Recovery.gov - Track the Money

EM has demonstrated success in transuranic (TRU) and solid waste disposition, soil and groundwater remediation, and facility decontamination and decommissioning.

EM will effectively spend the $6 billion in Recovery Act funding because these cleanup activities are associated with:

•Proven technologies—on-the-shelf plans and projects ready to be implemented
•Regulatory infrastructure in place—established regulatory framework with regulator and community support
•Acquisition structure in place—flexible contract vehicles allow quick expansion of environmental cleanup workforces
•Project Management structure in place—ability to track and measure performance

EM has identified opportunities at 11 sites in 8 states that meet ARRA principles.

The Hanford Site will use funds to demolish nuclear and support facilities, remediate waste sites, remediate contaminated groundwater, and retrieve solid waste from burial grounds. Accelerated cleanup of facilities, waste sites, and groundwater along the Columbia will take place to support shrinking the active area of cleanup at the 586-square-mile Hanford Site to 75 square miles or less by 2015, more than five years ahead of the current schedule.

The Office of River Protection will use funds to accelerate the design and construction of the infrastructure and systems to transfer radioactive liquid waste from aging underground tanks to a waste treatment facility for immobilization and disposal beginning in 2019.

Savannah River Site (SRS) funds will accelerate decommissioning of nuclear facilities and contaminated areas throughout the site. Recovery Act work also includes shipping more than 4,500 cubic meters of waste out of South Carolina and will reduce the site’s industrial area by 40 percent, or 79,000 acres, by September 2011. The funds will accelerate TRU waste packaged for disposal at the WIPP by five years from 2016.

Idaho National Laboratory (INL) funds will be used to accelerate demolition of 88 excess nuclear and radiological facilities resulting in a footprint reduction of more than 800,000 square feet. Targeted waste will be retrieved per the 1995 Settlement Agreement with the State of Idaho and shipment of waste off-site for disposal will be accelerated by three to four years.

Oak Ridge funds will be provided to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and Y 12 sites to accelerate demolition of high risk surplus contaminated facilities and remediate the most significant source of mercury contamination to surface water, demolish surplus contaminated facilities and perform soil remediation, and accelerate TRU waste treatment to complete the treatment and disposition of the waste. The facilities demolished under the Recovery Act were scheduled for demolition two to fifteen years later.

At Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), 35 buildings and structures across the complex will be demolished, reducing the LANL footprint by more than 150,000 square feet.

ARRA funding to the Carlsbad Field Office will accelerate legacy TRU waste characterization and shipment preparation as well as increase TRU shipments to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) repository from one large quantity site (SRS) and several small quantity sites including, Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory; General Electric Vallecitos Nuclear Center, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory,Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; Argonne National Laboratory; Nevada Test Site; and Sandia National Laboratories.

At the Nevada Test Site, soil will be analyzed to identify its composite waste characteristics and groundwater monitoring wells will be installed to provide additional data on groundwater contamination to support future cleanup work.

At the Separations Process Research Unit, cleanup activities include removing contaminated soil for offsite disposal, performing sampling to confirm cleanup results, and regrading and reseeding the area.

At the Mound Site, funds will be used for remediation of Operable Unit.

DOE and EM will monitor and evaluate the performance of the program in two major areas: corporate control at the Department level and EM Processes at the EM level.

I. Corporate controls

The DOE Recovery Office is the central point for implementation and execution of Recovery Act activities. A recovery operations team will oversee implementation management, such as monitoring project status, evaluating cost and schedule progress, ensuring thorough reporting, coordinating with external entities, and holding monthly performance and review meetings with senior departmental managers on the implementation status of specific recovery projects.

In addition to DOE’s standard funds control mechanisms, Recovery Act funds are subject to additional process controls to ensure funds are not co-mingled, are tracked to enable reporting, and are spent responsibly. DOE recovery funds are released for implementation in a staged approach.

DOE’s OIR helps programs ensure that internal controls are in place, effective, and support the risk-based approach to managing Recovery Act activities. OIR programs are being implemented or expanded to ensure the Recovery Act objectives are met and DOE managers and partners are both held accountable for successful execution and also have the appropriate tools to ensure that success. These programs include coordinating DOE’s “Internal Control Acknowledgment” program, conducting agency-wide assessments and analyses and performing oversight of Recovery Act programs, including site and field visits.

