The Secretary's Excellence in Acquisition

This year this prestigious honor of the Secretary's Excellence in Acquisition Award is presented to the Fissile Materials Disposition, Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU) Blend Down Project Team, for there outstanding contribution and performance in achieving exceptional results towards the completion of the Highly Enriched Uranium Blend Down Project ahead of schedule and more than $18 million under budget.

The Highly Enriched Uranium Blend Down Project, converts weapons-usable uranium into Low Enriched Uranium (LEU) for use in the production of electricity. This exceptional project is a stellar example of how various entities can work together to achieve goals that would otherwise be impossible working independently. The project was a collaborative effort among DOE-National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), DOE-Environmental Management (EM) and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA).

In April, 2001, DOE and the TVA signed an agreement to down-blend 33 metric tons of off spec surplus HEU for use as a fuel in TVA reactors, thus avoiding down-blending all of the off-spec HEU to LEU and disposing of it as waste, resulting in a saving of $550M.

To process HEU, a $99.6M capital construction project encompassing modifications to several areas of the SRS site was required, to ensure that they could purify, blend down and load the material for shipment to TVA. Diverse participants worked together to achieve an ambitious schedule requiring 80% of the work to be completed in nine months. The hard work of the project team is evident in there successful performance results. This success can be attributed to a disciplined approach to managing changes; experienced, knowledgeable people; and excellent teamwork among DOE-National Nuclear Security Administration, DOE-Environmental Management and WSRC personnel.

The Secretary's Achievement and Acquisition Improvement

The Secretary's Achievement and Acquisition Improvement award is awarded to an individual or team who has implemented ideas, methods, or processes that led to measurable improvements in acquisition management. This year that prestigious honor goes to the Nonproliferation and International Security Center (NISC) Project, at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL,) for their contribution to the successful planning, innovative, creative and effective project leadership, and teamwork demonstrated on the NISC Project, and for their outstanding safety performance and recognizable project management improvements.

This multistory facility will house technical and administrative offices, light laboratories, light manufacturing, special security, and support activities. The laboratories will be for physics, electronics, optics, instrumentation development, computing, intelligence, and other uses. Significant features include nuclear instrumentation development and training laboratories; a high-bay laboratory with adjacent machine shop; technical and administrative work spaces; and a greatly expanded Sensitive, Compartmented-Information Facility (SCIF).

The NISC provides the desired environment to develop and apply science and technology to deter, detect and respond to proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). Integration of worker safety throughout the project was of utmost importance, and an established safety record was a necessary Design/Build (D/B) contractor qualification. A conscious effort to keep safety plans current and to perform hazard identification assessments down to the subcontractor level was maintained throughout the project. Although DOE emphasized safety, the D/B contractor already instilled much of the projects safety culture. Their unique attention to safety was specifically molded to their business and the business partners that synergistically matched with the Departments resulting in the project being successfully completed with no (Zero) lost workday accidents in over 650 days of construction, approximately 367,496 hours of work, ahead of schedule and under budget.

The Secretary's Award of Achievement

The Secretary's Award of Achievement is awarded to an individual or team who has demonstrated "significant" results in completing a project within cost and schedule. This year the honor goes to the Building 371 Closure Project at Rocky Flats (RF), for their contribution to the successful planning, innovative, creative, and effective project leadership, and teamwork demonstrated on the project.

The Residue Elimination Project was formed in the middle of FY96 with a primary goal to stabilize and repackage 106,000 Kilograms of residues into a form that would meet Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) 94-1 and 94-3, and could be shipped to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) upon opening. From the onset of the project, personnel realized that new innovations and approaches were required in order to meet the schedule constraints of site closure and commitments made to the DNFSB within the available budget. Over twenty different configurations of waste packaging had to be used in order to meet both the Waste Isolation Pilot Project (WIPP) waste acceptance criteria and the Interim Safe Storage Criteria. Additionally the amount of drums produced from residue stabilization and packaging combined with TRU waste generated from Site Demolition and Decommissioning would severely strain the transportation system and possibly require new onsite waste storage. One of the innovations used was the Pipe Overpack Container (POC), which was used as part of the justification to terminate safeguards on residue wastes with higher attractiveness than previously allowed, thereby eliminating the processing alternatives to separate plutonium out of the residues, saving personnel exposure, processing time, and expensive equipment costs. Another was the Gas Generation Testing Canister (GGTC) which provided an accurate measurement of hydrogen gas generation and eliminated the need to repackage residue drums, therefore minimizing the amount of drums that were required to be shipped to WIPP, reduced worker risk and radiation exposure, cost and improved schedules. These and other innovations used during the project resulted in the successful completion of the project ahead of schedule and more than $11 million under budget.