CPUC staff says SoCalGas safety-culture revision shows progress but urges broader metrics, public-safety focus

Carolina, Safety Policy Division staff at the California Public Utilities Commission, told participants the workshop was focused on the Safety Policy Division’s evaluation of SoCalGas’s revised safety-culture improvement plan and the staff report that accompanies it. Commissioner Hauck opened by saying the proceeding “is 1 of 3 proceedings before the Commission that were open due to significant safety incidents involving SoCalGas.”

The workshop reviewed the Phase 1 safety-culture assessment (the 2EC report), the CPUC decision that directed SoCalGas to revise its plan (Decision D23-12034), and SoCalGas’s revised plan filed after extensive organizational dialogues. Dr. Mark Fleming, a subject-matter expert who worked with the assessment team, emphasized that the assessment sought to identify “overarching themes” beneath visible practices — the underlying assumptions that drive culture — and said improvement work must target those deeper drivers. “We need to specify those indicators before we go to the next level,” Fleming told the workshop, describing why pre‑defined cultural indicators are essential to judge whether initiatives move the organization in the intended direction.

Safety Policy Division (SPD) staff said their evaluation found meaningful changes in SoCalGas’s revised plan compared with an earlier submission the Commission had rejected. SPD’s high‑level finding: the revised plan reflects a shift from a defensive tone to a more self-critical one and shows clearer links between assessment findings, dialogue outputs and proposed initiatives. Carolina summarized SPD’s view that…