ACPC describes each site's end state and critical closure path for reaching the end state. The critical closure path identifies the key technical and programmatic activities that must occur before a site is considered closed. ACPC also contains potential roadblocks on the critical closure paths, including technological uncertainties. ACPC has thus become the basis for EM decisions regarding the correct science and technology investments.

In its Environmental Management Research and Development Program Plan, EM lays out its strategy for addressing site cleanup and waste management technology needs identified in ACPC. The role of the Office of Science and Technology is to address the full range of science and technology needs that underlie the successful completion of each site's planned end state for closure. Site-specific cleanup activities in ACPC are linked to over 500 technology needs, 86 events on sites' critical paths to closure having medium to high risk of delaying closure, and more than 200 waste streams with medium to high technology risk. (Technology risk is the likelihood that technologies will not be available to keep a cleanup project on schedule and within budget.) OST has already found technical solutions to address 160 of the 500 environmental problems identified in ACPC and is working on late-stage technologies that will meet an additional 250 needs.

Because EM has set in place a process that links science and technology investments with needs identified by cleanup managers, OST can be assured that it's working on the “right” problems—providing the scientific foundation, new approaches, and new technologies to help sites bring about significant reductions in risk, cost, and schedule for completion of the EM mission. And because cleanup managers have become an integral part of the science and technology development process, they are committed to using the technological solutions they've come to endorse.

Using systems engineering to find opportunities
Since July 1996, Greg Frandsen at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory, project manager for EM's complexwide integration effort, and his 11-member Project Management Team have been champions of EM integration. Their original role was using systems engineering to identify for EM decision makers a set of technically defensible integration opportunities that had significant cost and schedule savings associated with them. This role was fulfilled in May 1997 when the team issued A Contractor Report to DOE on Environmental Management Baseline Programs and Integration Opportunities—a report that catalogs opportunities for saving costs and schedule in six problem areas: transuranic waste, mixed low-level waste, low-level waste, environmental restoration, high-level waste, and spent nuclear fuel. (This report can be accessed online. Click the third bullet.)

Most significantly, the report identified over $24 billion in potential savings for the EM program and in several cases found opportunities to reduce project timelines by up to 30 years. Of the $24 billion potential savings identified, more than $3 billion in savings have since been incorporated into site baselines and are reflected in the most current version of ACPC. Frandsen is proud of this early return on investment and the savings it represents to taxpayers. As Frandsen explains it, though, the really good news is the potential for even greater savings that remains to be harnessed and incorporated into site baselines in the future.

Pushing integration
EM is serious about integration as its new way of doing business. Steve Schneider, who is heading up the EM integration effort for DOE, describes the new approach as a culture change that is supported and promoted by upper management and being embraced by the complex as a whole. “We want to save money and be more efficient and eventually help accelerate the closure of our sites. We're real excited about it, and we have support from the upper managers, and they're excited about it as well.”

In the summer and early fall of 1998, Jim Owendoff, acting assistant secretary for EM, field office managers at the five major field offices (Oak Ridge, Savannah River, Rocky Flats, Idaho, and Richland), and several deputy assistant managers conducted a series of round robin meetings to focus the sites on opportunities for working closely together to capture the cost savings inherent in integration. In addition, site personnel across the complex are in the process of being briefed via a 1.5-hour interactive video.

The latest evidence of EM's commitment to integration is its establishment of an organizational structure and a process for identifying, evaluating, and implementing appropriate integration opportunities. Frandsen says the process is not free-form. “This is not just your typical get-together and think of a bunch of new ideas. The thing that's novel is using rigorous systems engineering to identify programmatic requirements and from those requirements developing a suite of alternatives. From the suite of alternatives, certain opportunities are selected for implementation. We're not just thinking of new ideas, but we're using this rigorous and systematic systems engineering process so the recommendations we come up with are technically defensible.”

At the top of the new organizational structure is an Integration Executive Committee, composed of Jim Owendoff and the field office managers from the five major DOE sites. Next is an Integration Core Team, composed of EM's five deputy assistant secretaries (headquarters perspective), assistant managers for environmental management from the five major DOE field offices (site perspective), and five contractors from the Project Management Team (PMT) who represent the major DOE sites (contractor perspective). Frandsen is enthusiastic about this combination of headquarters, site, and contractor perspectives and views the team as “pulling in the same direction. . . . The team spirit seems to be there with the common goal of doing what's right corporately. It's a good feeling and I'm predicting pretty high success.”

The third level of organization is 12 Program Area Integration Teams, or PAITs, representing the following problem areas:

• high-level waste
• transuranic transportation and disposal
• transuranic storage and treatment
• mixed low-level and low-level waste
• environmental restoration
• deactivation
• decontamination and decommissioning
• reindustrialization
• spent nuclear fuel
• plutonium and other nuclear materials
• transportation
• science and technology

PAITs—also composed of headquarters, site, and contractor representatives—will evaluate opportunities that were originally identified by the PMT as well as identify new opportunities. As Frandsen describes PAITs, “they're now the opportunities generation factory.” PAITs will float their opportunities up to the Integration Core Team being led by Steve Schneider, which will perform a quality assurance function.

