4

Outcomes and Prioritization Strategies

INTRODUCTION

This chapter addresses Element B of the task statement (see Box 1.1 in Chapter 1) to

The committee provides two additional findings and three additional recommendations in this chapter to address the “outcomes” portion of Task Element B. These findings and recommendations focus on performance measures that can be used to assess progress toward achieving desired cleanup outcomes, including performance measures for the schema in DOE-EM’s Program Management Protocol (DOE, 2020). A further discussion of this protocol and its schema are provided in the “Portfolio Management” section in Chapter 5 of this report. Annex 2.B in Chapter 2 provides definitions for some key terms and concepts used in this chapter.

PERFORMANCE MEASURES

DOE-EM manages and tracks projects using several systems and metrics; these were described in Chapter 5 in NASEM (2021) and are also discussed in Chapter 2 (Annex 2.B) and Chapter 5 of the present report:

• The Earned Value Management System (EVMS)
• The Project Assessment and Reporting System (PARS)
• Project dashboards
• Performance Evaluation and Measurement Plans (PEMPs)
• Contract and project performance metrics and targets
• Progress reports to Congress

Many of the metrics in EVMS, PARS, and PEMPs measure procedural outputs—for example, schedule, cost, and percent of project completion. Output-based metrics are important for managing the cleanup program but do not measure absolute progress toward completing site cleanup. Tracking such progress requires the use of outcomes-based performance measures.

At least two outcomes-based performance measures are needed to provide a clear picture of progress toward achieving site cleanup:

1. Achievement of site end states, expressed, for example, in years or percentage of cleanup effort remaining; and
2. Risk reduction, expressed in terms of reduction in pollutant or contaminant levels at site boundaries, increases in areas released for productive reuse, or reduction in occupational exposures or risks (e.g., extent of areas requiring enhanced personal protection measures for site workers).

Implementing these outcomes-based performance measures would enhance DOE-EM’s capability to track cleanup progress and assess the impacts of budget

changes (increases or decreases) and schedule changes (acceleration or slippages) of end-state achievement and liability extinguishment. These latter assessments would be particularly valuable for demonstrating cleanup progress to the administration, Congress, and other stakeholders and supporting annual appropriations requests.

To be broadly useful, these outcomes-based performance measures need to be applied to all DOE-EM cleanup activities, not just projects currently subject to DOE Order 413.3B. Presently, approximately 25 percent of DOE-EM’s total budget is “projectized” under Order 413.3B (NASEM, 2021, p. 9). The remainder of budgeted activities are managed as “operations activities” not subject to Order 413.3B. The committee separately recommended that a much greater share of these operations activities were within the definition of capital asset acquisitions established by the Office of Management and Budget and should be made subject to Order 413.3B (see Recommendation C-2 below and Recommendation 4.1 in the Phase 1 report).

DOE-EM currently lacks performance measures to track and document schedule slippages relative to original baselines when cleanup projects are re-baselined. Chapter 2 noted, for example, that the Salt Waste Processing Facility project was re-baselined twice, resulting in a schedule slippage of almost 7 years. However, the schedule metric reported by the site to the committee did not reflect this slippage but instead indicated that the project schedule was on target.

DOE-EM needs to develop performance measures and a change-management process to track and document schedule slippages. These slippages also need to be reviewed periodically to assess their causes and identify and apply remedies so that future slippages can be minimized.

DOE-EM’s Program Management Protocol (DOE, 2020, Table 3) establishes several criteria for prioritizing cleanup activities, referred to as schema, to be used for strategic planning, life-cycle cost and schedule estimating, and budget requests:

A summary of EM’s prioritization, when applied to EM’s remaining scope, includes the following:

1. Activities to maintain a safe, secure, and compliant posture (also known as a ‘minimum safe’ posture).
2. Radioactive tank waste stabilization, treatment, and disposal.
3. Spent (used) nuclear fuel storage, receipt, and disposition.
4. Nuclear material consolidation, stabilization, and disposition.
5. Transuranic and mixed low-level waste disposition.
6. Soil and groundwater remediation.
7. Excess facilities deactivation and decommissioning.

These schemas are clearly described and understandable, and the bases for schema prioritization, namely risk management and risk reduction, are technically credible. However, there is no indication from the committee’s site visits that schema are being

• Effectively quantified,
• Linked to performance-based cleanup outcomes such as end-state achievement and liability extinguishment, or
• Used to prioritize and integrate cleanup activities across sites.

DOE-EM needs to develop outcomes-based performance measures to quantify the schema and apply those measures across its sites in a portfolio-management framework to optimize end-state achievement and liability extinguishment. This framework is described in more detail in Chapter 5 of this report.

REFERENCES