Functional Area Guide Overview
 
 

As indicated in the Attachment 2 Table of Contents, a list of key questions and of some of the associated assessment activities was developed for each of the five functional areas. For those key questions and assessment activities having page numbers indicated, an assessment guide has been developed to assist in standardizing and coordinating the assessment process. Those not having page numbers may have their respective assessment guides developed in the future, perhaps following the completion of the first Management Process and Programs Assessment (MPPA) site-specific assessment. The fact that an assessment guide may not have been developed regarding a specific topic does not preclude the assessment team from addressing that topic. Indeed, many of the assessment guides already cross reference listed guides that have not been developed. In these cases, although no comprehensive guide is developed, a statement is provided in the cross referencing guide regarding the rationale for the cross reference.

Since the review of the functional areas is limited in scope in order to identify significant management issues using limited resources, the strategy of using key questions is consistent with performing an assessment rather than a comprehensive inspection. Therefore, although MPPA Assessment Guides are provided in Attachment 2 for a large sample of these key questions and assessment activities, the eventual expansion of the guides to address all of the identified questions and assessment activities is still not intended to provide comprehensive inspection guidance.

The functional area questions are numbered using a prefix that includes an indication of the functional area, followed by a "Q" (EQ, FQ, MQ, OQ, and TQ), and the functional area activities are numbered using a prefix that includes an "A" (EA, FA, MA, OA, and TA). To provide some indication of relative priority, those questions or activities having the most potential impact on assessing the overall adequacy of the functional area are listed first and have the lowest numbers (e.g., engineering question EQ-1 may be more important than EQ-5).

In order to be able to develop site-specific, functional area assessment plans from the initial issue of this generic plan, at least ten functional area guides (questions plus activities) are provided for use by the team in addressing a large sample (1/3 to 1/2) of the important topical areas that could be addressed in each functional area. The remaining questions and activities are listed, and their associated guides will be developed in the future, after the MPPA assessment process has been used in the field. Thus, as actual site-specific assessments are planned and conducted, these guides will be revised and others will be developed. The remaining questions and activities listed for each functional area in Attachment 2 could be used for the development of additional guides, or the assessment team may develop alternate questions and activities based on the experience gained during each assessment.

Key Question Guides

For each functional area, a number of key questions are so important than an assessor for that functional area would probably address each of them before making any assessment of overall adequacy of the contractor’s performance in that functional area. Each key question guide provides technical and coordination information to assist the assessor in reaching a reasonable conclusion regarding the answer to the key question, and each guide provides cross references to some of the potential management causes of deficiencies. The assessor could use only one or, possibly, a number of actual assessment activities in order to gather the relevant information needed to answer each of the key questions in the assessor’s assigned functional area. In addition, for some functional area key questions, there are assessment activities associated with the other functional areas that could provide assistance in gathering this relevant information. In the course of answering each of the key questions and conducting the associated activities, there may be several deficiencies or findings uncovered that could be caused by management deficiencies.

The key question is stated at the beginning of each question guide, followed by a list of the potentially related assessment activities and MPPA hierarchy sections/questions. Following the lists of cross references, the first major section of the key question guide provides the basis for the key question. This is a description of the importance of the key question to the functional area and to nuclear safety. The discussion of the basis of the key question is intended to improve consistency between assessments conducted at different sites.

The basis is followed by a list of symptoms that frequently arise from functional deficiencies related to the key question. Therefore, each symptom could form the basis for a specific inquiry from the perspective of the key question. The assessor should keep in mind that each symptom discovered to exist at a site may or may not be caused by a deficiency related to the key question. Likewise, some symptoms are listed in the guides for more than one key question. Thus, the symptoms listed in each guide are intended to supplement the expertise and guidance of the assessor and to remind the assessor of possible approaches to answering each key question.

Following the list of symptoms, each question guide again lists the related assessment activities from the five functional areas as listed at the top of the guide, but this time a description of the specific type of assessment support needed from the other assessor is provided. This support is also described with the specific key question in mind, and it is expected that the assessor actually conducting the functional area assessment activity indicated will provide the information or assistance specified in this paragraph. A corresponding paragraph is provided in the cross referenced activity guide (discussed in the section below), making each guide a stand-alone document in this regard.

It is important to note that, even though more than one key question guide may refer to the same assessment activity as providing support, the descriptions of the nature of that support will generally be different, since a different issue or perspective is being addressed. These cross references to activities in different functional areas as well as the related functional area are intended to help the team to increase the efficiency and consistency of the assessment as well as encourage inputs from the perspectives of the other functional area assessors where this could be helpful.

The next section in each question guide addresses finding management root causes, describing the nature of the relationship between the key question and the potentially related MPPA hierarchy sections/questions. This guidance provides a basis for evaluating the significance of information gathered during the assessment. This evaluation is central to the management cause analysis process (Attachment 3).

Finally, the last section of each question guide includes the basic references that should be used in assessing the specific key question and related hierarchy questions. Nevertheless, reliance is largely placed on the expertise of the assessor in answering the key questions. Likewise, the identification of significant deficiencies and the development of possible management-related causes of these deficiencies in the management hierarchy requires evaluation in light of the findings by each assessor and should be further reviewed based on input from and coordination with each of the other team members.

Assessment Activity Guides

As indicated in the above discussion of key questions, the assessment activities are intended to support answering the functional area key questions. Each activity may be useful in providing the basic information needed to answer more than one of the key questions. Similar to the key questions, the assessment activities identified for use as part of MPPA assessments are primarily those minimum activities that would probably be performed by any assessor evaluating that functional area. Nevertheless, due to resource limitations, they are not intended to be as comprehensive as would be expected during a full inspection of the functional area.

Each assessment activity guide is organized very much like the key question guides, described in the previous section. The assessment activity stated at the beginning of each guide is followed by a list of related functional area key questions and a list of potentially related MPPA hierarchy sections or questions. The assessment activity is expected to provide information relevant to these related functional and hierarchical questions.

Similarly, the first major section of the assessment activity guide provides the basis, describing the role and importance of the assessment activity in answering the key questions. This is followed by a list of symptoms that may indicate a deficiency in the functional area or related functional areas to which this activity provides support. The random occurrence of a single symptom might have little significance; however, a collection of related symptoms might provide definitive proof of a deficiency important to answering a functional area key question or directly indicate a potential management deficiency covered under a specific hierarchical management question.

The assessment activity guides may include an additional section on specific assessment activities, which provides more detail regarding approaches to actually performing the assessment activity or describes actions expected to be performed by the assessor. In some cases, the basic activity addressed by the guide (the guide's title) is simply repeated.

Following the specific activities, the paragraphs on each of the cross-referenced key questions (described above) is provided. Again, these paragraphs are duplicated or restated from the perspective of the specific key question as related to the assessment activity. This makes each of the guides a stand-alone document and supports communication among the members of the assessment team.

The next section in each assessment activity guide, as in the key question guides, describes the nature of the relationship between the assessment activities and the potentially directly related MPPA hierarchy sections or questions that are listed at the beginning of the guide. This provides some additional guidance regarding what to look for during the assessment activities, but it is primarily intended to encourage the assessor to consider what management issues might be involved with deficiencies that are not clearly associated with a key question. These key question and assessment activity pointers to the management hierarchy provide important input to the analysis of management causes, discussed in Attachment 3. Whether the assessor chooses to refer a potential management issue to the hierarchy directly or to the hierarchy through a specific key question (or use both paths) is left to the assessor's judgment.