2010 Status of Safety at AREVA group facilities
Alternatives #5: The renaissance of solar homes
Alternatives #4: Hydrocarbons, cocktails of the future
Alternatives #3: Geothermal modesty
Alternatives #2: Tomorrow's reactors
Alternatives #1: Energies, what scenario for 2050?
Quiz: Test what you know about sustainable development
Quiz: Checking on the state of the Earth
Game: Nuclear energy key words
Game: Energy Memory Game
Human and organizational factors, important components of safety culture
It is not new for the AREVA group’s entities to take human and organizational factors into account. For several years now, events are analyzed from a human and organizational factors perspective in an increasingly systematic and methodical way. Operators are often involved in performance improvement studies related to operations, a practice that the group encourages.
A group-wide commitment
In addition to initiatives by the operating entities, AREVA’s Nuclear Executive Committee assigned additional resources and skills in February 2008 to increase efforts to include human and organizational factors in daily risk management activities throughout the group. The Committee lauded existing practices in this field while recognizing that they can be improved and that there is a need for a more systematic, consistent and specialized approach in this field, requiring special skills.
The initiative is based on seven operating principles:
- identify human activities subject to risk even more thoroughly than they are today, with a view to increasing their reliability;
- get final users more involved in all projects;
- get management closer to the field to understand the problems and performance;
- question slippages and report them;
- correct and understand errors and draw lessons from them for everyone;
- understand the remedial action taken as well;
- build trust and facilitate discussion at every level.
The operating entities are at the center of the action
A network of coordinators in each of the business units is spearheading the group-wide effort to improve how human and organizational factors are taken into account. Each business unit director and site director assigns personnel to head up the deployment of HOF commitments, sets performance improvement objectives based on an analysis of the situation in his/her entity, and acquires the means to share this experience with the group’s other entities.
It is the director’s responsibility to develop specific skills and involve all personnel in performance improvement initiatives for taking human and organizational factors into account.
The initiative is now in progress. Though results and sensitivity to this subject are not the same everywhere, the entities are showing real determination to improve performance and make these activities a regular part of the organization, and some have acquired real expertise on this subject.
