Hourglass Sampling of Participants in the Human Reliability Program (HRP) for Drug and Alcohol (D&A) Testing

The Human Reliability Program (HRP) is a personnel security program instituted by the Department of Energy for ensuring the reliability and trustworthiness of employees having access to Category I quantities of Special Nuclear Material. To maintain certification, each HRP employees must, within a twelve month period, undergo a psychological evaluation, complete the necessary security clearance forms, and submit to an unscheduled and unannounced Drug and Alcohol (D&A) test. To better comply with the criteria of 10 CFR 712, Human Reliability Program, a new sampling scheme has been developed at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) for selecting certified HRP employees for D&A testing. This scheme, called hourglass sampling, is an elementary but effective method that incorporates the desirable features of traditional finite sampling techniques. Per 10 CFR 712, the selection of HRP enrollees for D&A testing must be unpredictable and nondiscriminatory, which is interpreted to mean that systematic selection patterns are to be avoided and that all HRP participants are to have an equal likelihood of being selected. In addition to being unpredictable and nondiscriminatory, the selection methods should be efficient in that all employees are to be randomly selected for D&A testing at least once every twelve months and that excessive reselections of the same individuals are minimized. Those employees who have not been randomly picked close to the end of their annual renewal date are subject to directed tests, meaning that they are deliberately chosen for D&A testing.