NTS Environmental Restoration Passes Key Safety Mark

August 27, 2008

The Environmental Restoration group has put in more than one million work hours at the Nevada Test Site (NTS) without a lost time incident – an unprecedented feat.

There are about 90 employees working in support of the environmental restoration project, each of them working in potentially hazardous conditions where safety is always a factor.

The mission of the Environmental Restoration group is to clean up areas of the NTS contaminated by radioactive and hazardous releases from years of nuclear testing and other related programs, said Annette Primrose, Environmental Restoration manager for National Security Technologies (NSTec.) In doing so, employees are subject to high risk health and safety concerns.

“This is a significant accomplishment for anybody,” said Primrose. “But for us it’s especially terrific.”

The Environmental Restoration group faces different hazards every day, Primrose said. Because of this, there is a need for constant evaluation of safety measures.

Brian Konrad, an Environmental Restoration field operations manager said, “Employees actively participate in the planning of the work and provide feedback to help improve our processes. In particular, we rely on the work experience and involvement of the craft to help us safely plan and execute our work. ”

“We have really taken a safety first attitude around here,” added Primrose.

In addition to safety precautions taken by employees, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has implemented a Lessons Learned Program across the DOE complex. The program focuses on incidents at all DOE/National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) sites and how to prevent them from recurring. As part of the program, a database is published containing case studies from problems encountered at various DOE sites and how they were corrected.

“The Lessons Learned Program provides us a way of identifying and solving a problem before we encounter it,” said Konrad.

The Environmental Restoration project began in the early 1990s. The last time an employee missed work due to a work related injury was in January 2002.

“NSTec has a great safety culture, that builds on Bechtel, the previous contractor’s, experience,” said Primrose. Bechtel served as lead contractor until 2006, when NSTec took over management of the contract.