The Department of Energy’s Richland Operations Office (RL) plans to start moving its employees out of the Federal Building in Richland, Wash., to privately owned buildings this summer. The move would put workers in the Richland Stevens Center complex, which is about 3 miles to the north and home to the Hanford Site’s other DOE office, the Office of River Protection (ORP). RL has been at the Federal Building since it was built for Hanford and other federal use 50 years ago. “The co-location of RL and ORP does not mean the two offices are being recombined,” said Doug Shoop, RL deputy manager, in a message to employees after announcing the move at an all-employee meeting Tuesday. Federal legislation that split off the Hanford tank farms and the Waste Treatment Plant as the focus of a separate DOE Hanford cleanup office – ORP — expires in 2019, but the expiration has been extended before.
Both Hanford DOE offices agree that having employees in the same area will improve communications, coordination, and collaboration and allow for better sharing of resources, Shoop said. The move should also create operational efficiencies, he said. Leadership for the two offices will be in one area and RL will be near some of its contractor offices, according to DOE. Some employees for each DOE office have similar expertise, such as in nuclear safety, and they will be able to share expertise across the two offices, according to DOE. As cleanup along the Columbia River nears completion, co-location of the two offices will better support work as both offices are focused on projects in central Hanford, Shoop said.
The two offices share a chief financial officer and some legal, security, and infrastructure employees. However, their budgets are kept separate. Washington state’s congressional delegation has argued that they are two distinct offices with separate responsibilities and that a budget increase for one office should not mean a budget decrease for the other.
The two DOE offices’ workers would be in separate buildings, other than the RL and ORP acquisition teams leading the selection of the next set of Hanford contractors, who would share office space. The RL employees are expected to move into buildings used now by its contractors, CH2M Plateau Remediation Co. and Mission Support Alliance. This could require some of the firms’ employees to move to different office space, which might mean a shift to the Federal Building for some. Some may move to the Washington Closure Hanford building, which is near the Stevens Center complex, as river corridor contractor’s contract ends in September.
RL management is working closely with its federal union and has created an employee-led team that is developing a comprehensive plan and schedule for the co-location of offices, Shoop said. The cost of the move has not been disclosed. However, a similar move considered in 2010 was estimated to cost about $3,000 per federal employee moved, which did not include moving contractor employees out of the space federal workers would occupy. RL now has 250 to 300 employees and contracted support staff working in the Federal Building. The office has for several years been paying for renovations for the portion of the Federal Building it occupies. Remodeling has been halted pending the planned move out of the building.
