HANFORD MISSION SUPPORT

OPERATING EXPERIENCE PROGRAM

Gerald WhitneyOperating Experience Program Coordinator

Presented May 5, 2010DOE OEC Workshop - SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

"Lessons from the past can highlight the likely problems of the future"

Overview

Hanford Site Mission MSA Scope/Challenges OPEX Program Integration Information Processing

Hanford Site

The 586-square-mile Hanford Site is located along the Columbia River in southeastern Washington State . A plutonium production complex with nine nuclear reactors and associated processing facilities, Hanford played a pivotal role in the nation's defense for more than 40 years, beginning in the 1940s with the Manhattan Project. Today, under the direction of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Hanford is engaged in the world's largest environmental cleanup project, with a number of overlapping technical, political, regulatory, financial and cultural issues.

Cleanup Challenges

~53 million gallons of radioactive and chemically hazardous waste in 177 underground storage tanks

Spent nuclear fuel, and plutonium ~750,000 cubic meters of buried or stored

solid waste, and groundwater contaminated above drinking water standards

~1,600 waste sites of which 1,180 remain to be remediated and approximately 1,450 facilities of which about 400 are contaminated

Mission Support Contract

Mission Support Contract (MSC) provides DOE-RL, DOE-ORP, and their contractors with the infrastructure and site services necessary to accomplish the Site mission.

Multiple Prime contractorsThe MSA is the integrator for these

contractors: River Corridor Cleanup Contract Plateau Remediation Contract Tank Farm Operations Contract

Integrating OPEX Programs

Challenges Two DOE Field Offices Multiple contractors working for different FO’s

with: Different work scope Different programs/processes Different levels of knowledge of OE program

goals Over 10,000 employees

Multiple OE processes at Hanford inefficient

How Do We Integrate the Different OE Programs?

Develop a single Hanford database for OE Include all prime contractors Define OE Sources for the Site Establish OE information screening

criteria (consistency/value) Provide useful tools

Single Information Sharing Database

Hanford Information and Lessons Learned Sharing (HILLS)web application Central database storage Subscription Service: all employees can select

topics and receive direct email notifications Collects user feedback Search tool to quickly find information so it

can quickly applied to work packages or at pre-job

OE Information Sources

HILLS

Nuclear Energy

Institute

NEPA Lessons Learned

Office of Env. Management

Hanford Contracto

r OE

DOE Corporate Operating Experienc

e

Consumer Product Recalls

EGCOG Best

Practices

NRC

INPO

OSHA Safety & Health

Bulletins

US Departme

nt of Labor

DOE Accident

Investigation

Reports

Pollution Preventio

n Best Practices

DNFSB

Chemical Safety Best

Practices

NASA Lessons Learned

Homeland Security

NNSA Lessons Learned

EPA

DOE Audits

and Surveillan

ces

Screening Criteria

Necessary to deliver affective information to users/implementers Apply DOE Screening Criteria Apply fact check (non-DOE information) Consider Significance and Value: similar

situation could exist, low awareness level (if it’s repeat lesson would re-publishing benefit?)

Processing the Information

OE information is reviewed/screened by the MSA OPEX Coordinator and/or by Technical Authorities

Information is tracked in the MSA OE tracking database

Information deemed applicable and useful to Hanford operations is entered into the HILLS database and shared with the site

User Friendly Tools

Search quickly find articles by type, source, topic

Share Easy sharing of lessons learned received,

search results Interaction: comments, feedback http://www5.rl.gov/opex/

HILLS

Allows contractors to find information with powerful search tools

Allows commenting/blogging http://www5.rl.gov/opex/admin/

How we share OE

With the DOE Complex Lessons entered into the DOE LL Database Operating Experience Program Committee Directly with other DOE Sites

At Hanford Hanford Information and Lessons Learned

Sharing (HILLS)web application Hanford OE Committee (Lead by MSA)

How OE is Selected

OE is reviewed/screened to determine if: The experience provides significant new

information Has direct relevance to site operations Has potential to be the basis for significant

improvement or cost savings Information meeting the criteria is

entered into the HILLS database

How OE is Stored, Distributed, Tracked & Found

OE is captured in the HILLS database for storage, retrieval and user tracking

Articles are automatically distributed to subscribers and feedback recorded

Uses a powerful search engine to enable users to: quickly find relevant articles emailing search results to others

Distribution, Feedback, and Metrics

Articles subscribed provided via email Subscribers will be prompted to provide

feedback after reading articles they receive Feedback is optional but can be used to

determine application effectiveness Managers can request feedback statistics

to track use of OE

Conclusion

Move the HILLS database from the intranet to the internet

Involve remaining Hanford contractors Improve database capabilities