Speaker
Synopsis
The prevalence of a good safety culture is equally important for all kind of organizations involved in nuclear business including operating organizations, designers, regulator, etc. and this should be reflected through the processes and activities of these organizations. The need for inculcating safety culture into regulatory processes / practices is gradually increasing since the major nuclear accident of Fukushima at Japan. Accordingly, several international fora in last few years repeatedly highlighted the importance of prevalence of safety culture in regulatory bodies as well. The utilization of concept of safety culture remained applicable in regulatory activities of PNRA in the form of core values. After Fukushima accident, PNRA considered it important to check the extent of utilization of safety culture concept in organizational activities and decided to conduct its “Safety Culture Self-Assessment (SCSA)” for presenting itself as role model in-order to endorse the fact that safety culture at regulatory authority plays an important role to influence safety culture at licensed facilities.
Considering the complexity of cultural assessment starting from visual manifestations to the basic assumptions at the deeper level, PNRA decided to utilize IAEA emerging methodology for assessment of culture and then used modified IAEA normative framework ( made it applicable for regulatory body) for assessing safety culture at a regulatory body. PNRA SCSA team utilized safety culture assessment tools (observations, focus groups, surveys, interviews and document analysis) for collecting cultural facts by including all level of personnel involved in different activities / functions in the organization. Different challenges were encountered during implementation of these tools which were tackled with the background of training on SCSA and with the help of experts during support missions arranged by IAEA. Before formally starting the SCSA process, pre-launch activities were carried out in order to prepare the organization for the cultural assessment activity.
After completion of safety culture self assessment at PNRA, the communication strategy was defined to share outcome of this assessment in the organization with the focus on developing dialogue and shared understanding. The safety culture improvement activities were designed to maintain / enhance strong areas of safety culture at PNRA and to address those areas that need attention in order to enhance safety consciousness.
This paper presents PNRA experience of using IAEA emerging methodology for safety culture self assessment, challenges faced during the process and lessons learnt for further improvement in order to implement it more effectively in future. The paper also highlights strategy utilized for conveying outcomes of SCSA in the organization at different levels along with safety culture improvement activities.
| Country or International Agency | Pakistan |
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