The Department of Energy issued a preliminary notice of violation to Hanford Site contractor Bechtel National on Wednesday for a 2016 worker injury at the Waste Treatment Plant construction site.
The incident occurred on Nov. 4, 2016, while a piping system for cooling water for the plant was being vented and filled in preparation for pressure testing. A 12-inch pipe joint unexpectedly separated and hit the worker with a pressurized stream of water.
The worker sustained two fractured vertebrae and multiple cuts on the head, according to a letter to Bechtel from the Office of Enforcement in DOE’s Office of Enterprise Assessments. The worker missed 70 days of work and then was on medical restrictions for 84 days after returning to work. The incident resulted in serious injury, which could have been more severe, the Energy Department said.
“DOE considers this event and the underlying pressure safety deficiencies to be of high safety significance,” said the letter to Bechtel. However, the Office of Enforcement does not plan to issue a civil fine after DOE’s Office of River Protection at Hanford withheld $556,500 in contract fees for 2016 because of safety deficiencies that included the Nov. 4 event, according to the letter.
An investigation by the Office of Enforcement concluded there were three Severity Level I safety violations and two Severity Level II violations of federal requirements.
A deficiency related to management responsibilities led to one of the Level I violations. Pipefitters and their management had identified difficulties in venting air from the piping system since it was installed a decade ago, said the preliminary notice of violation report. But management did not evaluate the problem or establish a safe process for venting the system, the report said. Because the work process involved pressurizing the system up to 125 pounds per square inch, “the large quantity of entrapped air was compressed and presented an unanalyzed stored energy hazard that contributed greatly to the severity of the event when the joint failure occurred,” the report said.
A deficiency related to hazard identification and assessment led to another Level I violation. Bechtel did not prepare a job hazard analysis for the testing to identify potential hazards, including stored energy, or establish controls for the hazards, the report said.
The third Level I violation involved failures in hazard prevention and abatement. The installed pipes had been partially excavated to permit the installation of valves. Bechtel did not ensure that the piping was adequately restrained with backfill or by other means to prevent the pipe from separating at a joint, the report said. The pressure employed was excessive for the work being done, it said.
The Level II violations were for training and for record keeping. The venting and filling activities were not routine for trained and skilled journeyman pipefitters, the report said. The training provided by Bechtel that was most applicable to the work was required reading. But in one example given, the report said one newly hired pipefitter had spent a total of just three minutes reading about pressure testing, underground pipe installation, and barricades and signs. The record-keeping issue included underreporting the injured workers restricted-duty days in the DOE Computerized Accident/Incident Reporting System.
“These types of injuries are unacceptable,” said Brian Reilly, Bechtel project director for the Waste Treatment Plant, in a message to employees. “We have strengthened our work-control processes, and everyone must follow those processes and procedures.”
The Office of Enforcement acknowledged Bechtel’s response to the incident, which included analyzing the adequacy of venting of piping systems, updating pressure testing procedures, and updating recordkeeping practices. The letter also noted that Bechtel initiated actions to mitigate the immediate hazards associating with filing and venting piping. “However, DOE remains concerned that the potential impact of prior pressure tests on system components has not been fully assessed to determine whether additional actions are necessary to protect workers from system failures,” said the letter to Bechtel.
Bechtel has 30 days to respond to the preliminary notice of investigation. If it does not respond, the notice of violation will become a final order and Bechtel will have no right to appeal it.