II. EM Processes
EM has chartered an integrated project team (IPT), the EM Recovery Act Team, to ensure proper planning and execution of Recovery Act funds. The IPT is led by the program manager and has ultimate responsibility and accountability for delivering the project successfully. The program manager is a member of the federal Senior Executive Service and possesses the executive core competencies required to lead the project through this period of government transformation. The program manager is supported by Federal Project Directors (FPD) who have satisfied the certification requirements prescribed in the Department’s Project Management Career Development Program (PMCDP), and have been certified. The FPDs are senior federal managers and are seasoned project directors certified by the PMCDP Certification Review Board.

EM has assigned Recovery Act Site Representatives to support the field offices. These individuals will streamline communications and decision-making between HQ and the field sites, while facilitating the integration, rapid sharing of lessons learned, and compliance with Recovery Act requirements.

As a prerequisite to receiving Recovery Act funds, the site offices have been required to submit to HQ checklist items that ensure each site is in a state of readiness and has implemented measures that prevent waste, fraud, and abuse. The checklist items verify that each site office has the necessary systems and processes in place for safety, oversight, contracting, change control, reporting, risk management, and regulator and stakeholder involvement.

The vast majority of the work will be executed through the expansion of existing contracts. This approach greatly reduces the risk associated with project performance. Appropriate funding modifications will be enacted to implement and segregate the Recovery Act funds for reporting purposes. All projects will be executed by the contractors according to DOE Order 413.3A, Program and Project Management, with appropriate performance measurement baselines and DOE oversight. Acceptable performance on these projects will also be measured using performance metrics (e.g., cost, schedule, and scope) as established in baselines; cost and schedule performance indicators (cost performance index and schedule performance index) according to DOE-approved Earned Value Management Systems will be used as required by DOE Order 413.3A.

DOE leverages its existing corporate systems to track and report on Recovery Act activities and to ensure effective funds management. The DOE’s iManage Data Warehouse (IDW) is a corporate enterprise system integrating financial, budgetary, procurement, and program information to monitor project execution. Each Recovery Act program is tracked using unique Treasury Appropriation Fund Symbols (TAFS); each component project is identified by a unique Project Identification Code (PIC).

IDW is a central data warehouse linking common data elements from each of the Department’s corporate business systems and serving as a “knowledge bank” of information about portfolios, programs or projects including budget execution, accumulated costs, performance achieved, and critical milestones met. The IDW contains information from multiple corporate systems and will be a tool used to meet information needs for Recovery Act oversight and reporting to Recovery.gov.

The Performance Measure Manager (PMM) is the Department’s performance tracking system. PMM tracks high-level budgetary performance and is being expanded to accommodate Recovery Act performance tracking needs. Performance evaluations will be organized and reported along with results from the Department’s annual budgetary activities in the Annual Performance Report (APR). Performance results will be uploaded into the IDW for required agency reporting.

DOE’s Agency Wide Recovery Plan for additional information on DOE’s financial and performance tracking mechanisms. The plan can be found here: www.energy.gov/recovery.

At the EM Sites, appropriate funding modifications will be enacted to implement the Approved Funding Programs and segregate the Recovery Act funds for reporting purposes. Separate budget and accounting codes have been established for Recovery Act work in order to manage, implement, measure and account for these funds. To ensure adequate controls only 80 percent of Recovery Act funds are being allotted to the sites for obligation against contracts. The remaining 20 percent is being held at Headquarters and will be released after the projects are demonstrating adequate performance. Additionally, only 24 percent (i.e., 30 percent of the 80 percent) of Recovery Act funds can incur costs until all contractor baseline plans have been submitted, reviewed, and approved.

At the sites, EM manages all of its activities using strict project management principles. Federal Project Directors responsible for managing the Recovery Act projects are required to be trained and certified for the magnitude and total cost of each project.

• Certification Level 4: Total Project Cost (TPC) exceeding $400 million (M)
• Certification Level 3: TPC greater than $100M and equal to or less than $400M
• Certification Level 2: TPC greater than $20M and equal to or less than $100M
• Certification Level 1: TPC greater than $5M and equal to or less than $20M

If a Federal Project Director is managing a portfolio of projects, the required Federal Project Director certification level is determined by the project with the highest TPC dollar value. EM may assign lower or higher required project management certification levels than may be indicated by the TPC alone to cleanup projects of various complexity, risk, and visibility per coordination with the Certification Review Board (CRB). Likewise, when new hires or reassigned incumbents assume Federal Project Director positions, their certification level may be higher or lower than that indicated by the TPC dependent on a project’s degrees of complexity, risk, or visibility.

Annual performance goals for all federal managers executing Recovery Act work will be developed. The managers’ success in meeting these goals will be assessed as part of their annual performance reviews.

Not applicable to the EM Defense Program.