DOE to Soon Roll Out New Project Mgmt. Approach, Energy Sec. Says

A new approach to how the Department of Energy manages its projects is set to be rolled out in the coming weeks, Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz said yesterday, though he gave few concrete details about what changes will be made. The Department has been looking at “redoing our fundamental project management structures," Moniz said at a meeting held by the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, describing the “philosophy” behind the planned changes as, “Here are the core principles that must be observed, whether it’s the Office of Science or Defense Programs, or EM. There will be some variations specifically in how that is implemented, but the core principles must be respected. And we will strengthen the way in which essentially the Office of the Secretary engages with that.”

Moniz indicated the Department would look to use ideas developed by the the Office of Science to aid in managing projects in the NNSA and the Office of Environmental Management. “It’s not to say that execution is identical because it can’t be—an EM project and the UPF and a coherent X-ray laser project are different,” he said. “We’re trying to get a lot more enterprise-wide experience, learn from best practices, understand what are the core principles that make that approach effective, have those principles become enterprise-wide and then have the implementation at each of the under secretary levels follow their needs and the kind of work that they do.”