Fra Visiting Committee

FRA VISITING COMMITTEE

FOR

FERMI NATIONAL ACCELERATOR LABORATORY

Batavia, Illinois

ADMINISTRATIVE AND OPERATIONS

SUPPORT REVIEW

August 29-31, 2007

Team Members

K. Anne Street, Chair

Riverside Consulting Group, Inc.

A.  Judd Haverfield

FRA Board of Directors

Former Vice President, Weyerhaeuser Business Services

Ernest Pierz

Director of Projects – IST Oil Americas

BP

Jerry Swanks

Former Associate Laboratory Director for

Operations and ES&H

Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Diane Schultz

Former Director, Human Resources

Motorola, Inc.

Robin Wendt

RW Consulting Services

Former Acting Director, ES&H Division

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Former Interim Director, Office of Assurance

Stanford Linear Accelerator Center

FRA VISITING COMMITTEE FOR FERMILAB

ADMINISTRATION & OPERATIONS SUPPORT

July 10, 2007

Charge to the Committee

Fermi Research Alliance, LLC (FRA) has established an annual Visiting Committee consisting of a diverse group of six experts for the purpose of performing a three-day peer review of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory’s (Fermilab) administration and operations support activities. Specifically, FRA would like the Visiting Committee to review strengths and weaknesses, identify opportunities for improvement, and make recommendations to FRA, and in turn, to Laboratory management

Administration and Operations external reviews are conducted annually at Fermilab at the behest of the FRA Board of Directors, in order to continually integrate noteworthy practices into the Laboratory management culture and to apprise the FRA Board of Directors and FRA management of the status of administrative and operational support and related issues requiring further study and/or resolution.

The team is asked to review and evaluate the quality and effectiveness of Fermilab’s administrative organizations which covers the subject matter within the oversight role of the following FRA Board of Directors’ Committees: Administration and Finance, Compensation, and Environment, Safety & Health:

·  Soliciting customer (internal and user, as well as DOE) feedback.

·  Evaluating each Section’s ability to accomplish its mission in a cost effective and efficient manner within its present staffing level.

·  Providing recommendations and suggestions for improvement.

·  Providing feedback to improve the Laboratory’s self-assessment process.

·  Communicating the results of the review to management and other appropriate parties, in consultation with FRA.

·  Completing a written report to FRA which in turn becomes part of FRA’s self-assessment, subsequently submitted to DOE in accordance with the prime contract.

The Committee is asked to prepare and submit its final report no later than September 17, 20007

BACKGROUND

Fermilab (the Laboratory) is one of the world’s leading centers for high-energy physics research, with a staff of over 1,900 and a current annual budget of approximately $325 million. The Laboratory is located 30 miles west of Chicago, and is the home of the Tevatron, the world’s highest energy particle accelerator. The laboratory provides research facilities for nearly 3,000 physicists from institutions in most of the United States and many foreign countries.

The Laboratory is organizationally aligned according to mission (line) and support (staff) functions. Mission organizations (e.g., Accelerator and Particle Physics) are designated as Divisions. Operations support and administrative organizations are designated as Sections.

Fermilab annually convenes a visiting committee to review its scientific programs. During the summer of 2001, URA, the contractor responsible for the operation of Fermilab at that time, established a similar external review process for Fermilab’s operations and administrative functions. Subsequently, a visiting committee made up of individuals with diverse administrative and operations management backgrounds and representing both the public and private sectors, was appointed to perform a peer review and issue a report identifying strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and improvements, and make recommendations accordingly. The first report was issued in October 2001, and similar reports have been issued on a regular basis since that time.

In addition to the visiting committee report, a vigorous self-assessment process has been instituted as part of the Contract Performance Measurement Process agreed to with the DOE. This self-assessment activity has been functioning for several years and has served as the initiation point for continuous improvement within the Laboratory.

The DOE’s Office of Science (SC), through the Fermi Site Office (FSO) which is physically located at the laboratory, provides DOE administrative and operations support oversight. FSO is the prime interface for detailed evaluation of contract performance measures.

