Hanford Mission Support Operating Experience Program

1. Hanford Mission SupportOperating Experience Program Gerald Whitney Operating Experience Program Coordinator Presented May 5, 2010 DOE OEC Workshop - SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory "Lessons from the past can highlight the likely problems of the future"

2. Overview • Hanford Site Mission • MSA Scope/Challenges • OPEX Program Integration • Information Processing

3. 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.

4. 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

5. 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 contractors The MSA is the integrator for these contractors: • River Corridor Cleanup Contract • Plateau Remediation Contract • Tank Farm Operations Contract

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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

9. OE Information Sources DOE Accident Investigation Reports DOE Corporate Operating Experience Hanford Contractor OE Nuclear Energy Institute NEPA Lessons Learned Office of Env. Management NRC Pollution Prevention Best Practices INPO DNFSB HILLS Chemical Safety Best Practices OSHA Safety & Health Bulletins NASA Lessons Learned US Department of Labor Homeland Security EPA DOE Audits and Surveillances NNSA Lessons Learned Consumer Product Recalls EGCOG Best Practices

10. 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?)

11. 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

12. 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/

13. HILLS • Allows contractors to find information with powerful search tools • Allows commenting/blogging • http://www5.rl.gov/opex/admin/

14. 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)

15. 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

16. 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

17. 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

18. Conclusion • Move the HILLS database from the intranet to the internet • Involve remaining Hanford contractors • Improve database capabilities