Alissa Tabirian
NS&D Monitor
12/11/2015
Deficiencies in the issues management program at the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) Los Alamos Field Office has led to ineffective tracking of corrective actions and inconsistent documentation, the Department of Energy’s Inspector General (IG) said this week.
A Dec. 7 letter and audit report from the IG to the Los Alamos Field Office manager notes that corrective actions could not be verified, validated, or assessed for effectiveness because of recordkeeping weaknesses in the field office’s corrective action, employee concerns, and differing professional opinions programs, all of which are components of the issues management program that addresses safety concerns during lab operations.
The field office did not adequately document issues in the corrective action tracking system, ePegasus, the report says, as over half of the records sampled “had incomplete, inaccurate, or invalid closure data.” For example, a 2009 finding of ineffective oversight of the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s nuclear maintenance program was closed with “no objective evidence,” according to the report. “The Field Office closed the issue by stating that it performed fiscal year 2010 assessments,” the report says, although it did not complete the planned assessment.
In another instance, a fire safety deficiency record was closed in the system before the completion of corrective action. A review of the field office’s Los Alamos nuclear safety self-assessments found that at least 53 deficiencies identified between 2009 and 2012 had not been entered into ePegasus.
The IG was unable to assess the effectiveness of the Employee Concerns Program and the Differing Professional Opinions process because of documentation inconsistencies, the report says. Some documents in the IG’s employee concerns sample lacked open dates, closure dates, or final resolutions. The IG found that overall, 16 percent of the sampled records contained all the required information in the case file.
The IG recommended that the Los Alamos Field Office manager issue guidance to improve documentation of corrective action plans and employee concerns, formalize records management requirements, and ensure the issues management process is consistently used. The field office said it “must focus their limited resources on overseeing the contractor” but agreed to revise guidance and develop formal documentation policies by next June, and said it will review the issues management program during its biennial site office review during the first quarter of fiscal 2017.