TEAM MEMBERS

Team members include a diverse group of experts with functional and organizational expertise consistent with the FRA charge. The Committee includes experience within private industry and DOE’s national laboratories as well as the M&O contracting community in the fields of business management, human resources, ES&H, facilities management, and budget. The team also includes a member of the FRA Board of Directors, who is familiar with the laboratory’s mission and user communities.[1]

METHODOLOGY AND APPROACH

The review process included information gathering through a variety of processes: briefings, interviews, document reviews, and observations of on-site activities. Data collection methods were qualitative in nature, and specifically included:

·  Briefings – The visiting committee was briefed by representatives of the Directorate and Section heads, a process which was interactive and included question-and-answer segments.

·  Interviews – Over 30 Fermilab staff members and DOE personnel were interviewed during the course of the assessment. Interviewees included a diverse range of both operations and administrative support staff, as well as their customers (representatives of the mission-related organizations who use Section services).

·  Document Reviews – The team reviewed key laboratory documents, including most notably the recent self-assessment report.

The Committee was divided into six segments for purposes of interviewing and report writing, based on team members’ specific areas of expertise and organizational experience, and each was assigned a focus area: Facilities Engineering; ES&H; Finance; Workforce Development & Services, Business Support Services, and Office of Quality and Best Practices. All team members participated in the identification and review of “cross-cutting” issues.[2]

During the course of the interviews four global questions were asked of each group:

·  How has the Laboratory reorganization affected your ability to deliver services?

o  All responders felt empowered by the organizational changes and believed them to have improved the delivery of services.

·  How has the change from URA to FRA affected your ability to deliver services?

o  There appeared to be no noticeable difference in operations between the laboratory under the leadership of FRA and the laboratory under URA.

·  What new initiatives to improve services have you developed with ANL as a result of the establishment of FRA?

o  The Committee could not identify new initiatives with ANL put in place since the re-competition. Several groups identified areas they would like to pursue, but they had been given little encouragement to begin to develop initiatives as yet. The Committee believes that there are numerous opportunities for synergy that should be investigated as soon as practically possible.

·  What change management practices, principles, and procedures have you used and how successful were they?

o  The responses to these questions ranged from “We have used some change management principles” (with varying levels of success) to “what are change management procedures?”

OBSERVATIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Business Services Section (BSS)

The Committee reviewed many of the functions of the Business Services Section. Those units reviewed included Procurement, Property & Inventory Control, Travel, and elements of Information Resources. Feedback was obtained from customer representatives, DOE Site Office, and internal function staff.

Observations

The property function is being performed effectively and efficiently. DOE provided feedback that clearly indicated that they are, in general, pleased with Fermilab’s performance in this area. Interviews with Fermilab staff also reflected a high level of satisfaction with this function. During the past year, the unit has focused its efforts on the elements of the Balanced Scorecard that were agreed upon with the DOE Fermi Site Office, and appear to be in good position to achieve a year-end evaluation of “A”.

With respect to the procurement function, last year’s Administrative and Operations Support Review had expressed concerns related to weaknesses found in an Internal Audit review of service contracts and file reviews by DOE. Weaknesses identified at the time were: a) poor file documentation, b) lack of contract administration, c) appropriate clauses being omitted, and d) prevailing wage determination not incorporated into a file. The Review Committee also noted that insufficient staffing might have contributed to the observed weaknesses.

This year, the Committee was impressed with efforts toward implementing corrective actions to address the previously identified weaknesses. These actions included improved training and surveillance, additional efforts in administration of service subcontracts, improved file documentation, organization, and presentation, and the addition of staff to the function. The Committee believes that the positive impact of these actions will be demonstrated in the year-end evaluation against DOE’s Balanced Scorecard.

The Committee also discussed ILC acquisition plans with the Fermilab Procurement Manager. It was apparent that there has been active Procurement involvement in ILC planning over the past year. The direct involvement in procurement activities will ramp -up significantly next year and it may be necessary to add staff to handle the additional procurement activity. Evaluations should be made as to whether that increased activity could be handled through temporary resources. Many of the procurement actions that will be placed in support of ILC will involve cooperative development activities with industry. It will be important for Procurement to develop an effective CRADA agreement that can be used a template for agreements with the industrial partners. This should serve to make the negotiation and contracting process more efficient.