Schneider says the Integration Core Team's review ensures that “what is proposed is feasible from an economic, technical, and environmental standpoint.” The Integration Core Team provides feedback to the PAITs and passes on deserving recommendations to the Integration Executive Committee, which ultimately has the authority to change the planning bases at respective sites to incorporate new opportunities.

Schneider says that PAITs are using systems engineering to examine approximately 40 potential integration opportunities, some of which are legacy recommendations from the contractors' PMT and the rest have been newly identified. Schneider gives examples of two areas where integration may save money through added efficiency: transuranic waste and transportation. Because tansuranic waste is currently being stored in small quantities at various sites around the country, there may be efficiencies in consolidating transuranic storage at one site. Waste transportation is another area where potential efficiencies may be realized by replacing sites' different protocols for transportation with a single consistent protocol for moving waste.

Getting down to business
EM integration recently took two steps forward. During meetings held in November 1998, the Integration Executive Committee (IEC) was authorized to implement the EM R&D Program Plan and launch project-level science and technology roadmapping. Implementation of the EM R&D Program Plan will begin with site workshops through which the five major DOE field offices will prepare to participate in identifying cleanup project managers' needs for science and technology. The workshops will also help cleanup project managers learn how to partner with focus areas in developing work packages to support cleanup projects.

The IEC was also recently recognized as the authority for launching project-level roadmapping, which EM will use to identify critical needs for investments in science and technology and the timeline for meeting those needs. The roadmaps will include a set of logical, time-sequenced steps showing project activities and decision points along with the complete set of science and technology activities needed to address technology gaps and reduce the cost, schedule, and technical risk associated with cleanup. Only the most critical and high-impact projects will be selected for roadmapping.

Winning kudos
The EM integration movement has won national recognition. In December 1998, as part of Vice President Gore's Reinventing Government Initiative, the EM integration project was one of six recipients of a Government Technology Leadership Award. And in April 1998, the American Academy of Environmental Engineers conferred its highest honor—the Superior Achievement for Excellence in Environmental Engineering Award—to recognize EM's program integration and the role it's playing in strengthening DOE's cleanup mission. DOE is the first government agency to receive the Academy's highest honor.

For more information on EM integration, visit the EM Web site. Click on “Program Integration.”

OST plays on EM team
In the EM integration game, OST is the designated hitter when it comes to investing in a full range of science and technology to meet the cleanup needs of DOE site program managers. From basic science research to technology development and deployment, OST's investment portfolio reflects EM's six major problem areas, which correspond to the focus areas in parentheses:

• mixed, low-level, and transuranic waste (Mixed Waste Focus Area)
• high-level waste (Tanks Focus Area)
• environmental restoration (Subsurface Contaminants Focus Area)
• deactivation and decommissioning (Deactivation and Decommissioning Focus Area)
• nuclear materials (Nuclear Materials Focus Area)
• spent nuclear fuel (Spent Nuclear Fuel Focus Area)

OST selects its investments in science and technology to meet high-priority site cleanup needs, reduce the cost of cleanup, reduce the risk of not completing critical projects on time or within budget due to technology deficiencies, and accelerate technology deployments.

Steps to wise investments
Through the focus areas, OST follows four steps in developing and executing its science and technology program. Through these four steps, OST provides responsive, technically defensible solutions for cleanup at DOE sites.

1. Identify cleanup needs through data collection and analysis. Focus areas use cleanup project managers' need statements, project baseline summaries, disposition maps, critical path analyses, and similar documents associated with Accelerating Cleanup: Paths to Closure to identify specific technology needs. The focus areas also work directly with end users and site technology coordination groups—which include senior site managers, site contractors, and national laboratory personnel—to help identify the science and technology needs of sites.
2. Develop technical responses. Acting as the liaison between the cleanup project managers and science and technology researchers, focus areas identify the best matches between cleanup needs and potential solutions. These links are compiled into work packages, which link the technical approaches in project baseline summaries to the technical needs in disposition maps and critical path analyses.
3. Prioritize the program. Each focus area prioritizes its set of work packages to formulate a budget request. While setting priorities, focus areas consider site needs, project urgency, future technology deployments, closure project risk, and potential cost savings. A user steering committee for each focus area also comments on, helps modify, and ultimately approves the focus area's prioritization. Focus area rankings of projects are compiled into the OST budget submission.
4. Execute the program and implement solutions. Focus areas manage the approved OST investment portfolio, coordinating research and development efforts by universities, national laboratories, industry, and site contractors, while keeping abreast of investments made by other federal or state R&D programs.

EM has published two documents from which OST receives its mandate to manage a balanced portfolio of science and technology investments: Environmental Management Strategic Plan for Science and Technology and Environmental Management Research and Development Program Plan: Solution-Based Investments in Science and Technology. Both are available on the web. Work is in progress on a related document that will describe the research and development portfolio for DOE's environmental quality business line, which includes the Environmental Management program.