Nuclear Health and Safety: Further Improvement Needed in the Hanford Tank
Farm Maintenance Program (Letter Report, 11/08/94, GAO/RCED-95-29).
At the Energy Department's (DOE) Hanford facility in Washington state, a
backlog in routine maintenance increases the risk of a significant leak
or accident involving underground storage tanks that hold 61 million
gallons of high-level radioactive waste. Some progress has been made in
strengthening the tank farm maintenance program. Westinghouse, a
contractor at Hanford, believes that a new maintenance approach has
helped to reduce the number of uncompleted maintenance projects from
1,969 to 1,517. However, the remaining backlog of projects is still too
great to guarantee that needed maintenance will be done in a timely
manner. Tank farm maintenance personnel estimate that to respond
promptly to maintenance needs, the number of projects awaiting
completion should not exceed three months' work--about 300 projects, or
less than one-fifth of the current backlog. Westinghouse can further
improve its maintenance program by reducing the time spent preparing and
closing out maintenance projects. Westinghouse has started to
experiment with procedures that other DOE sites use to reduce delays,
and these experiments show promise. Westinghouse can also improve its
program by gathering and analyzing more information about how it
processes maintenance projects.
--------------------------- Indexing Terms -----------------------------
REPORTNUM: RCED-95-29
TITLE: Nuclear Health and Safety: Further Improvement Needed in
the Hanford Tank Farm Maintenance Program
DATE: 11/08/94
SUBJECT: Nuclear facilities
Energy research
Contractor performance
Facility maintenance
Maintenance costs
Work measurement standards
Radioactive wastes
Nuclear waste storage
Tanks (containers)
Nuclear waste management
IDENTIFIER: Hanford (WA)
DOE Hanford Tank Farm Maintenance Program
**************************************************************************
* This file contains an ASCII representation of the text of a GAO *
* report. Delineations within the text indicating chapter titles, *
* headings, and bullets are preserved. Major divisions and subdivisions *
* of the text, such as Chapters, Sections, and Appendixes, are *
* identified by double and single lines. The numbers on the right end *
* of these lines indicate the position of each of the subsections in the *
* document outline. These numbers do NOT correspond with the page *
* numbers of the printed product. *
* *
* No attempt has been made to display graphic images, although figure *
* captions are reproduced. Tables are included, but may not resemble *
* those in the printed version. *
* *
* A printed copy of this report may be obtained from the GAO Document *
* Distribution Facility by calling (202) 512-6000, by faxing your *
* request to (301) 258-4066, or by writing to P.O. Box 6015, *
* Gaithersburg, MD 20884-6015. We are unable to accept electronic orders *
* for printed documents at this time. *
**************************************************************************
Cover
================================================================ COVER
Report to the Chairman, Committee on Governmental Affairs, U.S.
Senate
November 1994
NUCLEAR WASTE - FURTHER
IMPROVEMENT NEEDED IN THE HANFORD
TANK FARM MAINTENANCE PROGRAM
GAO/RCED-95-29
Hanford Tank Farm Maintenance Program
Abbreviations
=============================================================== ABBREV
DOE - Department of Energy
INEL - Idaho National Engineering Laboratory
Letter
=============================================================== LETTER
B-258559
November 8, 1994
The Honorable John Glenn
Chairman, Committee on
Governmental Affairs
United States Senate
Dear Mr. Chairman:
Over 61 million gallons of high-level radioactive waste are stored in
177 underground storage tanks at the Department of Energy's (DOE)
Hanford Site in southeast Washington State. Timely maintenance of
these aging tanks and the equipment for monitoring them is critical
because of the hazardous nature of the contents and the potential
consequences of a significant leak or other accident. However, a
1992 DOE study found problems with the maintenance program. For
example, the study found that more than one-third of the gauges for
detecting leaks in Hanford's tanks were not working. You asked us to
(1) review the progress DOE has made in strengthening the maintenance
program and (2) identify opportunities for further improvement.
