DOE Considering Complex-Wide Infrastructure Committee

By Mike Nartker

Todd Jacobson
WC Monitor
2/27/2015

The Department of Energy is considering establishing a committee to help prioritize infrastructure needs across the DOE complex, a senior Office of Science official told a panel examining the effectiveness of the Department’s national laboratories this week. Joseph McBrearty, the Office of Science’s Deputy Director for Field Operations, stressed that the idea was still in draft form, but he said officials were hopeful it would help the Department broadly prioritize where it wants to invest limited funding for infrastructure improvements. “The design is really to look forward from an infrastructure strategic approach at how we are assessing the projects, how we’re prioritized,” McBrearty said Feb. 24 at a meeting of the Congressionally mandated Committee to Review the Effectiveness of the National Energy Laboratories. “Are they going to be the projects we’re really going to want to invest in going forward?”

McBrearty said the committee would likely include the chief operating officers of each of DOE’s main programmatic elements, like the National Nuclear Security Administration, Office of Environmental Management and Office of Science. The committee would not make decisions, but would help make recommendations for the Secretary of Energy and other top DOE officials. “It’s a great step to codify a corporate approach to this very vital subject,” McBrearty said. “We all have infrastructure problems. They’re a little different, the funding problems are a little different, but we have the ability to really make progress.”

Broader Prioritization of Infrastructure Needs Underway

The committee would be part of a new strategy implemented in the fall on prioritizing infrastructure needs across the DOE complex that included an increased emphasis on programmatic input as well, McBrearty said. “That process was designed to give the Department a chance to show from a budget formulation standpoint where the need was,” he said. “So if the need was in utilities at a certain laboratory we would make that investment there. We would give senior leadership the idea and the data to make that decision.” He added: “Before we engaged in this type of process our rigor in determining prioritization for general infrastructure wasn’t as good as it should be.”

Aging infrastructure and deferred maintenance have been an ongoing concern for EM sites. Following the events at WIPP last year, EM asked contractors across the complex to complete extent-of-condition reviews outlining maintenance concerns across the complex. While none of the assessments found immediate safety concerns, several contractors, such as at the Portsmouth D&D project and the Savannah River Site, noted the need for additional resources to help address maintenance backlogs that could pose safety or operational risks in the future. Savannah River, for example is facing a deferred maintenance and infrastructure backlog of “close to a billion dollars,” Savannah River Nuclear Solutions President Carol Johnson said last October.

‘The Serpent Lurking Between the Seas’

McBrearty emphasized that the backlog needs to be addressed. “We look at this as the serpent lurking beneath the seas,” he said. “We know we’re running these systems beyond design life or to design life in many cases and waiting for these to fail is not really the best way to do business. … So the labs and programs are doing a risk analysis.”

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Nuclear Security & Deterrence Vol. 19 No. 9
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Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor

Article 17 of 21

February 27, 2015

DOE Considering Complex-Wide Infrastructure Committee

By Todd Jacobson

Todd Jacobson
NS&D Monitor
2/27/2015

Broader Prioritization of Infrastructure Needs Underway

Across the NNSA, there are about 3,800 facilities, and about 50 percent of those facilities by square footage are more than 40 years old, said Robert Haldeman, the NNSA’s Director of Infrastructure Operations and Modernization. Nearly 30 percent date to the Manhattan Project, and about 12 percent (or about 450 total) are considered excess, Haldeman said. The aging facilities have begun to cause problems, Haldeman said. At Y-12, concrete ceilings fell in a pair of buildings over the last year, and multiple fire suppression system leaks at Pantex forced the closure of one cell and one bay. A major fire suppression leak at the Nevada National Security Site shut down operations at the Device Assembly Facility for 10 days.

Haldeman said the NNSA is also implementing a strategy to prioritize its infrastructure needs in a budget-constrained environment. “We are trying to prioritize and tackle each one-by-one,” he said. “Make sure we’re program informed and tackle those issues.” He said the infrastructure needs don’t represent an “impending crisis”—yet. “I think we’re taking the right steps to not just invest in infrastructure but do the right infrastructure,” he said. “We’ve shifted a lot of the focus in our ‘16 budget request to move funding from operations into recapitalization and construction to really tackle those issues to start addressing that now before it does become a crisis.”

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