$8B Shortfall in Cleanup Funding Estimated

Though there was general recognition from the company execs that the Office of Environmental Management has made great strides in the past year, EM’s Deputy Assistant Secretary for Program Planning and Budget Mark Frei reported in his opening address that the cleanup program faces a potential $8 billion shortfall through 2012 as budgets level off and funding needs increase. "That’s not something you can make up with efficiencies," Frei said. "The implications to our cleanup progress and regulatory commitments and stakeholder commitments are pretty obvious. We’re going to be $8 billion short."

For his part, D’Agostino for the first time outlined NNSA’s plans for reshaping the nuclear weapons complex, proposing a middle ground would maintain all eight existing sites, but significantly reduce excess facilities and personnel. In advance of the release of the preferred alternative for the NNSA’s effort to shape the future complex next month, D’Agostino called for the weapons complex to "eliminate redundancies and dramatically improve efficiencies" by consolidating the mission at the agency’s eight sites. "Now is the time to take a look before we make significant capital investments in the weapons complex on what the right focus is and how do we shape our nuclear weapons complex, because at this point right now we have materials spread out among the complex, we are spending significant amounts on security costs across a number of sites that we don’t think is appropriate," D’Agostino said. "So now is the time to take a look at this focus."

Key Company Execs, Cleanup Chief Exchange Views

The Forum was highlighted by an evening roundtable featuring Rispoli and his senior staff and several key industry executives. While the executives praised DOE for recent improvements to the procurement process, they called for more to be done, especially when it comes to speeding up the process. "What I think a lot of us are worried about is the speed of the procurements, from the original day of ‘Hey, we’re going to go do something’ to the day that someone hits the beach and hits the work.," Bechtel Executive Vice President Craig Weaver said. In addition, delays can lead to increased expenses for contractors, Weaver said, adding, "It’s not just dollars or what it costs to bid. It’s the opportunity cost of taking that ‘A’ team that you wouldn’t be venturing into a procurement unless you thought you had and keeping them focused on the procurement and not being able to go out and do other things."