BECHTEL: INCENTIVES NOT NEEDED TO ADDRESS WTP SAFETY CULTURE CONCERNS

By ExchangeMonitor

While the Department of Energy is examining potential changes to Bechtel National’s contract for the Hanford Waste Treatment Plant to include safety culture elements, a senior contractor official said late last week that incentives aren’t needed for Bechtel National to make improvements. DOE is examining Bechtel National’s contract for possible revision as part of efforts to address concerns that workers on the WTP don’t feel comfortable in raising safety issues. “Getting the performance incentives right in the contract is clearly important but it is not essential and it’s not something that I believe is necessary to get the management and supervisory team focused on delivering high quality with high safety. It’s something that we as a company, as Bechtel, believe very strongly in and it’s the right thing to do regardless of how the incentive structure is set up. So whatever DOE decides they want to do with the incentive structure on the contract, that’s up to them,” said Ward Sproat, a Bechtel executive and former DOE official who has recently joined the project to help lead efforts to improve the safety culture. “All I’m saying is that we at Bechtel are not sitting here waiting for the incentive structure on the contract to change to go after these changes in terms of culture and safety and quality,” Sproat told WC Monitor.

Sproat also said, “From the client side, you shouldn’t have to incentivize people to do the right thing. In my experience, I didn’t need to provide financial incentives to get people to focus on safety and quality, and I don’t think Bechtel needs that kind of incentive either.” However, incentives tied to cost-and-schedule performance may also have an effect on safety culture concerns, according to Sproat. “What I would say, though, is when you have contracts that are heavily incentivized to meet schedule, that will drive the behaviors of the supervisory team that are clearly focused on schedule and cost. And it becomes much more difficult on the day-to-day basis, regardless of what the guy at the top says, for the people it becomes much more difficult on the day-to-day basis to make those tradeoffs of taking the time as opposed to schedule,” he said.

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