FY 2023 Outstanding Safety Culture Award Nominees & Awardees

FY 2023 DOE Individual Employee Outstanding Safety Culture Award Recipient

Chris Seniuk
Safety Engineer
Brookhaven Site Office
Office of Science
U. S. Department of Energy

In FY 2023, Chris provided outstanding safety leadership and demonstrated all three safety culture focus areas (Leadership, Employee/Worker Engagement, and Organizational Learning) with a special contribution in safety leadership within the Site Office and across the Laboratory.

Chris Seniuk serves as a Safety Engineer at the Brookhaven Site Office (BHSO) overseeing safety of construction and operations at the Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), one of the Office of Science's research laboratories.  The size, scope, and breadth of the research activities at BNL pose an equally broad challenge to ensure safety culture across the laboratory and its multiple facilities, departments, organizations, and research groups.

Chris leads by personal example with a focus on management engagement and time in the field.  He frequently engages with workers, asking questions, coaching, mentoring, and reinforcing standards and positive behaviors.  He communicates his experiences in the field to fellow employees and management through interaction in the weekly division meeting, heads-up emails when spotting trends, and detailed write-ups in the division weekly report. 

Additionally, Chris made outstanding contributions in staff recruitment, selection, retention, and development with the mentoring of new BHSO staff in the Operations Division.  Chris readily took on mentoring and guiding the new employees and focused this on-the-job training to broaden individual skills and improve organizational performance. Leveraging his decade plus experience at the site, he stressed key areas such as the ability to appreciate the potential for unexpected conditions and to recognize and respond to a variety of problems and anomalies.  Working with the new employees, he compared site conditions and operations with historical examples of problems so that they learn from significant industry and DOE events. 

In addition, Chris regularly attended and provided feedback and input to BNL's institutional Laboratory Electrical Safety Advisors Committee (LESAC) and Lockout Tagout (LOTO) Work Practices Working Group to provide DOE oversight and lessons learned from his decades of experience in the electrical and safety domains.  Interacting with these groups, Chris was actively involved in identification, planning, and improvement of work and work practices, especially as the laboratory planned their transition to the National Electrical Code (NFPA 70-2020 version) and Electrical Safety in the Workplace (NFPA 70E-2021 version) for January 1, 2024.  His efforts paid off with the laboratory implementing the newer revisions of the standards in early FY 2024, a monumental achievement considering the extensive updates required to the lab's electrical safety program.

Chris promoted credibility, trust and reporting errors and problems and displayed the best characteristics of a questioning attitude in his review of the Laboratory's controlled burn plan and execution of two controlled burns during FY23.  His hard work upfront and consistent follow through by attending burn plan briefs and being present during burns on site ensured that the multiple agencies involved were safety-focused, alert, and ready.  The careful focus on preventing a safety incident from occurring was realized in the successful burn and no injuries.

Chris drove safety for BHSO and BNL throughout the year and deserves recognition with the Safety Culture Award - Federal Employee for FY23. His focus on partnering with the contractor at multiple levels, trust within an atmosphere of questioning to ensure results, improvements to work processes through adoption of the latest codes and standards, and mentoring and growing the Site Office and Laboratory staff resulted in an outsized impact this year and set the stage for future success.
 

FY 2023 Contractor Individual Outstanding Safety Culture Award Recipient

Saprena Lyons
VPP/ISMS/Safety Culture SME
Idaho Environmental Coalition
DOE Idaho Cleanup Project

Saprena Lyons is a VPP/ISMS/Safety Culture Subject Matter Expert with The Idaho Environmental Coalition (IEC).  Everything Saprena does is with team building and the betterment of the organization in mind.  Saprena continually went above and beyond to improve the safety culture in FY 2023 -- both within the ICP as well as throughout the entire DOE and local community. 

Saprena's leadership in organizing the 2023 SCIP Annual Meeting and Safety Culture Workshop was instrumental to the events success.  She was the driving force leading efforts to pull the logistics together, find a venue, develop a plan and outline of events, find speakers, arrange food, arrange audiovisual and IT support, etc.  In the end, the workshop was an amazing success with 3 days of safety culture presentations and opportunities to interface and network for the more than 300 Federal employees, contractor employees, and subject matter experts.  Her efforts embodied all aspects of safety culture including leadership, employee-engagement, and organizational learning.

In addition, Saprena has provided leadership for focused efforts on strengthening and improving the safety culture within IEC. She assisted in Safety Culture surveys and took the effective use of surveys to another level.  Saprena effectively evaluates the data from the surveys and utilizes it to help drive improvements.  While keeping the data confidential, she analyzes the results from each area and does one-on-one meetings with the various project managers so they can see what specific concerns or positive behaviors are being seen in their given area.  

Saprena has been a leader in the Voluntary Protection Program, ISMS, Safety Culture, etc. at the local, regional, and national levels for many years, and is recognized as a mentor and role model in these areas. She has worked hard to mentor many of the new Employee Safety Team leaders in their new roles.  She has started doing one-on-one meetings with them to help them grow and give them the resources they need, in a more personal setting.  This is already showing benefits as ICP is seeing many individuals new to these leadership roles develop into more confident and prepared leaders.  