RESULTS IN BRIEF
------------------------------------------------------------ Letter :1
Some progress has been made in strengthening the tank farm
maintenance program. In October 1993, Westinghouse Hanford Company
(DOE's management and operations contractor for the Hanford Site)
started a new approach for coordinating maintenance work on the tank
farms. Westinghouse officials believe that this approach has been a
factor in reducing the number of uncompleted maintenance projects
from 1,969 in January 1994 to 1,517 in October 1994. However, the
remaining backlog of projects is still too great to ensure that
needed maintenance can be done in a timely manner. Tank farm
maintenance personnel estimate that to respond promptly to
maintenance needs, the number of projects awaiting completion should
not exceed 3 months' work--about 300 projects, or less than one-fifth
of the current backlog.
Westinghouse can further improve its maintenance program by reducing
the time spent in preparing and closing out maintenance projects.
Westinghouse has begun to experiment with procedures that other DOE
sites use to reduce such delays, and these experiments show promise.
Westinghouse can also improve its program by gathering and analyzing
more information about how it processes maintenance projects.
Analysis of such information would help determine how productively
maintenance tasks are being carried out and where improvements are
needed.
BACKGROUND
------------------------------------------------------------ Letter :2
Between 1943 and 1986, 177 single- and double-shell storage tanks
ranging in size from about 55,000 to 1 million gallons were
constructed at Hanford to store the highly radioactive,
heat-producing, and chemically toxic liquid wastes resulting from the
production of nuclear materials. The tanks are arranged in 18
groupings called tank farms. Besides the tanks themselves, tank
farms also have equipment such as lines and pumps for transferring
waste between tanks, exhausters and compressors for controlling and
monitoring heat and chemical reactions going on inside the tanks,
instruments to measure temperature and tank levels, and many types of
support facilities. Under current plans, Hanford's single-shell
tanks will be used for up to 30 more years, and DOE proposes to
construct new double-shell tanks that will be used for even longer.
Tank farm maintenance consists of two activities: (1) preventive
maintenance, which is designed to keep problems from occurring, and
(2) corrective maintenance, which involves correcting problems that
occur or modifying facilities to improve their operation. Examples
of preventive maintenance include calibrating instruments and
servicing pumps, valves, and related equipment. Examples of
corrective maintenance include repairing leaking piping, modernizing
electrical systems, and repairing defective tank level gauges and
other monitoring instruments. Given the potential environmental,
health, and safety problems from leaks, spills, or other problems
with radioactive or toxic materials, we focused our review on
corrective maintenance projects designed to repair tank farm
equipment, instruments, and facilities.
Tank farm maintenance, like other maintenance at Hanford, is divided
into four classes that are prioritized according to urgency.
Priority 1 items include actions to recover from unsafe conditions or
to avoid imminent violation of safety requirements, while priority 2
items include regular actions required for facility safety or
continuing operations. Nonsafety-related actions are classified as
priority 3 or 4, depending on their importance. Of the corrective
maintenance projects completed in 1993, about 3 percent were priority
1 and about 88 percent were priority 2, while only 9 percent were
priority 3 or 4.
Westinghouse Waste Tank Operations Group, the organization
responsible for tank farm operations, has two units that together are
responsible for maintenance activities. The first unit, production
control, consists mainly of planners, schedulers, engineers, clerks,
and related staff and is responsible for preparing, scheduling, and
closing out the work. The second unit, maintenance, consists of
craft workers who do the actual maintenance work (electricians,
instrument technicians, pipefitters, and others) and their
supervisors. The fiscal year 1994 budget of $32 million for these
two organizations supports a staff of 146 managers and other
professionals, 22 administrative staff, and 93 craft employees.
Westinghouse manages most tank farm maintenance through a process
called the job control system.\1 This process or system can be
grouped into six general phases--identification and validation,
planning, approval, scheduling, work and retesting, and closure. The
initial phase of the system involves identifying and agreeing on the
projects to be done, after which the item is assigned to a planner,
who prepares the work "package"--a detailed plan and related
documents covering the work to be done. Once prepared, the work
package is reviewed and approved by a number of officials, such as
health and safety personnel and facility managers. When all
necessary approvals have been obtained, the job can be scheduled for
work. When the work is completed and the equipment retested, the
package is reviewed to ensure that (1) the work was done correctly,
(2) needed changes to operating or maintenance procedures were made,
and (3) the package was completed. The package is then sent to
storage.
