1996 Management Plan - Sec1

Introduction

This report describes efforts by the Department of Energy (DOE) to effectively plan for environment, safety and health activities that protect the environment, workers and the public from harm. This document, which covers fiscal year 1996, reflects planning by operating contractors and Program Offices in early 1994, updated to be consistent with the President's FY 1996 budget submittal to Congress, and subsequent Department of Energy Program refinements.

Prior to 1992, only a small number of facilities had a structured process for identifying environment, safety and health (ES&H) needs, reporting the costs (in both direct and indirect budgets) of ES&H requirements, prioritizing and allocating available resources, and efficiently communicating this information to DOE. Planned costs for ES&H activities were usually developed as an afterthought to program budgets. There was no visible, consistently applied mechanism for determining the appropriate amount of resources that should be allocated to ES&H, or for assuring that significant ES&H vulnerabilities were planned to be funded.

To address this issue, the Secretary (in November 1991) directed DOE to develop a Safety and Health Five-Year Plan to serve as a line management tool to delineate DOE-wide programs to reduce and manage safety and health risks, and to establish a consistent framework for risk-based resource planning and allocation.

In mid-1992, the then Cognizant Secretarial Officers (CSOs) submitted their first S&H Five-Year Plans for FY 1994-1998. Improved uniformity across DOE in defining and understanding the scope of S&H programs and a more consistent prioritization of corrective actions based on the projected level of risk-reduction were established. This first year's process proved to be a powerful management tool facilitating communication up and down the management chain. Accordingly, each CSO was positioned to better allocate funding and personnel to address S&H problems. Recognizing such benefits, CSO s recommended the scope of the planning process include environmental programs in addition to safety and health activities. Environmental activities were included in the planning process for the third planning cycle (with the exception of the Environmental Management Program's environmental activities), improving Departmental consistency in managing and reporting these activities.

Over the course of the next two planning cycles, the planning process was refined and improved. For this report, the following has been accomplished in regards to ES&H planning in the Department:

• Consistency in Reporting:
  • Developing a common understanding of the magnitude of environment, safety and health costs, including that which is expended through indirect overhead funds in the field;

• Improved ES&H Planning:
  • Operating organizations have refocused their efforts on integrated environment, safety and health programs rather than discrete corrective actions;
  • Greater recognition by Line Programs of the need for comprehensive planning to support budget decision-making and effective program implementation was also achieved.

• Development of Quality Budget Information:
  • Understanding the realistic implications of programmatic decisions, including decisions to constrain budgets, on the ability to meet prior commitments for achieving compliance or upgrades in environment, safety and health performance; and
  • Fostering "ownership" of the planning process for environment, safety and health activities and associated costs;
  • Improved budget-quality environment, safety and health cost data, consistent with Unified Field Budget Call guidance.

• Improved Risk Management:
  • Provided technical assistance to help identify additional safety and health needs, cost-effective ways of meeting those needs, and a proven system for relative ranking of various new activities, based on risk;
  • Fostered an increasing acceptance of risk-based strategies in the development of environment, safety and health plans. More operations are using the prioritization methodology recommended for the environment, safety and health planning process, and more operations have begun to review planned expenditures of resources to better assure that resources are allocated to the highest risk reduction activities.

The substance of individual plans (e.g., Offices of Defense Programs, Environmental Management, Energy Research, etc.) are detailed in Section 6 of this report.

Last modified: 02/27/96 16:17:28