The Department's new Environment, Safety and Health (ES&H) Policy states:
"The hallmark and highest priority of all our efforts is daily excellence in the protection of the worker; the public, and the environment."
The primary objective of the ES&H Management Planning Process is to assist Departmental managers in fulfilling this vision by providing structured management processes and tools that support the development and budgeting of cost-effective ES&H programs.
Due to previous insufficient attention to ES&H issues, the Department is now confronted with an array of environment, safety and health needs that exceed its financial and human resources. As the Assistant Secretary for Environment, Safety and Health stated in her recent testimony to Congress:
"In an era of constrained federal budgets and changing missions we may not be able to do everything we would wish. It thus becomes critical to recognize the most serious threats first and address these adequately and cost-effectively."
Therefore, a key supporting objective of the ES&H management planning process is to assist Department managers in making and communicating cost-effective ES&H risk-management decisions. A central feature of the ES&H planning process is the establishment of risk-based priorities and the optimal allocation of constrained resources.
Specifically, the ES&H Management Planning Process is designed to allow DOE managers to answer the following basic risk-management questions:
The planning process used to produce the DOE ES&H Management Plan is a combination of: 1) top-down guidance from senior Departmental officials that establishes guidelines and budget targets; and 2) bottom-up, detailed analysis and decision-making by the ES&H professionals and line managers in the field. It is a continuous, risk-based, resource- constrained, management process designed to improve the way that DOE and its contractors utilize available resources to manage ES&H risks. It is totally consistent with and strongly supportive of the Department's new Environment, Safety and Health Policy and the Secretary's stated management philosophy and objectives.
The process of developing environment, safety and health plans aimed at answering such questions is relatively straightforward. The sequence of steps in the planning process is as follows:
A Guidance Manual issued by the Office of Environment, Safety and Health is provided for use by all Field elements, showing how to develop a plan that answers the above questions. The technical content in the manual is reviewed annually and upgraded to reflect improvements and the experience gained in application.
Each Secretarial Office directs implementation of the guidance and optionally provides supplemental and specific guidance to the field, including identification of any issues of strategic importance that should be explicitly addressed.
Field elements analyze the environment, safety and health issues and requirements confronting their facilities, identify cost-effective environment, safety and health program activities to address these issues and requirements, prepare Activity Data Sheets to document these activities, and enter the activities into the Environment, Safety and Health Planning Process Database System.
Activity Data Sheets are ranked using the DOE environment, safety and health Risk-based Priority Model. The risk ranking is reviewed by successive levels of management and other planning factors (such as cost, precedence and coupling relationships between activities, and strategic factors) are applied to adjust the rankings, if necessary.
Available resources (as defined by the Unified Field Budget Call, Secretarial Office guidance, and facility management) are allocated to Activity Data Sheets. Less important activities that cannot be accomplished within budget constraints are either reduced in scope or deferred to subsequent years. Unfunded vulnerabilities are identified for Operations Office notification to Headquarters.
Operating organization planning reports are prepared and submitted to the Secretarial Offices through Operations Offices. Operations Offices review the Plans on an integrated, site-wide basis to ensure proper resource allocation.
Secretarial Offices review field submissions and prepare a plan covering all activities under their purview on a time scale consistent with the Department's Budget Review cycle and provide summary environmental, safety and health financial data to the Office of the Chief Financial Officer in support of the Departmental Budget Review process.
Secretarial Office Plans are updated to reflect Departmental Budget Review process and Office of Management and Budget decisions, as well as Congressional direction, when that becomes available.
The Office of Environment, Safety and Health integrates data from all Secretarial Office Plans, produces the DOE Environment, Safety and Health Cross-Cut and issues a consolidated DOE Environment, Safety and Health Management Plan.
Please send comments to support@tis.eh.doe.gov
Last modified: 02/27/96 16:17:28