Assessments and Integration
The NASA Safety Center (NSC) manages the agency’s Safety and Mission Assurance (SMA) assessments, audits and investigations. The NSC provides collaborative, risk-based SMA assessments and investigations that promote mission success. It supports all SMA disciplines and addresses programs, projects and other agency needs and requests to help customers identify, assess and mitigate issues, concerns and risks.
SMA Assessments
The NSC provides a risk-based and objective-driven model of selecting and performing SMA assessments and audits. The assessment process focuses on a philosophy of being helpful and providing value to NASA centers, programs, projects, and the Office of Safety and Mission Assurance (OSMA) to promote mission success.
SMA assessments have a focused scope and are strategically targeted. They are based on potential risk areas, areas of concern, major program/project operations, milestones, program life cycle and customer requests. A small assessment team conducts the SMA assessments to minimize stakeholders’ time commitment.
Institutional Safety Program Audits
Institutional Safety Program Audits (ISPAs) provide a baseline for understanding the performance of a NASA center’s safety program. An ISPA is a fair and independent evaluation of the effectiveness, efficiency and implementation of the center’s safety program and adherence to agency and Occupational Safety and Health Administration safety requirements.
The ISPA aligns with centers’ annual self-evaluation, accounts for individual center risks and focuses on identifying program areas with high-risk concerns. The ISPA also accounts for centers’ Voluntary Protection Programs (VPP) status.
Hazard Reporting
he NSC provides oversight for the NASA Safety Reporting System (NSRS), which supplements local hazard reporting channels to provide an anonymous, voluntary and responsive reporting channel to notify NASA’s upper management of a person’s concerns about hazards.
Policy Management
The NSC oversees SMA policy management by providing the OSMA expertise for SMA documentation and policy integration.