Building organizational technical capabilities: a new approach to address the office of environmental management cleanup challenges in the 21. century

Conference · Sun Jul 01 04:00:00 EDT 2007

OSTI ID:21294639

Fiore, J J; Rizkalla, E I ^[1]

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1. Office of Environmental Management, The United States Dept. of Energy, Washington, D.C. (United States)

The United States Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Environmental Management (EM) is responsible for the nations nuclear weapons program legacy wastes cleanup. The EM cleanup efforts continue to progress, however the cleanup continues to be technologically complex, heavily regulated, long-term, and a high life cycle cost estimate (LCCE) effort. Over the past few years, the EM program has undergone several changes to accelerate its cleanup efforts with varying degrees of success. Several cleanup projects continued to experience schedule delays and cost growth. The schedule delays and cost growth have been attributed to several factors such as changes in technical scope, regulatory and safety considerations, inadequacy of acquisition approach and project management. This article will briefly review the background and schools of thought on strategic management and organizational change practiced in the United States over the last few decades to improve an organisation's competitive edge and cost performance. The article will briefly review examples such as the change at General Electric, and the recent experience obtained from the nuclear industry, namely the long-term response to the 1986 Chernobyl accident. The long-term response to Chernobyl, though not a case of organizational change, could provide some insight in the strategic management approaches used to address people issues. The article will discuss briefly EM attempts to accelerate cleanup over the past few years, and the subsequent paradigm shift. The paradigm shift targets enhancing and/or creating organizational capabilities to achieve cost savings. To improve its ability to address the 21. century environmental cleanup challenges and achieve cost savings, EM has initiated new corporate changes to develop new and enhance existing capabilities. These new and enhanced organizational capabilities include a renewed emphasis on basics, especially technical capabilities including safety, project management, acquisition management and people. The new enhanced organizational capabilities coupled with more effective communications; oversight and decision-making processes are expected to help EM meet the 21. century challenges. This article will focus on some of the initiatives to develop and enhance organizational technical capabilities. Some of these development initiatives are a part of DOE corporate actions to respond to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) recommendations 93-3 and 2004-1. Other development initiatives have been tailored to meet EM specific needs for organizational capabilities such as case studies analysis and cost estimating. (authors)

• Research Organization: WM Symposia, 1628 E. Southern Avenue, Suite 9 - 332, Tempe, AZ 85282 (United States)
• OSTI ID: 21294639
• Report Number(s): INIS-US--09-WM-07073
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE WASTES FROM NUCLEAR FACILITIES
DECISION MAKING
LIFE-CYCLE COST
NUCLEAR WEAPONS
PROGRAM MANAGEMENT
RADIOACTIVE WASTE MANAGEMENT
RADIOACTIVE WASTES
RECOMMENDATIONS
SAFETY
US DOE