Staff Reports
WC Monitor
12/18/2015
The Department of Energy Inspector General’s Office faulted the Los Alamos Field Office for ineffective implementation of an issues management program during a five-year period starting in 2009. In a report issued on Dec. 7, the IG identified a number of deficiencies in the way the office has reported, addressed, and tracked issues related to employee concerns and conflicting professional opinions.
“The identified problems occurred because the Field Office issues management program either lacked complete procedures or the procedures were not consistently followed,” Daniel M. Weeber, assistant inspector general for audits and administration, stated in a cover letter to the report.
An efficient and continuously improving issues management program is especially important for operations of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Los Alamos office, according to the audit, because it oversees LANL stewardship activities for the U.S. nuclear stockpile, as well as the handling, processing, packaging, and transport of radioactive and hazardous materials at the laboratory.
Among the deficiencies, the audit noted delays in registering issues and findings, failures in tracking closure, and providing evidence of deficiencies on such matters as conduct of engineering, fire protection, and maintenance; inaccuracies in the recorded information, and arbitrary closing of unfinished issues. One example given was that the field office did not complete a scheduled assessment of a contractor’s fire safety program, while indicating it would be done in the future, but then the deficiency was closed out without a record of the finished action. Another example involved a fire protection exemption on the record for the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center as of 2009. An action plan recommended a viable corrective action process in place of future exemptions. The audit found the issue was closed in 2010 even though the deficiency was not resolved until 2013.
A study of 68 field office records on employee concerns found many instances of inadequate information and documentation to meet criteria for further investigations and reviews. The audit observed: “Overall we could not determine the open date for 12 cases (18 percent), the closure date for 25 cases (37 percent), or the final resolution for 17 cases (25 percent) in our sample.” The audit acknowledged there was some improvement in this category over time.
Toni Chiri, LAFO spokeswoman, responded to a request for comment by pointing to the management response attached to the audit. “I will point out that most of the [news] outlets have confused the Field Office issues management database and that of LANL’s,” she said. “This is an audit only of the Field Office issues management tracking system.”
The audit’s concluding recommendations called for directed guidance in the problem area of the issues management corrective action process, including timely data entry and better documentation of corrective action plans, actions, and relevant outcomes. Specific guidance was also recommended to ensure the consistent and formalized documentation of employee concerns and their resolution.
An itemized response from NNSA concurred with all the recommendations with a statement of specific actions to be taken or planned. In discussing consistency of documentation related to employee concerns, the field office emphasized a distinction between significant “employee concerns” that have been formally documented, “while more routine operational issues (e.g., broken venetian blinds, requests for ergonomic keyboard) have been quickly addressed with resolution noted rather than formally documented.”
The audit reports that field office officials agreed that they could do a better job of issues management, “but stated that to ensure safe and efficient operations, they must focus their limited resources on overseeing the contractor. They noted that, as a result, consistent use of issues management processes may not occur.”