--------------------
\1 Some routine maintenance tasks are managed through a simpler
process.
BACKLOG OF CORRECTIVE
MAINTENANCE EXCEEDS DESIRED
LEVELS
------------------------------------------------------------ Letter :3
Between February 1991 and October 1994, Hanford's inventory of
uncompleted corrective maintenance projects ranged from a high of
1,992 projects to a low of 1,517. To ensure that maintenance needs
are responded to in a timely manner, the inventory should be 90 days
of work or about 300 projects, according to managers in
Westinghouse's production control unit. If the number is
substantially higher than 300, as has been the case over the past 3
years, many projects could remain unaddressed for long periods.
The hazardous nature of the waste in the tank farms makes timely
maintenance critical. This requires not only that actual problems be
corrected but also that monitoring equipment be maintained so that it
can detect problems as they occur. As the following examples show,
projects in Hanford's corrective maintenance backlog have required
both types of attention.
In 1991, a worker found that an asbestos gasket on a ventilation
system in one tank farm had been leaking a small amount of
radioactive contaminant on the ground. As of October 1994--more than
1,175 days later--the corrective maintenance had not been completed.
A Westinghouse official said that the leak had been sealed with tape
pending final repair. A facility representative said that the work
had not been given more emphasis because such leaks were common in
the tank farms.
In June 1992, a special study team from DOE's Office of Environmental
Restoration and Waste Management found that more than one-third of
the liquid level gauges had failed, including those in 10 tanks that
posed safety concerns, such as a risk of explosion. The July 1994
tank farm monthly report--the most recent report available--shows
that automated instruments used for detecting and reporting leaks in
18 tanks were not working at the end of June 1994--including 6 that
had been out of service for more than a year.\2
To help understand what contributes to the backlog, we analyzed how
long it took Westinghouse to process a corrective maintenance
project. Our analysis focused on 660 projects closed in calendar
year 1993, for which phase-by-phase data were available within the
job control system.\3 On average, these 660 projects took 325 days
from start to finish. The distribution of the 325 days was as
follows:
The largest portion of calendar time--162 days, or 50 percent--was
spent preparing to start work on the project. This portion
encompasses the planning, approval, and scheduling phases. These
three phases averaged 67, 36, and 59 days, respectively.
By far the smallest portion of calendar time was spent actually doing
the maintenance work and retesting the equipment. On average, this
phase took 21 days, or about 7 percent of the total time. Data from
the job control system show that the actual time to make the repairs
averaged about 30 hours.\4
The final phase of the process--closure--took an average of 142 days,
or about 44 percent of the time. The purpose of this phase is to
ensure that the work was done correctly and completely.
To provide some basis of comparison for assessing the timeliness of
the process at Hanford, we asked maintenance managers at DOE's
Savannah River Site and Idaho National Engineering Laboratory (INEL)
to provide us with information about how long it took to complete
corrective maintenance at their tank farms. Savannah River reported
that corrective maintenance projects completed in 1993 averaged 143
days from start to finish; at INEL the figure was 138 days. The
three sites have similar types of tanks, tank wastes, and maintenance
activities associated with their tank farms. However, because each
site has its own system for structuring the work and maintaining data
on the process, it was not possible to make phase-by-phase
comparisons between locations.
--------------------
\2 Because automated instruments in these tanks were out of service,
manual readings were taken.
\3 When we requested information on corrective maintenance projects
closed in 1993, the job control system contained information on 725
projects completed during the year. We were unable to include 65
older projects in our analysis because complete phase-by-phase
information on them was not available.
\4 The job control system does not have similar data on the number of
hours spent in other phases of the work.
NEW APPROACH TO ORGANIZING WORK
HAS HELPED REDUCE THE BACKLOG
OF CORRECTIVE MAINTENANCE
PROJECTS
------------------------------------------------------------ Letter :4
While the backlog is still too great to ensure timely response to all
corrective maintenance needs, it has decreased in recent months.