In FY2023, Saprena assumed the role of ISMS and SC SME in addition to her already full duties with VPP.  She has taken a tried-and-true ISMS and safety culture program and improved it through greater levels of employee involvement and leadership.  She has taken what she has learned from her vast years of experience along with what she learns from other projects and customized the programs to fit the unique needs of IEC.

Overall, Saprena is the definition of team player and has a true desire to see safety culture improve in her communities.  She constantly goes above and beyond to drive change and improvements and is undoubtably deserving of this recognition.
 

FY 2023 Outstanding Safety Culture Award Team Recipients

Central Plateau Cleanup Company Back-to-Basics

Team Members:

The Central Plateau Cleanup Company (CPCCo) manages 15 nuclear facilities while completing D&D and high hazard remediation activities on behalf of the Department of Energy (DOE) in southeastern Washington State. The nature of work at Hanford's Central Plateau requires crews to be disciplined, highly trained, and knowledgeable of a robust suite of protective procedures.

Following the onset of the first End State contract in January 2021, CPCCo  - like much of industry  - experienced yearly attrition rates between 18 and 25% that drove the median worker age down by nearly a decade.  With significant high-risk projects on the horizon, the loss of institutional experience across the site was a compelling and urgent problem.

In 2023, CPCCo launched their response to this challenge with the “Back-to-Basics ” safety culture campaign. The Back-to-Basics  plan began with a statement of commitment from CPCCo President John Eschenberg and his leadership team highlighting a core tenet shared by DOE and the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO) standards: that nuclear safety is a collective responsibility from the board of directors to the individual contributor.

By the time the plan was issued in February 2023, it embodied a collective effort of actions from workers and leadership. Roundtables with labor representatives, and a cross-disciplinary team including training specialists, procedure writers and work planners, performance assurance analysts, safety professionals and conduct of operations professionals and mentors provided input for the 24 actions in the plan, including "A Tailored Approach to Training," "Optimizing our Procedures," "Work Planning and Control" and "An Emphasis on Culture."

A Tailored Approach to Training focuses on training on fundamental operational principles. CPCCo developed and deployed a course called "Do Work Safely" and rolled it out to employees with special emphasis on new employees near the 90-day mark. The training focuses on the basics of safe field work, how CPCCo expects work to be done, what employees can expect of CPCCo, and what to do if expectations are not met. CPCCo, in partnership with other Hanford contractors, overhauled additional existing trainings and added new targeted courses including new Supervisor Training and an interactive Human Performance Initiatives lab.

Optimizing our Procedures includes extensive review, evaluation and revision of current procedures.  Ensuring procedures can be properly followed by both new and experienced workers, with the correct amount of detail, leads to consistency of work in the field while minimizing errors and deviations.

Work Planning and Control changes developed and implemented in the field, ensure the proper level of rigor and review is applied for work packages. This includes a substantial bolstering of the Hazard Review Board process to verify readiness for unique and high-risk work evolutions.

An Emphasis on Culture encompasses a wide variety of initiatives to ensure that we are communicating our intentions to each employee.  CPCCo began by communicating the "Vision 2028" to the workforce, a holistic overview of the many projects being executed by CPCCo over the next 5 years. By establishing a common vision and understanding of the mission ahead, there is less organizational uncertainty, which enhances our team culture through common objectives.

Overall, there were twenty-four actions identified for a successful Back-to-Basics campaign.  Actions implemented include an external Safety Culture Survey, launch of "Healthy and Mission Ready" campaign, and developing new, revising existing, and conducting training sessions in support of Human Performance, New Supervisor Training, Operational Excellence, and Do Work Safely.  Additionally, work planning, procedures and work packages were strategically reviewed, revised, and subjected to enhanced scrutiny across the company.  More specifically, the Back-to-Basics plan called for CPCCo to gauge and baseline the safety culture. CPCCo entered into a contract with Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU) to conduct CPCCo's first ever independent Safety Culture Survey.  With an impressive response rate of nearly 75 percent, employees rated the safety culture at CPCCo and identified areas for improvement. Results of the survey produced eight high-level recommendations.  Employee-led, management-sponsored teams identified and completed an additional 39 actions addressing those top-level recommendations in 2023.  It is estimated that nearly 50% of the workforce participated in an activity to implement, support, and closeout these actions.

Back-to-Basics yielded accomplishments supporting the focus area of leadership throughout the initiative. It is demonstrated by the use of the Hazard Review Board's evaluation of work packages, through increased mentorship and training available to workers, and by the amount of worker engagement in the ORAU Safety Culture Survey indicating that workers feel free to present facts and opinions without the fear of retribution. 

In addition, the initiatives in the Back-to-Basics campaign embrace worker engagement by incorporating participation and teamwork into many of the initiatives. By encouraging and engaging workers in work planning and improvement activities, CPCCo institutionalized personal commitment to safety.  An emphasis on hazards and controls during both training and work planning further engaged employee’s ownership of safety culture.

The Back-to-Basics team devoted countless hours researching, developing, coordinating and implementing the response to the Safety Culture Survey results. The success of the program is evident as CPCCo has experienced a nearly 10% drop in attrition rates from 2022 to 2023, improved employee participation in assessments and surveys, improved response to incidents in the field, lowered rolling recordable injury rate, and an increased overall job satisfaction, based on employee response to the recent Voluntary Protection Program annual self-assessment.