Todd Jacobson
NS&D Monitor
5/30/2014
A series of mishaps involving the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Roof Asset Management Project (RAMP) has drawn concern from the Office of Enforcement within the Department of Energy’s Office of Independent Enterprise Assessments, but DOE took a pass on fining the contractors involved. Despite noting that five incidents over the course of a four-year span resulted—or could have—in serious injuries or death and acknowledging that worker safety-related roles and responsibilities need to be better defined, communicated and implemented, the Office of Enforcement appeared pleased with the response from the NNSA and integrating contractor Honeywell Federal Manufacturing & Technologies and plans to reexamine the project’s safety and health program. "As RAMP work continues and is expanded in scope to other projects involving multiple contractors and multiple jobsites, NNSA contractors, in coordination with NNSA, should ensure that roles and responsibilities for ensuring worker safety are appropriately documented, clearly understood by all parties, and effectively implemented in accordance with the applicable worker safety and health program," Office of Enforcement Director John Boulden wrote in a May 21 letter.
The incidents took place at four sites and involved five weapons complex management and operating contractors: the Sandia Corporation, National Security Technologies, B&W Pantex, Los Alamos National Security, and Honeywell FM&T. In one case, a worker with subcontractor Building Technology Associates suffered a broken shoulder and a damaged spleen after falling 13 feet from the roof edge of a building at the Pantex Plant. The worker was wearing a 50-foot retractable lanyard, but had strayed too far from the lanyard’s allowable distance, and the Office of Enforcement said BTA and Honeywell FM&T didn’t "implement fall protection and work practices appropriate to prevent worker injury." Other incidents involved worker exposure to heat stress at Sandia, the airborne release of volatile organic chemicals at Los Alamos, and a pair of lockout/tag out incidents at Pantex and the Nevada National Security Site.