Between January and October 1994, the inventory of uncompleted
projects dropped from 1,969 to 1,517. One factor contributing to the
decrease, according to Westinghouse personnel, was the implementation
of a new approach to make the maintenance process more productive.\5
During the past 2 years, Westinghouse undertook three major
initiatives to improve the productivity of its tank farm maintenance.
Two of the initiatives have basically been abandoned in favor of the
third initiative. The first initiative, called the Team Concept,
involved assigning a cross-sectional group to handle maintenance at
specific facilities. The concept encountered difficulties in
implementation and was gradually abandoned. Westinghouse's
production control manager said that the major problems encountered
were weak scheduling systems and a lack of management discipline to
keep team members working in the facilities to which they had been
assigned. The second initiative, called SD-028, allowed streamlined
planning for replacing parts. After an audit of a sample of work
packages found that staff failed to comply with the requirements of
the procedure, SD-028 was also canceled.
The new approach, called the "zone concept," was implemented in
October 1993. This approach was adapted from DOE's Waste Isolation
Pilot Plant in New Mexico, where the maintenance manager credited it
with substantially reducing the maintenance backlog. The new
approach centers on a different method for getting work done. The
approach attempts to break down the separation between various
Westinghouse units having maintenance, safety, and related
responsibilities. While retaining separate production control and
maintenance units, the new approach divides maintenance work into 10
zones and assembles an interdisciplinary group to coordinate the work
in each zone.\6 Under this concept, for example, fixing an electrical
zone problem would be planned, coordinated, and scheduled by a group
with representatives from production control and maintenance and from
other Westinghouse units responsible for tank farm operations,
safety, and health physics.
Early indications are that the zone concept has played a role in
reducing the backlog of projects. Westinghouse officials believe
that the zone concept has increased efficiency and had other
benefits, such as better communication between craft workers and
managers and more timely completion of maintenance. Previously,
according to the officials, maintenance was often interrupted
because, for example, craft workers or support staff were not
available or safety requirements were not being met. The incidence
of such delays dropped from an average of 114 per month in fiscal
year 1993 to an average of about 33 per month in fiscal year 1994.
More time is needed to assess how much the zone concept will increase
productivity and deal effectively with maintenance problems because
its structure and staffing are still evolving. For example, since
the concept was initially implemented, some zones have been added,
while others have been combined.
--------------------
\5 Another factor was that Westinghouse reviewed the list of
uncompleted projects and eliminated ones that duplicated others or
that were judged to be no longer needed.
\6 The 10 zones are electrical, mechanical, and instrumentation zones
in each of Hanford's two tank farm areas; a zone for the evaporator
and some related facilities; a painting and insulation zone; a
compliance and sampling zone; and a zone for safety projects and
major maintenance work done by a subcontractor.
OTHER WAYS TO IMPROVE
EFFICIENCY REMAIN ONLY PARTLY
ADDRESSED
------------------------------------------------------------ Letter :5
Several other opportunities remain available for reducing the time
needed to complete maintenance projects. These include reducing the
time spent in preparing and closing out maintenance projects,
developing benchmarks for measuring performance, and gathering and
analyzing information about how much time and money are spent on
individual work projects. As currently implemented, the zone concept
does not address these issues.
REDUCING THE TIME REQUIRED
TO PREPARE AND CLOSE OUT
MAINTENANCE PROJECTS
---------------------------------------------------------- Letter :5.1
We identified steps that Savannah River and INEL are taking to reduce
the time spent in preparing and closing out maintenance projects.
Westinghouse managers have recently experimented with these same
approaches, with promising results. However, the managers have not
established any plans for taking these approaches beyond the
experimental stage.
At INEL, officials adopted a collaborative process for approving
corrective maintenance plans, trimming this phase of the process to a
few minutes each for most projects. By comparison, the fiscal year
1993 projects we analyzed at Hanford took an average of 36 days to
approve. In July 1994, Westinghouse experimented with this approach
at Hanford. By drawing together all staff responsible for approving
a group of about a dozen similar packages, Westinghouse was able to
approve those projects in a single meeting. The manager responsible
for the initiative, who is applying this approach on a limited basis,
estimated that the cost savings from reductions in staff time would
amount to about $10,000 a month. He plans to continue this process
with this group of packages and would like to expand it further.
