Teams Win 3 Hammer Awards


	Teams Win Three Hammer Awards

The Lessons Learned Process Improvement Team of Federal employees and contractors at the Department of Energy created, with no budget and no management mandate, a system for sharing lessons learned across the DOE complex. Sharing of lessons prevents repeating mistakes or accidents, saves injuries and lives, and saves scarce taxpayer dollars. The team members made a difference in safety and cost savings, and earned respect and appreciation from everyone they touched. Today, every major DOE site has in place a lessons learned program and a lessons learned site coordinator; all developed through a grass-roots cooperative process.

The Performance Indicator Team, made up of a cross-section of federal employees, broke down information stove pipes and produced the first DOE corporate performance indicators for environment, safety and health, leading to a highly successful new DOE product and a corresponding process improvement. In addition, through intelligent use of information in electronic databases, their actions saved an estimated $2 million per year that can now be applied to DOE missions that more directly impact the American Taxpayer such as cleaning up nuclear waste.

The Occurrence Reporting Team’s empowered Federal and contractor employees put the customer in charge and cut the costs of the Department of Energy’s process for collecting data on environmental and worker accidents by 28%, saving $6 million per year that can be applied to DOE missions that more directly affect the American Taxpayer. The process focused on reducing costs without reducing quality. The Headquarters federal employees who "owned" the reporting system took a risk and gave up control, empowering the system users (customers) in the Field and, in turn, became leaders of change.