Savannah River Safety Performance

The truest test of any great company is how well it protects the safety and health of its people. At the Savannah River Site (SRS), our record speaks for itself.

SRS Operations employees achieved the lowest fiscal year first quarter injury rates on record.
SRS Construction employees have achieved over 23 million man hours without a lost time injury or illness. Construction employees have not missed work in over 11 years due to injuries.

SRS continues to build on the rich site safety legacy of being one of the safest sites in the DOE complex and one of the safest major industrial sites in the world. Protecting workers, the public, the environment, and national security interest are our highest priorities. We are proud of our strong safety tradition, and will stop work rather than compromise the safety and health of a fellow co-worker. Because we share this strong conviction, our daily work in support of our nation and the world is managed with the highest regards to safety.

Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS)
Between October 1 and December 31, 2008, SRNS operations had a TRC rate of 0.14 (60% decrease over 1Q FY08) and a DART rate of 0.00 (0.05 in 1Q FY08). See Figure 1.

Between 8/1/08 and 4/27/09, SRNS Operations and Service Subcontractor employees worked over 8 million hours without a lost time injury or illness. For this performance, SRNS was recognized by the National Safety Council. For 2008 performance, SRNS also received the National Safety Council’s Operational Excellence Award for having a lost workday rate equal to or less than 50% of the BLS rating. For FY09, SRNS was the fourth safest DOE EM prime contractor. See Figure 2.

In CY2008, Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) was the safest national lab for the fifth consecutive year. The South Carolina Manufacturers Alliance (SCMA) awarded SRNS its 2008 Plant Safety Award for excellent injury rate performance, recognizing the fact that its operations rate for lost and restricted workday cases was far less than the industry average. See Figure 3.

Savannah River Remediation (SRR)
Savannah River Remediation continues to build upon the strong safety legacy established by the previous contractors at SRS. During the first five months of the SRR contract (July 1, 2009, through December 1, 2009), workers completed over 1.6 million hours of work without an injury requiring lost days or days of restricted activity. In fact, there was just one OSHA recordable injury during that same period, yielding a Total Recordable Case (TRC) frequency rate of 0.12 - well below the DOE EM Complex average of 0.95 and substantially better than the national average of 4.2. This strong performance is not a recent phenomenon for the Liquid Waste work force as they have now worked more than 12 million hours (over 38 months) since their last injury that required days away from work.

SRR construction workers also excel in the area of safety as they have worked more than 22.3 million hours (nearly 11.5 years) since their last days away from work injury case.

This outstanding safety performance has not gone unnoticed, as safety awards were received in 2009 from URS Corporate, the National Safety Council, the South Carolina Manufacturers Alliance, and the South Carolina Labor, Licensing, and Review Board.

Voluntary Protection Program (VPP)
Over the years, SRS has received many commendations for our safety performance. In 2000, SRS was awarded STAR Status in the Department ofEnergy Voluntary Protection Program (DOE-VPP). VPP is a joint Department of Energy and Occupational Safety and Health Administration-sponsored program focusing on every aspect of an organization’s safety and health initiatives. SRS is the largest and most complex organization ever to receive STAR status recognition in the VPP process. Paramount to the awarding of VPP status is a strong management commitment to safety and employee involvement in all phases of the program. We believe we have both.

To complement our Star status recognition in 2000 the DOE bestowed upon WSRC their most prestigious annual award for safety excellence, the DOE-VPP Star of Excellence Award from 2002 through 2008. This award recognizes DOE-VPP companies that maintain their injury and illness rates at least 75 percent below the industry average and perform outstanding outreach activities. At the 2007 Annual National Voluntary Protection Program Participant's Association (VPPPA) conference in Washington, D.C., in addition to the Star of Excellence, WSRC also received the DOE Outreach Award and the VPP Champions Award for their exemplary work in assisting other organizations in their quest to attain VPP Star status.

In 2003, WSRC's Safety Management Program was again evaluated by DOE-HQ and subsequently recertified as a STAR site with no findings cited. Since recertification, WSRC has been awarded the Star of Excellence for seven consecutive years. Also, in 2005, SRS became only the second site within the DOE complex to attain the Legacy of Stars award, which is given to those sites attaining Star of Excellence status for three consecutive years. During 2008, SRS received a second Legacy of Stars award and will be eligible for a third during 2011.

SRS, SRR, and SRNS embrace the concepts of VPP and strive to share our success through many outreach endeavors. SRS continues to participate as mentor with other DOE, Department of Defense (DOD) and private businesses such as Warner Robins Air Logistics Center (DOD); The Waste Treatment Project in Hanford, Washington; Los Alamos National Lab; West Valley Nuclear Services Company and Blue Linx Distribution Center. Moreover, SRS continues to conduct breakout sessions at National and Regional VPPPA Conferences.

Behavior Based Safety (BBS)
Although SRS has received numerous local and national safety awards and honors and, although our injury frequency rates across the board are among the very best in the world, we will not be content until all injuries and illnesses are eliminated. To that end, we have implemented BBS throughout our site. Our Behavior-Based Safety process was designed to be an integral component of our Integrated Safety Management System (ISMS). It supports the ISMS principles and every one of its core functions. BBS has empowered our national recognition within the VPP as the second site in the nation to achieve the Legacy of Stars award.

BBS addresses the dynamics of injury prevention designed to focus attention on the identification and elimination of behaviors that place us at risk. Each of us, from our weekly salaried associates to our company president, is encouraged to participate in the process as BBS observers and as safety improvement team members. We actively use behavioral checklists to observe one another's work practices and then share the results in one-on-one safety conversations. These constructive feedback sessions include a discussion of both the safe and at-risk behaviors observed, as well as at-risk workplace conditions (including management factors) that are real time factors influencing safe performance of work.

We are now in the process of integrating what we have learned from the application of behavioral science, through the BBS process and Human Performance Improvement (HPI) technologies, to take advantage of their synergistic mix. The BBS process enabled our site to reduce our already world class injury frequency rates by almost 70 percent, and we firmly believe that, through continued improvement of the process, BBS will one day help us to reach an injury free workplace, a goal shared by all company associates regardless of their role in achieving this success.