The COVID-19 pandemic helped sell the top brass at the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management on the value of telecommuting, the No. 2 official there said Wednesday.
When the DOE office was forced to roll back on-site work at nuclear remediation operations starting in mid-March, “a lot of people had their doubts” on the workability of that approach, Todd Shrader, principal deputy assistant secretary for environmental management, said during the ExchangeMonitor’s virtual RadWaste Summit.
Even as personnel began to return to their work sites in May, most “back room support work” is still happening remotely, Shrader said. That covers operations such as engineering, planning, and procurement, he said.
The COVID-necessitated remote work has gone so well that Environmental Management officials are considering whether it can be used in the future to save costs on office space and even attract future employees.
Of course, someone “cannot telework taking down a building,” Shrader said. Fortunately, outside construction by its nature better lends itself to maintaining physical distance than office work, he noted.
As of the last update a week ago, there were 88 active COVID cases in the EM complex.
While he lacked specific figures, Shrader said enough people are now back on-site doing physical work at the 16 Environmental Management properties to keep most major construction projects going.
Some regulatory deadlines were missed due to workforce constraints created by the virus. Legal settlements in various jurisdictions often require that certain milestones be reached by a given date. However, many such agreements with states that host cleanup sites have a “force majeure clause,” which grant leeway for unforeseeable events, Shrader said.
In the spring, the Energy Department rolled out a four-step process to restart operations that is based upon guidance from the White House and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The remobilization starts with planning (Phase 0) and progresses to almost pre-pandemic operations (Phase 3), and is based on a combination of safety measures taken by the various sites combined with regional health statistics.
As on-site EM operations ramped up, the availability of adequate personal protective equipment was a concern, but “that issue is mostly cleared up,” Shrader said.
