Risk-based safety management seminar Thursday

"Building the Walls Around the Fortress: Risk-Based Safety Management and Regulatory Intrusion at LANL," is the subject of a seminar at 10 a.m. Thursday in the Materials Science Laboratory Auditorium at Technical Area 3.

Matthew Jude Egan of Integrated Risk Analysis, Management and Communication (HSR-3) will discuss the use of Integrated Safety Management as a tool that responds to three different types of risks and risk perspectives:

• order/safety risks facility and shop-floor safety practices for personnel, environmental and public safety;
• order/administrative risks: the activation of new rules and regulations that come after an accident;
• order/public risks: the risk of the loss of public trust in the leadership ability of management.

Although each of these requires a different set of actions and possibly even a different use for Integrated Safety Management, each risk-perspective is rational given the constraints of each decision-maker, according to Egan. "From its earliest days, [the Laboratory] was as close to a completely closed organization as we have seen in the modern era," Egan said. "However, its history is one in which the walls of the fortress have been opened up as a result of outside influence, both political and technical."

Egan said that in the last two decades, "There have been many successful attempts to break through these walls and expose the inner workings of the organization to outsider control." He noted that in at least the areas of safety, security and finance, the Laboratory has been subjected to increasing oversight and, thus, a loss of decision-making power for its leaders. "The basic point is that people at different levels of Lab management think of risk differently," Egan said. "That means each level has different criteria by which they measure successful safety (and security) management," he said. His talk will include a discussion of this point and his belief that "ISM is a compromise that addresses the different standards by which managers think about hazard control and risk management."

A doctoral candidate in political science at the University of California, Berkeley, Egan holds a law degree from UC, Berkeley. He has worked part-time at the Laboratory since 1999. The seminar is open to badgeholders only.

For more information, contact Egan at 7-3367 or write to jude@lanl.gov by electronic mail.

-- Fran Talley

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