no programatic changes anticipated other than those driven by changes in overhead funding level or organizational changes (or in the case of the ALS; ALS funding). Organizational changes are identified by senior line management to better align the EH&S division with the Lab's operational direction. Unknown changes are anticipated resulting from the Necessary and Sufficient Process. There are no known changes to the Federal regulations that would impact this area. Lab programatic changes include the startup of the new hazardous waste handling facility, the new human genome center, the Biomedical Isotope facility (B55), and NERSC the new supercomputing facility.

Resource availability and constraint

There are no forseeable significant changes to the Occupational Function within the division. Recent divisional restructing, positioning the division as a strong service oriented organization has placed additional stress on the current Occupational Safety resources.

Stakeholder concerns

There are no stakeholder concers relating to the Occupational Safety function within EH&S.



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