INEL and Savannah River have assigned staff as coordinators to close
out a project once the work has been done and tested. Under their
systems, work packages are in the closure phase for an average of 9
days at INEL and 38 days at Savannah River. It is during this phase
that the work package is reviewed to ensure that (1) the work was
done correctly, (2) needed changes to operating or maintenance
procedures were made, and (3) the package was completed. At Hanford,
production control staff do not consider closure a high priority, and
no staff are exclusively assigned to this phase. As a consequence,
the average package spent 142 days in this phase--almost as much time
as is spent in planning, approving, and scheduling the work. Earlier
in 1994, Westinghouse's production control manager said that he had
made a limited effort to reduce the closure time by directing his
staff to close out packages when they had time available.
Westinghouse succeeded in reducing closure time to about 70 days, and
Westinghouse officials believe the time can be reduced to about 30
days. However, because no staff have been directly assigned to this
task, there is no assurance that the closure phase will continue to
receive needed attention.
DEVELOPING BENCHMARKS FOR
MEASURING MAINTENANCE
PERFORMANCE
---------------------------------------------------------- Letter :5.2
Hanford's corrective maintenance projects showed wide variations in
the time they took in the various phases of the process. In the
planning phase, for example, half of the fiscal year 1993 projects we
reviewed were completed in 17 days or less, but some took as long as
763 days. Likewise, approval was completed for half of the projects
in 13 days or less, but some took as long as 712 days. Similar
variation was present in other phases as well.
The wide variation points to a basic problem in Hanford's maintenance
program: The program lacks clear expectations about how long the
work should take. Without such expectations, important projects can
languish as the following examples show:
A 1-day job to prevent water lines from leaking and shutting down a
system that helps prevent accidental releases of radioactivity spent
a year in the scheduling phase.
Another project involved replacing a $3 filter on a $300 vacuum pump
used for monitoring leakage of radioactive material. A staff member
with whom we discussed this project said that if the filter were to
fail, the entire vacuum pump would have to be replaced. He said that
although he kept putting the project on the schedule, other staff
bumped it in favor of other projects. In all, 329 days elapsed
between the time the work package was initiated and the time the
filter was replaced.
Recent studies have pointed out the advisability of adopting
benchmarks (called "engineered performance standards") for how long
work should take to ensure efficient use of resources and workable
schedules.\7 In May 1993, a consultant's report recommended that
Westinghouse adopt these standards. A similar recommendation was
made for Savannah River's tank farms in January 1994, where work is
now under way to put performance standards in place.
Some Hanford officials are implementing engineered performance
standards but not those who oversee tank farm maintenance. A manager
in the landlord maintenance program\8 at Hanford said that he is
beginning to implement the standards in his program. He said that
while it is too soon to identify improvements in productivity, the
performance standards have already improved the accuracy of work
scheduling. In October 1994, the tank farm production control
manager told us that Westinghouse is struggling with budget and
staffing issues and has no plans to implement the standards at this
time. However, he said that the standards, tailored to the Hanford
tank farm maintenance operation, would be useful.
--------------------
\7 Audit of Staffing Requirements at the Westinghouse Savannah River
Company, U.S. Department of Energy, DOE/IG-0340, Jan. 1994. Value
Management Evaluation for the Measurement and Improvement of
Productivity, a report prepared for Westinghouse Hanford Company,
Richland, Washington, H.B. Maynard and Company, Inc., May 1993.
\8 This group is responsible for the general maintenance of roads and
buildings not maintained under other programs and for other needed
site maintenance.
DEVELOPING AND ANALYZING
INFORMATION ON MAINTENANCE
TIMES AND COSTS
---------------------------------------------------------- Letter :5.3
Even though DOE policy requires facilities to be maintained in a
cost-effective manner, Westinghouse lacks information on project
costs and the number of hours used to complete maintenance projects.
