Title:
Improved EMS/OSH Assessment Strategy
Facility:
Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL)
Point of Contact:
John Selva, BNL, 631-344-8611, selva@bnl.gov
Brief Description of Best Practice:
During the course of development of the ISO 14001
Environmental Management System (EMS) and Occupational
Health and Safety (OHSAS) 18001 programs several methods for
deploying internal conformance and compliance assessments
were developed.
These assessments occurred independently and created an
unnecessary resource load over the course of a given year.
This best practice improved BNL performance through
consolidation of required EMS/OSH and compliance
assessments.
Why the Best Practice was used:
The best practice was developed to reduce the audit burden
on limited (contributed) resources by combining several
independent assessments required for EMS and OHSAS programs.
What are the benefits of the Best Practice:
Prior to the implementation of this best practice
EMS/OSH/Compliance assessments required more than ten weeks
of audit time, significant contributed resource use, and
more than five separate reports.
The best practice consolidated this effort into one
four-week process with only two weeks in the field
significantly reducing resource burdens.
In addition, approximately five reports were
consolidated into one.
Other benefits include:
-
Improved approach at recognizing “extents of condition”
-
One list of findings
-
Allows site sampling approach
-
Concurrent with DOE audits (when possible).
-
Shows ESH Directorate commitment to improve operational
burden on Line.
What problems/issues were associated with the Best Practice:
The coordination of several subject matters into one
assessment plan was significant.
Report consolidation of findings was difficult due to
a lack of consistent checklists.
Future audits will standardize checklists, improve
schedules, and conveniently organize subject matter.
Additional issues included:
-
Findings can overlap between media
-
Auditor overload
-
Staying on schedule
-
Hard to separate EMS and OSH findings in final report
-
Longer close out meetings
How the success of the Best Practice was measured:
The success was measured by the reduction in time noted
above and an improved institutional approach that allows
better causal and extent of condition analysis.
Description of process experience using the Best Practice:
The development of the best practice was significantly time
consuming for the project lead.
Specifically in pulling together several old audit
approaches into one new one.
However, the expectation is that this process will
continually improve over time and lead to a truly integrated
approach to ESH assessments.
It is a natural progression for an improving
integrated safety management program and maturing EMS.
