Issues Management Program

The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) Issues Management Program (IMP) encompasses the continuous monitoring of work programs, performance, and safety to promptly identify issues to determine their risk and significance, their causes, and to identify and effectively implement corrective actions to ensure successful resolution and prevent the same or similar problems from occurring.

This comprehensive institutional program is comprised of four Program Manuals, two databases and two implementing procedures.  These tools define and implement the process for issues identification, tracking, resolution, closure, validation, and effectiveness of corrective actions.  Issues that are governed by this program include program and performance deficiencies or nonconformances that may be identified through employee discovery, internal or external oversight assessment findings, suggested process improvements and associated actions that require formal corrective action.  Issues may also be identified in and/or may result in Root Cause Analysis (RCA) reports, Price Anderson Amendment Act (PAAA) reports, Occurrence Reporting and Processing System (ORPS) reports, Accident Investigation reports, assessment reports, and External Oversight reports.

Analysis of issues, individually and collectively, is performed in order to identify programmatic or system issues and to identify recurrence of issues, generic issues, trends and vulnerabilities at a lower level before significant problems result.

Lessons Learned and Best Practices, based on LBNL’s and other facilities’ operating experiences, are developed to ensure ongoing improvement of safety and reliability, prevent the recurrence of significant adverse events/trends, and determine implementation strategies that will help LBNL successfully meet the missions and goals set forth by the Department of Energy (DOE).

Program Manuals and Tools

1. LBNL/PUB-5519 (1), Issues Management Program Manual, Rev. 0
   
   
   • Corrective Action Tracking System (CATS) Database
   • OIA-OCA-0001, CATS Database User Manual, Rev. 0
2. LBNL/PUB-5519 (2), Root Cause Analysis Program Manual, Rev. 0
3. LBNL/PUB-5519 (3), Data Monitoring and Analysis Program Manual, Rev. 0
4. LBNL/PUB-5519 (4), Lessons Learned and Best Practices Program Manual, Rev. 0
   
   
   • Lessons Learned and Best Practices Database
   • OIA-OCA-0002, Lessons Learned/Best Practices Database User Manual, Rev. 0

Training

Training courses are offered on a quarterly basis on the following IMP elements:

• BLI2000, Issues Management Program
• BLI2001, IMP: Data Monitoring and Analysis Overview (under development)
• BLI2002, IMP: Data Monitoring and Analysis Application
• BLI2003, IMP: Lessons Learned and Best Practices Program

Enrollment may be accomplished through the BLI website: https://hris.lbl.gov/self_service/login/.

Additional Resources

• DOE Corporate Lessons Learned Collection
• EFCOG – Energy Facilities Contract Group Best Practices
  
• SELLS – DOE Society for Effective Lessons Learned Sharing
  

Last updated 24 Sep 2007