CPUC convenes Utility Safety Culture Working Group; asks feedback on third-party assessor by July 15

The California Public Utilities Commission(CPUC) Safety Policy Division on the working group kickoff said the panel created by Decision 25-01-031 must be established by 07/15/2025 and that the groupwill help implement the commissionsafety-culture assessment framework for large investor-owned electric and gas utilities.

Carolina Contreras, senior engineer in the CPUC Safety Policy Division, opened the meeting and summarized the commission order and the groups purpose, saying the group "must be established by 07/15/2025, which is a hundred and 80 days after the issuance of the decision, which is the reason why we are all here today to kick off the working group formally." The session set expectations for a collaborative, education-focused forum intended to build a common understanding of safety culture and to improve the assessment process.

The kickoff included a 30-minute presentation by Mark Fleming, a faculty member at Saint Marys University and a long-time safety-culture researcher, who described safety culture as a construct that explains why organizations with written safety systems can still experience catastrophic failures. "So what is safety culture? So it's an abstract concept that was created to describe collective failure to implement known controls to…