Wednesday’s Speakers

Wednesday, June 24, 2020

Plenary: Leading the Future of Safety by Learning from the Past

At the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), we recognize that a safe and healthful workplace is essential to our mission delivery. Safe work practices and a safe work environment are critical to employee wellbeing and to the conduct of world-class science. In fact, world-class science demands world-class safety. The essential elements for world-class safety are: leadership commitment; clearly documented and well-communicated roles, responsibilities, and requirements; employee participation in creating and implementing safe work procedures; and a robust safety management system grounded in continual improvement. As each of these elements strengthen and improve, so does the safety culture of the organization. In this presentation, I will discuss the development and evolution of each of these elements as part of the NIST journey that led to the safety management system, practices and culture that we have today.

Breakout Session #10A: Prevention Through Engineering Design

A proven method to improve safety for any facility is to remain focused on engineering safety during the front-end engineering design (FEED) stage and on the maintenance of effective programs, procedures, and practices. This session will explore considerations in the development and application of new technology, the role of digital technology, and how organizations can effectively assess prospective new operating environments.

J. Robert Sims is an Eminent Fellow with Becht Engineering Company, Inc. He is a recognized authority in risk-based technologies, high pressure equipment, mechanical integrity evaluation of existing equipment and fitness-for-service analysis including brittle fracture analysis. Sims is past senior vice president for ASME Standards and Certification and is an ASME past president and a past member of the ASME Board of Governors. He has more than 40 years of experience in design, analysis, troubleshooting, design audit, mechanical integrity evaluation, leading risk based reviews, and failure analysis.

Richard E. Feigel was responsible for risk analysis at Hartford Steam Boiler & Insurance Company (HSB), supporting the company’s insurance underwriting and loss prevention activities, as well as consulting with clients worldwide on risk-based inspection, corporate risk mitigation strategies and financial optimization of maintenance and repair decisions. He was involved in engineering standards development for almost twenty-five years, primarily with The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME.) He served as ASME president (2005-06.) He was a member of ASME’s Board of Governors and is a past senior vice president of ASME’s Council of Codes and Standards which is responsible for overall management of ASME’s standards activities. He chaired the board of ASME’s Codes & Standards Technology Institute. He is a past chairman of the ASME B31 Piping Main Committee. Feigel was the lead expert on the U.S. delegation to the International Standards Organization Committee on Boilers and Pressure Vessels. In previous positions with HSB, he was responsible for worldwide engineering and inspection services.

Kenneth R. Balkey is past vice president, ASME Nuclear Codes and Standards (2005-2008) and past senior vice president, ASME Standards and Certification (2011 – 2014) where he had oversight of the development and certification activities by more than 5,000 worldwide experts producing more than 500 safety standards used by many industries in over 100 countries. Balkey now serves as a member of the ASME Foundation Board of Directors and Chair, ASME Standards Infusion Project Team. He retired in 2014 as a Consulting Engineer at Westinghouse Electric Company in Pittsburgh with 42 years of service in the global nuclear power industry. He advised technology developments related to Codes and Standards and provided consultation across a range of technical fields for current and new reactors worldwide. He has authored over 150 publications and documents related to risk evaluations of the integrity of piping, vessels and structures; the performance of components using state of the art probabilistic assessment techniques; and the infusion of engineering standards content into undergraduate and graduate mechanical engineering education programs. He holds two patents related to reactor pressure vessel integrity and risk-informed inspection of heat exchangers. Balkey earned bachelor and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering at the University of Pittsburgh, and he is a registered professional engineer in Pennsylvania.

John Gambatese is a professor in the School of Civil and Construction Engineering at Oregon State University. Gambatese’s educational background includes bachelor and master’s degrees in civil engineering from the University of California at Berkeley, and a doctoral degree in civil engineering from the University of Washington. He has worked in industry as a structural engineer in San Francisco, and as a project engineer for a construction management firm in Seattle. He started his current position at Oregon State University in 2000. Gambatese’s research interests are in the broad area of construction engineering and management, and more specifically related to safety, prevention through design, work zone safety, risk and reward, innovation, and sustainable and lean practices. Over his career he has taught courses on a variety of subjects including worker safety, planning and scheduling, contracts and specifications, structural analysis and design, temporary structures, and construction site systems engineering. He is a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) and American Society of Safety Professionals (ASSP). He is a licensed Professional Civil Engineer in California.

Mihai A. Diaconeasa obtained his bachelor’s degree from University College Utrecht, the international undergraduate honors college of Utrecht University, the Netherlands, his master’s degree in nuclear science and engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from University of California, Los Angeles. After his graduation, Diaconeasa held the postdoctoral research scholar position at the B. John Garrick Institute for the Risk Sciences from the School of Engineering at UCLA. Diaconeasa has developed the methodologies needed to design and implement a suite of computer codes in the probabilistic risk, reliability, and resilience assessment fields for nuclear, aerospace, and maritime industries. He was also the associate general chair for the International Conference on Probabilistic Safety Assessment and Management (PSAM-14) hosted by UCLA in 2018. He is a member of the American Nuclear Society (ANS) Standards Committee ANS-30.1 Working Group under the Research and Advanced Reactors Consensus Committee and a non-voting member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Safety Engineering and Risk Analysis Division (SERAD) Executive Committee. Diaconeasa leads the design and development of ADS-IDAC, a dynamic probabilistic risk assessment methodology and software platform for nuclear power plants, the Hybrid Causal Logic Analyzer system risk and reliability software used to enhance the design process and assess the commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) parts usage in space systems for extended deep space missions at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and the Phoenix human reliability analysis methodology and software for Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority (JNRA).

