ECA CALLS ON DOE TO IMPROVE WORKFORCE PLANNING AND ADDRESS BRAIN DRAIN
In ECA’s transition paper, “Ensuring Long-Term Success: Recommendations for the Next Administration on the U.S. Department of Energy’s Environmental Management Mission”, ECA provides multiple recommendations to tackle challenges the Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management (DOE-EM) faces.
In recent years, EM has placed an increased emphasis on workforce recruiting and retention, especially regarding early career workers. ECA has been working closely with EM, along with industry through the Energy Facility Contractors Group (EFCOG), on this effort and on the needs and abilities of local communities to support an expanded workforce.
Even so, EM is facing a considerable lack of mid-to-senior leadership depth. In the field, most EM site offices appear to be struggling to have experienced personnel ready to move up to the position of Manager as needed. EM headquarters is also facing significant leadership gaps due to the departures and retirements of qualified personnel, particularly in the Regulatory and Policy Affairs and Technology Development organizations.
In addition, EM’s track record in developing its next-generation workforce is decidedly mixed. As the Government Accountability Office warned this summer, “EM workforce management challenges have caused project failures and affected the mission through schedule delays, cost overruns, and workplace accidents, according to DOE assessments. These assessments found that additional failures are likely without efforts to address workforce challenges.”
These workforce issues and lack of experienced leadership are not problems that can be solved overnight and are ones that can pose a significant risk to EM as it works on longer-term planning and challenges. In its report, the GAO laid out an extensive series of recommendations to better improve its workforce management, and we urge the new Administration to maintain focus on making progress in implementation, while continuing to work with local communities to ensure successful alignment. The depth and caliber of the EM workforce, at all levels, is critical to our members since these workers are part of our communities.
We also call on the next Administration to prioritize rebuilding the EM leadership cadre and ensuring the talent is available to move into higher tiers of responsibility as necessary. This effort should include a focus on retaining and developing mid-career employees, as well as an examination of how qualified candidates from the DOE contracting industry can be brought into the program.
EM has enjoyed a level of success in recent years in establishing strong relations and coordination with other key DOE programs, such as the Office of Nuclear Energy (concerning waste disposal) and the NNSA (concerning addressing cleanup needs for ongoing missions). This improved coordination appears to have been based, though, largely on personal relationships between leaders in EM and other DOE programs. As DOE undergoes the leadership changes anticipated when a new Administration comes in, we encourage the Department to ensure this successful record of inter-program coordination continues.
Read the paper by clicking its cover above or the button below!
All ECA publications, including the new Transition Paper are available at www.energyca.org/publications.
If you have any questions about the paper please reach out to ajr@energyca.org.