DOE Considering Complex-Wide Infrastructure Committee

The Department of Energy is considering establishing a committee to help prioritize infrastructure needs across the DOE complex, a senior Office of Science official told a panel examining the effectiveness of the Department’s national laboratories yesterday. Joseph McBrearty, the Office of Science’s Deputy Director for Field Operations, stressed that the idea was still in draft form, but he said officials were hopeful it would help the Department broadly prioritize where it wants to invest limited funding for infrastructure improvements. “The design is really to look forward from an infrastructure strategic approach at how we are assessing the projects, how we’re prioritized,” McBrearty said. “Are they going to be the projects we’re really going to want to invest in going forward?”

McBrearty said the committee would likely include the chief operating officers of each of DOE’s main programmatic elements, like the National Nuclear Security Administration, Office of Environmental Management and Office of Science. The committee would not make decisions, but would help make recommendations for the Secretary of Energy and other top DOE officials. “It’s a great step to codify a corporate approach to this very vital subject,” McBrearty said. “We all have infrastructure problems. They’re a little different, the funding problems are a little different, but we have the ability to really make progress.”