Safety Culture Assurance and Improvement Methods in Complex Projects – Final Report from the NKS-R SC_AIM

A good safety culture is an essential ingredient for ensuring nuclear safety. The predominant approaches for safety culture improvement are based on the assumption of stable and relatively homogeneous organizations, which often does not apply to contemporary project-oriented and turbulent environments. This research activity aims to provide guidance for methodical safety culture change in complex nuclear industry projects, and how to utilize existing safety culture tools or create new ones to support this effort. A set of twelve principles of safety culture change were developed that summarize the essential good practices of leading safety culture change. The principles are based on up-to-date practical experience and theories in the fields of systems thinking, organizational management and safety science. The principles are related to the generic characteristics of safety-critical project environments to illustrate their relevance in the context of complex projects. We propose that these principles are instrumental in leading safety culture activities in an informed manner, and to avoid mechanistic or superficial methods. Guidelines for the implementation of safety culture ambassadors were developed on the basis of the empirical work carried out in the Nordic nuclear power industry. Safety culture ambassadors group is novel method for safety culture improvement which aims to support the development of good safety culture by involving safety-conscious individuals from different parts of the company in safety culture activities. The guidelines can be utilized as a reference for practitioners in the nuclear power industry aiming to implement the method.