Mohammad Pourgol-Mohammad is a multidisciplinary systems risk/reliability analyst with Johnson Controls Inc. and an associate professor of reliability engineering, with Sahand University of Technology (SUT). He received his Ph.D in reliability engineering from University of Maryland (UMD), and holds one M.Sc degree in nuclear engineering and another in reliability engineering from UMD with his undergraduate degree in electrical engineering. Pourgol-Mohammad has more than 18 year of work experience including research, industrial, and academic in safety applications and reliability engineering at various institutions including Johnson Controls Inc., Sahand University of Technology, FM Global, Goodman Manufacturing, UMD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and University of Zagreb-Croatia. He is a Fellow member of American Society of Quality (Application pending), member of American Society of Mechanical Engineers (Currently Safety Engineering and Risk/Reliability Analysis Division (SER2D) Chair-Elect), member of American Nuclear Society and member of several technical committees (ASQ Boston Section Co-Chair for Education Committee and ANS Technical Journal Committee) and a registered Professional Engineer (PE) in States of Massachusetts. He is a certified reliability engineer (ASQ CRE), Certified Six Sigma Practitioner (ASQ CSSGB) and certified Manager of Quality/Organization Excellence (ASQ CMQ/OE). He has authored more than 150 papers and reports on his researches and filed one patent-USPTO pending. His efforts have been recognized with several awards.

Breakout Session #10B: The Role of More Effective Data Management

In this age of "big data," it is important to recognize the role of effective and innovative data management in improving safety performance. The pooling of data gives insight that benefits safety in many industry sectors, according to several reports and studies. For example, important lessons can be learned when near misses are included in safety event databases. To pool data effectively, common definitions are needed to facilitate the sharing of data and experience sharing. A related challenge is the double-reporting of events in different organizations (i.e., regulatory authorities, international associations). A more effective aggregation of data is necessary for disseminating knowledge on past events, obtaining a clear overall picture of the risk of possible safety event types, understanding the effectiveness of barriers, determining what constitutes a leading indicator, and analyzing trends with the objective of trying to anticipate the next major event.

Elizabeth Mackey is the chief safety officer (CSO) of the Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). After receiving a B.S. in chemistry from Boston College in 1984 and Ph.D. in nuclear chemistry from the University of Maryland in 1991, Mackey began her career as a research chemist at NIST, where she conducted research to develop and improve radiochemical analysis methods and worked with external stakeholders on laboratory quality assurance and to develop and certify standard reference materials. In 2010, Mackey shifted her career focus from research to safety and became the safety program coordinator for NIST’s Material Measurement Laboratory. In 2014, Mackey was honored with the NIST Safety Award as the visionary leader behind the development of a web-based hazard review system, a comprehensive, flexible, and user-friendly tool to manage NIST’s laboratory hazard assessment, risk analysis and work and worker authorization process. Mackey was appointed the chief safety officer in September of 2019. As NIST’s CSO, Mackey is responsible for developing, implementing, and maintaining a robust, integrated, and risk-based safety, health, and environmental management system and developing strategies to improve the agency’s safety performance and maintain a positive safety culture.

Tom Garvin is a senior managing consultant with IBM Services, in the global Chemicals & Petroleum Center of Competence. He has over 30 years of experience in process industries and operational technology, acting in multiple roles within health, safety, and environmental (HSE) operations, operations management, knowledge management, laboratory information and real-time data architectures. Over his career, Garvin has held multi-year engagements with several international majors in the oil, petrochemical and mining industries, including Chevron, ExxonMobil, BP, ConocoPhillips, and Alcoa. Most recently, he has been heavily involved in the application of artificial intelligence to the HSE domain and has been invited to speak at several international conferences on the topic.

Breakout Session #10C: Risk Identification and Tolerance

The objective of this session will be to address processes for identifying and managing different types of risk that may present the greatest challenges in any work environment. Specific aspects to be discussed include understanding the value of risk matrices and risk registers; determining the integrity and effectiveness of barriers; and identifying the factors impacting risk tolerance at the individual and company levels. The session will address question such as: Does managing risk mean it is acceptable to cut corners if the likelihood of a problem is relatively low? Is your personal risk tolerance aligned with the company's level? What about at the workforce level?

Ray has been a visiting professor in the School of Chemical Engineering at Purdue University since 2016, where he teaches the required senior-level course, Chemical Process Safety, and is co-director of the Purdue Process Safety & Assurance Center. The Center oversees a wide variety of process safety research at graduate and undergraduate levels, with a dozen faculty and about three dozen students engaged. Previously, he taught at Texas A&M University and was part of the Mary Kay O’Connor Process Safety Center for seven years. Earlier, he had a 28-year career with ExxonMobil, with over a dozen assignments. He has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Illinois, and master’s and doctoral degrees from Purdue, all in chemical engineering.

Closing Remarks and Recognition of Congress Organizers and Planners