ISMS is a DOE program meant to ensure that attention to environment, safety and health is built into the way we go about our work. On the surface, that s really all there is to it. Most workers probably think they already do their work safely through implementing their Work Smart Standards, and they are likely correct. However, a closer look reveals something very different from the way things were only a few years ago.
Safety is no longer an overhead function, no longer someone else s responsibility.
Safety has become the responsibility of line management and every employee who performs the work. People began to think that safety wasn t their concern because someone else was looking after it. Or as Chemical and Analytical Sciences Division Director Marv Poutsma, who is leading the Lab s ISMS Implementation Committee, says, They took good managers and removed safety responsibility from their hands. Parzyck and Poutsma believe the resulting stovepiping of organizations and responsibilities might actually have been the basis for accidents. And these didn t have to happen, Parzyck says.