We identified two main ways in which Westinghouse could improve this
information:
For craft workers, such as pipefitters and electricians, Westinghouse
could examine INEL's and Savannah River's approaches for obtaining
more specific data than Hanford currently keeps. At Hanford, at the
end of a project, craft workers summarize the time they spent on the
task and record the information in the maintenance package. Parts
supplied are also listed in the package. However, the cost of the
various types of staff performing the work and the cost of the
material used are not developed. By contrast, INEL and Savannah
River develop additional information on maintenance performance by
recording craft hours and associated costs and adding the cost of
materials used. At INEL, the cost reports are sent to facility
managers to use to prepare facility budgets and to help decide if
equipment should be replaced. At Savannah River, cost information is
also used in decisions to repair or replace equipment.
For other workers, such as planners, engineers, or safety personnel,
Westinghouse could examine ways to collect similar project-by-project
information. Currently, these workers charge their time to broad
budget categories, such as corrective maintenance or preventive
maintenance, and do not record how much time they spend working on
individual maintenance projects. Collecting more specific
information is important to identify how much time workers actually
spend preparing the packages during the considerable periods of
calendar time the projects spend in planning, approval, and
scheduling.
Because Hanford's information about hours and costs is limited,
managers cannot tell how productively maintenance tasks are being
carried out and where improvements are needed. Better information
could lead to greater accuracy in predicting the actual time required
for work and more effective schedules. During our review, we
identified specific benefits, such as the following:
Better information could help management use staff more efficiently.
We examined this potential in a random selection of 16 maintenance
projects for which we tracked workers' use of time during the work
and retest phase when repairs were actually being done. We found
that about 38 percent of the time was used in performing the work; 34
percent was spent in related activities, such as donning protective
clothing and conducting pre-job meetings; and 28 percent was spent on
nonproductive activities, such as waiting for assistance needed to
perform the work. For example, on one maintenance job we observed,
staff who were working overtime waited for at least 6 hours for the
results of air sampling and for approval to use a three-eight-inch
pressure valve on a three-quarter-inch pipe.
More accurate information about the number of hours needed to
complete certain tasks could help managers improve work scheduling.
Currently, the planner estimates the time and crafts required to do
the work when the package is planned. The craft workers report the
time they spent at the conclusion of the job. However, no analysis
of any differences is conducted to help in planning future projects.
For about one-third of the 1993 jobs with sufficient information to
make such an analysis, the difference between the planned and
reported time spent on the project was more than 50 percent.
Better information could direct management attention to whether
projects were languishing because of inattention. For example, we
examined one maintenance project to repair a leak detection alarm
that was in the planning phase for 20 months. None of the three
planners involved in the job whom we interviewed had any records to
show how much time they had spent working on the package. If this
information were available, Westinghouse managers would be better
able to determine whether the number of hours spent was reasonable
for an effort that took 20 months to complete. The Westinghouse tank
farm production control manager said that information on the actual
time spent working on packages would be helpful. He said that a
number of approaches are available to obtain this information but
none has been implemented.
CONCLUSIONS
------------------------------------------------------------ Letter :6
Successful resolution of problems facing the tank farm maintenance
program requires a wider range of actions than Westinghouse now has
under way. The zone concept shows promise in improving communication
between work units and making the maintenance process more
productive, but reducing the backlog of maintenance projects to an
acceptable level requires that Westinghouse make full use of
additional procedures that have proven successful at other DOE tank
farms. Westinghouse's experiments with these procedures have
demonstrated their usefulness. What is needed now is to apply these
lessons systematically. Westinghouse also needs to gather more data
about its maintenance operations in order to better understand how
the projects proceed and to identify opportunities for further
improvement.
RECOMMENDATIONS
------------------------------------------------------------ Letter :7
We recommend that the Secretary of Energy direct the Manager of the
Richland Field Office to take the following actions:
Streamline the processes for (1) approving corrective maintenance
plans and (2) closing out completed maintenance work by adopting
procedures used at other DOE sites and already tested in experiments
at Hanford.
Develop (1) benchmarks and, where appropriate, engineered performance
standards for tank farm maintenance and (2) more complete data on the
time required for, and the cost of, conducting each maintenance
project. DOE should then use this information to adjust the
benchmarks and standards and to identify additional opportunities to
improve tank farm maintenance.