During discussions with the Travel staff, we observed that some significant improvements had been implemented during the past year. The communication with the customer appears improved and customer satisfaction (as determined through questionnaire to the travel arrangers) seems quite good. The implementation of a Domestic Conference Management System has been a needed positive step. The extension of this to foreign conferences is an important step yet to be done From Committee discussions with management in the Divisions & Projects, much remains to be done in the whole area of foreign travel. With the process improvements already implemented within Travel, it is BSS’s expectation that significant progress can be made reducing the concerns in this area.

An important management area for BSS has been Security. With DOE’s impending selection of an independent contractor to manage Fermi Site Security Support, a major transition will occur during the next year. It appears that BSS will retain the responsibility for providing some support to the new contractor such as vehicles, uniforms, etc. In addition, Fermilab retains the Emergency Planning responsibility for the site. The operational points of contact need to be clarified early in the relationship to assure smooth working relationships between the two contractors.

Recommendations

Establish and communicate a process for interacting with the new Security Contractor. This includes ensuring that all elements of the Laboratory that need to interface understand communication pathways and procedures for establishing customer expectations, as well as providing support to the contractor.

Utilize existing DOE Lab best practices for CRADA development in Procurement.

A number of DOE Laboratories, such as Argonne, Jlab, and others, have significant experience in developing and implementing Cooperative Research and Development Agreements (CRADAs) with industry. It would best serve Fermilab to quickly accept the best practices from those other Labs in their contracting efforts.

Improve the Travel Website, including publishing the Laboratory Travel Policy.

The next step in the continuing improvement of the Travel function should be to make its website both more user-friendly and useful for both traveler & travel arranger. Succeeding steps should include foreign conference attendance and foreign trip approval status.

Develop a streamlined procurement process for emergency repair work.

The discussions with FESS clearly identified the need for standing support agreements to provide repair work on an emergency basis. This should be a priority for both Procurement & FESS.

Recertification of Procurement & Property Management Systems

FY08 will see visits by DOE Review Teams in both Property and Procurement as part of the process to recertify both systems. It is imperative that top attention be paid to these recertification efforts. The future of ILC and NOvA are dependent upon the Laboratory’s ability to manage large and complex projects. Procurement and Property Management are key elements of that management process.

OQBP & QA Program Implementation

A key message resulting from both the DOE Contract Re-competition and the triplet magnet failure is a greatly enhanced effort in Quality Assurance activities. While the prime leadership for this effort will come from outside BSS, it is important that BSS play a strong role from the Records Management and Procurement perspective. Documentation of the engineering design process and maintenance and use of the associated engineering drawings are key areas where BSS needs to provide leadership. It would be valuable for BSS to start their planning processes early by benchmarking other DOE Labs which have significant engineering efforts.

Environment, Safety, and Health (ES&H) Section

In addition to hearing presentations from both division and section management, senior staff members of the ES&H Section were interviewed. Also, numerous chapters of the Fermilab ES&H Manual (FESHM) were reviewed. The senior staff members were very responsive to the many questions that arose during the review and the FESHM chapters were generally concise and clear.

The report from last year’s Review Committee for Fermilab Operations and Administration Review were revisited.

·  One recommendation was to continue attention to subcontractor safety initiatives. The Committee took note of what appears to be an excellent contracting officer technical representative program that helps contribute to sub-contractor safety. This is noted elsewhere in the current report.

·  All but two of the recommendations from the Director’s Panel on Injury Reduction have been implemented. The last two will be implemented soon.

·  The Annual Safety Plan seems well embraced by all elements of Fermilab

·  Though outside agencies seem reluctant to drill with Fermilab, a few incidents have brought them in and in some respects substituted for drills. Also, emergency response agencies have gone through NuMI tunnel familiarization. There are other forms of interaction as well.