Creating a Company Vision

MR GEOFFREY F FOUNTAIN (TFYY93A@prodigy.com)
Mon, 09 Jan 1995 21:35:43 EST

In response to Larry Headley's reply posted 1/9/95:

It's great to see some DOE folks on this list. More on that
later.

I was referring to the DOE Order compliance program that was
intiated under Admiral Heckman. DOE beltway consultants
used the INPO guidelines for certain Orders such as Conduct
of Operations and Conduct of Maintenance as their
deliverables to DOE. DOE then turned around and told their
contractors to "comply" with the orders -- "word for word".
This "word for word" compliance followed NCR convention.
Unfortunately, the INPO guidelines were written as standards
of excellence, not as prescriptive, regulatory requirements.
How does one comply to "excellence" the first time ? But it
was too late, the wheels were set in motion. The
contractors were caught in a viscious cycle of intepreting
the guidelines, implementing them, then being subjected to
more beltway consultants who intepreted the guidelines based
on their own experience, and the contractors were
bludgeoned. The viscious cycle had no end.
Fortunately, I had an excellent local DOE liaison who
listened. We also communicated with HQ contacts Joe King
and Rollie Seigler. They listened and finally we were able
to get a site DOE letter stating "word for word" compliance
to the guidelines was not required. You can imagine the
predicament that situation put a manager in who was trying
to get into position to startup, and then had a handful of
experts come in and interpret the guidelines differently.
They were set up to fail from the beginning.

The structures at play were so obvious to those who
understood the systems perspective.
As far as trying to intice others, I think the best approach
is to begin networking within the complex. Changing the
federal bureaucracy system (starting with DOE) would be
worth hanging around to me !

There are pockets of ST activites going on in Idaho,
Hanford, and even in the Behavior-Based Safety Program.
What is needed is someone who has the resources to maintian
the ST network across the complex. I could supply some
contacts within DOE, Westinghouse, and others.

TFYY93A@prodigy.com (MR GEOFFREY F FOUNTAIN)