NASA safety needs employee input

William Atkins
Monday, 27 April 2009 20:00

Opinion and Analysis

The ASAP 2008 was released on April 16, 2009, which consists of a report by an advisory panel that addressed safety concerns at the top levels of NASA. And, John Kelly, of FloridaToday.com comments on April 27, 2009, about pressures to finish the Space Station. According to William Atkins, maybe the employees need a safety panel, too.



John Kelly, of FloridaToday, com, blogs in “John Kelly: Shuttle's past says time isn't on its side” about the deadline of September 30, 2010 to finish the International Space Station by the Space Shuttle fleet and its team of NASA and contractor personnel.

Kelly says, “In a business demanding perfection, it's the little unnoticed decisions that can add up to a catastrophe. Subtle pressure is there in the form of the 2010 deadline. NASA needs to complete nine more flights to complete the shuttle's mission, which is to finish building and outfitting a space station that can stay in orbit a decade or so."

Ten days earlier, the members of the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel released its ASAP 2008 recommendations for NASA.

According to the NASA article “Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel Releases Annual Report, “The report examines NASA's safety performance and advises agency and government leaders on ways to improve performance. The ASAP is an independent group of experts that has been evaluating NASA's safety performance and advising the agency on ways to improve that performance since it was established in 1968.”

The members of the ASAP made numerous suggestions in its report. The one recommendation I would like to concentrate on is:

“NASA has an important one-time opportunity to better interweave safety as a consistent and more powerful operating parameter by hardwiring safety into the fabric and procedures of the new flagship exploration program, Constellation. Accordingly, NASA should institutionalize safety programs, systems, processes, and reporting.”

I state these excerpts from Mr. Kelly’s article and from the ASAP report for one very good reason: Employees.

For all too long, in my opinion, employees are ignored as to their part in any organization. Whether it is space operations or any of the thousands of industries in the world, employees do the actual work but have little say in how things are actually done at companies.

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