---------------------------------------------------------- Letter :7.1
Appendix I discusses the scope and methodology we used in conducting
our work. As agreed with your office, we did not obtain written
agency comments on a draft of this report. However, we discussed our
findings with the director of the tank farm operations office and
with the tank farm operations manager at Westinghouse. The officials
said that the findings were generally consistent with their own
assessment of the tank farm maintenance activities. However, they
provided additional information on recent actions taken to improve
tank farm maintenance. As a result, we conducted additional work and
revised the draft to reflect recent changes in the program.
As arranged with your office, unless you publicly announce its
contents earlier, we plan no further distribution of this report
until 30 days after the date of this letter. At that time, we will
send copies to the appropriate congressional committees; the
Secretary of Energy; and the Director, Office of Management and
Budget. We will make
Please call me at (202) 512-3841 if you or your staff have any
questions. Major contributors to this report are listed in appendix
II.
Sincerely yours,
Victor S. Rezendes
Director, Energy and
Science Issues
SCOPE AND METHODOLOGY
=========================================================== Appendix I
To address the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs' concerns
about the Department of Energy's (DOE) tank farm maintenance program,
we used a number of different approaches. At DOE's Hanford Site, we
reviewed various reports on the tank farm maintenance program;
reviewed key DOE orders and Westinghouse manuals; discussed
maintenance activities with DOE staff, Westinghouse managers and
workers, and state and federal regulators; reviewed maintenance work
packages; observed work in process; and obtained and analyzed data on
maintenance work from Westinghouse's job control system. To help us
assess the Hanford program, we visited the Idaho National Engineering
Laboratory's (INEL) tank farm and tank farms at DOE's Savannah River
Site. At our request, managers at those facilities developed
information related to their maintenance workload.
DATA BASE ANALYSIS
--------------------------------------------------------- Appendix I:1
To determine how long it takes to complete maintenance work at the
Hanford tank farms, we analyzed work package data. Westinghouse
maintains data on each work package in a computerized job control
system data base. The system, implemented in February 1991, stores
information such as who originated the work package, location and
description of the work, when work began or ended, names of staff who
reviewed the package, and other relevant information. This data base
is updated to track the package through the process. We validated
the accuracy of these data by selecting a small sample of work
packages and comparing the information shown in the actual package
with data in the computerized system. We generally found only minor
discrepancies.
We obtained from Westinghouse copies of the data base for all open
and closed corrective maintenance packages as of January 15, 1994.
We used a data base program and a statistical analysis program to
analyze the data. We singled out those work packages that were
completed in 1993--725 out of a total of 4,673 work packages. We
used data from our analysis to compute the range of time packages
spent in various stages of the process, how many steps they incurred,
and average and median time spent in each phase. We also analyzed
other related factors such as whether preapproved procedures were
used and priority of the work. We discussed our methodology with
Westinghouse staff, who agreed that our approach would accurately
portray the time spent performing corrective maintenance work at
Hanford.
WORK OBSERVATION
--------------------------------------------------------- Appendix I:2
To determine how efficient Westinghouse was in performing the repairs
called for in the work packages, we reviewed several studies that had
reported problems in performing the work. Also, on 10 different days
between November 1993 and January 1994, we attended the early morning
meeting at which maintenance jobs were released. We selected 16 jobs
that were released for work at these meetings.\1 We then observed the
workers assigned to the jobs from their pre-job meetings through the
completion or suspension of that days' work on those jobs. The 16
jobs included both preventative and corrective maintenance at the
evaporator and several tank farms. We monitored the activities of
all staff assigned to the work location. We summarized the
activities of the assigned maintenance craft workers into the
following categories: performing the work, related activities, and
other.
--------------------
\1 One job was selected on two different days.
MAJOR CONTRIBUTORS TO THIS REPORT
========================================================== Appendix II
ENERGY AND SCIENCE ISSUES
Carlotta Joyner, Associate Director
James No�l, Assistant Director
Edward E. Young, Jr., Assignment Manager
William R. Swick, Regional Energy Issues Manager
Christopher R. Abraham, Evaluator-in-Charge
Robert J. Bresky, Jr., Staff Evaluator
Brent L. Hutchison, Staff Evaluator
Stanley G. Stenersen, Senior Evaluator