Executive summary
Date(s) of inspection: March 2024
Aim of inspection
This intervention was undertaken across the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) Explosives Technical Centre (XTC) and aligns with the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) 2023/24 integrated intervention strategy for the weapons sub-division.
The below key sub-division objective (KSO) and desired regulatory outcomes (DRO) are considered most relevant:
- >KRO.1- AWE(A) delivers the improvements necessary to demonstrate sustained adequate performance and capability to return to a routine level of regulatory attention
- >DRO.5 - Provide assurance to our stakeholders that hazardous activities on site are planned and conducted safely in accordance with the appropriate legislative requirements and that all risks, so far as reasonably practicable, have been reduced to as low as reasonably practicable
- >DRO.5.6 - Demonstration of improved safety culture within each of the key operational areas across the AWE Plc sites
The main focus of this inspection was to explore cultural and leadership aspects across XTC and examine the progress made by XTC against the improvement plan it identified following a previous psychological and ESH surveys. The main aims are as follows:
- understand how cultural factors affect safety performance across XTC
- sample the effectiveness of the XTC culture improvement programme
- use the warning flags to inform judgements against culture warning flags
Subject(s) of inspection
- Leadership & Management for Safety - Rating: Not rated
Key findings, inspector's opinions and reasons for judgement made
This report documents the findings from an inspection which sought to gain an understanding of safety culture across XTC. As part of the inspection we carried out a series of interviews and focus group sessions with a sample of the workforce, and observed a daily brief meeting within a facility. This is an unrated inspection focused on Leadership and Management for safety.
During the intervention, we experienced positive and proactive engagement with the XTC workforce, with open and honest discussions. There was no evidence from anyone spoken to that production was prioritised over safety. However, the warning flags identified areas of potential drift that XTC could consider strengthening.
The key learning points are summarised as follows:
- Significant measures had been introduced to address identified deficiencies in safety culture, and XTC developed a programme to improve culture. During the intervention some of these were sampled and appeared to be effective. ONR would encourage XTC to continue to pursue these iterative improvement activities, including evaluation of effectiveness.
- Employees could not clearly articulate the expected safety behaviours, or what a good safety culture would look like within their work context. As there are many threats to performance, including Project Phoenix, turnover and lack of expertise there would be value in describing this expectation, training it and reinforcing it via leadership.
- There has been a recent trend of events which suggest that safety behaviours could be drifting, and in tandem with the production focus/risk appetite and organisational changes this could lead to continued deterioration of performance. ONR recommend that XTC continue to monitor performance and consider value of trending exercise to identify common issues and remedial actions.
- There is a current focus on production, and the need to deliver product. ONR caution that leadership focus on this may present a threat and could lead to safety being overlooked.
XTC committed to considering the insights from this intervention in their culture improvement programme. ONR will continue to monitor implementation and outcomes from this.
Conclusion
The safety improvement journey has delivered some positive improvements, for example increasing leadership visibility; use of safety circles as a mechanism to engage employees and methods to improve reporting of events. These are part of an improvement journey and ONR encourage XTC to continue to focus on iterative improvement activities. Alongside these activities ONR encourage XTC to consider the insights from this inspection.
Overall, I judge that relevant good practice was met in the sample inspected with some areas of good practice and some areas that XTC should consider strengthening to continue to improve their safety culture.