Lab's Facilities Management building for future
The Institutional Facilities Management Office was formed to provide
non-parochial and strategic management of the Lab’s investments in
its facilities and infrastructure in support of all of the Laboratory’s
missions. Over the last four years, the Institutional Facilities Management
Office has made significant progress in understanding and correcting some
of the Lab’s more difficult facilities and infrastructure (F&I)
problems. The health of the Lab’s facilities has been noticeably
improved, and an effective partnership has been forged between customers
and service providers to provide cost-effective correction of the Lab’s
highest priority problems.
Managing F&I is getting a lot of attention in the public sector, and
especially in the Department of Energy. In March 2001, the Senate Committee
on Appropriations heard testimony in support of a National Nuclear Security
Administration/Defense Programs initiative to obtain new funding for F&I
management across the weapons complex — as much as $300 million next
year to begin addressing the growing maintenance needs of older facilities.
Director Bruce Tarter reported on the need for F&I recapitalization
at our Lab and the processes we have in place to ensure investments are
efficiently implemented.
When the IFM Office was formed, the Lab had in place some excellent systems
to identify facility maintenance requirements. These included the Laboratory’s
adaptation of the DOE Facilities Information Management System (FIMS)
and Condition Assessment Survey (CAS) Program. The Plant Engineering Organization
has worked with DOE to make FIMS and CAS a Labwide tool to identify, catalog
and assess real property maintenance. The IFM Office has facilitated an
effective prioritization process to focus all available funds on the Lab’s
highest mission priorities.
Prioritization of maintenance entails identification of all deficient
systems that would have an immediate impact on each organization’s
mission goals. The highest priority projects are addressed with funding
within a year. Important, but relatively less critical deficiencies are
ranked for attention within two and three years. This list of projects
is defined as the essential maintenance backlog, which is about 20 per
cent of the total backlog.
After re-engineering many aspects of operations in the mid-1990s, the
Lab began reinvesting $6 million of overhead cost savings in F&I in
1998 to begin reducing the backlog. Over the last two years, this level
of investment, now a permanent part of the Laboratory Facility Charge
(LFC), has grown to more than $8 million due to productivity improvements
that have resulted from earlier investments. Each year these funds are
directed to 150–200 highest priority projects that are co-managed
by the Plant Engineering and the IFM in cooperation with the organizational
customers.
As we have evolved the prioritization process, the total backlog has stabilized,
but the essential backlog has grown from $39 million in FY98 to $46 million
in FY01. This is due to an annual influx of $12-$15 million in new deficiencies
each year and a shortage of capital funding directed at projects over
$500,000.
Historically, Line Item and General Plant Projects have contributed at
least $10 million each year to fund large institutional or non-programmatic
capital improvement projects, such as large roof replacement, electrical
and other utility upgrades, new infrastructure facilities, etc. Recent
programmatic budget pressures have reduced the average capital investment
to less than $5 million per year. Since a major essential project, such
as replacing a $3 million roof in a single year, would effectively cripple
the Lab’s ability to correct many of its other highest priority projects,
the backlog growth cycle will continue unless additional funding can be
found.
To address the lack of adequate space for offices, the IFM has sponsored
"maintenance catch-up" projects to revitalize some of our older,
structurally sound buildings. Bldgs. 314 and 315, two 50-plus-year-old
barracks buildings containing 138 offices, were brought into good condition
for the Chief Financial Office by replacing worn out windows, air conditioners,
rugs, lighting, etc., and painting everything. Approximately 1,000 offices
have been revitalized through this process in the last four years.
Today, approximately 600,000 square feet of excess (primarily laboratory)
space has been returned to the institution. About half of this space is
in contaminated legacy facilities that should be decontaminated and demolished
(D&D). The two most visible legacies are Bldg. 251 and about 100,000
square feet of the former AVLIS facilities. Bldg. 251, an excess nuclear
facility now managed by Hazardous Waste Management (HWM), needs significant
cleanup funding to move out of the costly nuclear facility category. Similarly,
present DOE funding remaining after the close-out of the USEC/AVLIS Program
will address only about a third of ongoing ES&H surveillance and cleanup
tasks.
Four years ago, the IFM Office sponsored a pilot project to D&D several
contaminated support buildings in the former Bldg. 222 Chemistry and Material
Science (CMS) complex. The Space Action Team (SAT), developed to manage
contaminated and hazardous projects, demonstrated safe, cost-effective
cleanup and D&D of five reinforced concrete buildings. Approximately
1,100 tons of materials were removed for about $80 per square foot, including
all waste disposal costs. Recently SAT received the Environmental Protection
Agency’s Greening the Government Award for excellence in pollution
prevention and recycling in D&D projects.
We now invest about $1 million in D&D each year to deal with the worst
local ES&H problems. Since D&D costs for the low contamination
level legacies (Bldgs. 212, 222, 412, 43, and 865) will be more than $50
million, timely progress will require an influx of D&D funding.
Over the last several years, DOE, the GAO, several DoD organizations,
and many of our sister DOE organizations have identified the Lab’s
maintenance prioritization and execution, D&D, and facility revitalization
efforts as good examples of effective F&I management. If Congress
approves the new NNSA/DP F&I initiative, the Lab should be in a good
position to win new funding to correct or improve our F&I elements.
Being the Institutional Facilities Manager has been a challenging and
rewarding assignment. Looking back, the most important accomplishment
of the IFM Office was to build an effective, Labwide team to create trust
among customers, service providers and Lab management. This team now exists
and they are the ones who have made most of the IFM successes possible.
Dick O’Neil was the Laboratory’s Institutional Facilities Manager
from 1997 to the beginning of 2001.