State of the Laboratory -- 1997 (part 3)

Management and Administration

Let's now take a moment to talk about management and administration, because effective overall lab management and leadership by the senior management team, as well as an effective and efficient administrative team and infrastructure, are all essential to Argonne's success.

The capability and performance of administration and operations at Argonne are clearly first- rate, and arguably the best among the major DOE labs. Our performance continues to improve, and these functions earned an "outstanding" rating under our performance-based contract with DOE in 1996.

Administration and operations divisions are at the forefront of implementing general management information systems on client- server platforms with commercial applications consistent with industry practices. As I heard last week in Washington, achieving improved effectiveness and efficiency is an important priority of Secretary Peña and DOE's Laboratory Operating Board, reflecting the central recommendation of the Galvin Report. I support this priority.

Several noteworthy new activities occurred over the past year or are in process now.

Partnership 2000 Initiative with DOE/CH

One positive development involves the increasingly close working relationship between Argonne and DOE Chicago Operations under Cherri Langenfeld and Tim Crawford.

We have recently initiated a "Partnership 2000 Program," with several objectives, including:

• removal or reduction of procedural obstacles to progress, so we can improve effectiveness and efficiency ...,
• improvement of communication and understanding between the senior managements of the Lab and DOE ...,
• and joint senior-level strategizing and problem-solving where specifically appropriate.

I am enthusiastic about the potential of this program, which should become a "win-win" program.

Human Resources

In the months ahead, we are planning a lab- wide employee survey seeking your opinions on a wide range of subjects to allow all levels of management and non-management to better understand where and how we might be able to improve lab effectiveness.

This survey also is part of our emphasis on openness and good communication, which I believe is required of all of us if we are to be effective and have a quality workplace.

Turning to our performance appraisal process, this year we will use an improved appraisal process and a new form for exempt employees and it will cover the same performance period as before. In the future, we plan to make our appraisal period match the fiscal year. We also plan to have a modified compensation policy, which links compensation better to the appraisal process and to performance.

The appraisal process work has been undertaken by a lab-wide committee headed by Harvey Drucker.

As these activities lead to recommendations and then to changes, senior management will keep you fully informed.

ES&H and Brookhaven

Now, before I talk about Environment, Safety and Health (ES&H) and about the importance of Argonne's reputation, visibility, and community relations, I want to briefly discuss the Brookhaven National Laboratory incident and how it relates to both.

That dramatic, and traumatic, incident involves the unprecedented firing of the Brookhaven contractor a few weeks ago by DOE.

Last week at a lab directors' meeting held by Secretary Peña, he discussed the Brookhaven situation. His point -- and one we must remember -- is that it was not the specific environmental incident of the relatively minor tritium leak at the High-Flux Beam Reactor that caused DOE to "fire" the contractor.

Rather, what prompted DOE's action was both the lab management's and the contractor's inability or unwillingness to address a chronic ES&H problem that had existed for many years, and the resulting chronically adverse community relations which occurred. This resulted in severe lack of trust in Brookhaven by the community and New York State.

I cannot imagine such a situation happening at Argonne, but we must remain vigilant to ensure that it doesn't occur.

I am not aware of any environmental vulnerabilities at Argonne that are not under active and adequate management. We have created and are implementing a five- year environmental plan to clean-up the Argonne-East site. We have also nearly completed the long task to obtain a permit for our environmental management.

Nevertheless, we are initiating an Argonne Vulnerability Assessment and ES&H Plan Confirmation activity. The purpose is to re- evaluate all our past data, plans, and actions, then assess if there are any "gaps," issues, or unknowns, and then strengthen our environmental plan and safety and health plans and practices appropriately. This activity involves using our QuickSite methodology, which I mentioned earlier, at Argonne-East to improve our environmental geologic model.

This activity is in partnership with DOE-CH.

In Environmental Safety and Health, our employee safety record continues to be nearly twice as good as the average of all DOE labs, and about five times better than that of industry average.

But our record is not yet at the level of the best industrial performance. Ultimately, we will achieve our best level of safety only when safety becomes a conscious commitment of each of us in everything we do. The latest guidance on this uses the term "integrated safety management." At its most basic level, this simply means that safety must be an integral part of our work planning, our work execution, and our evaluation of what we have accomplished.

I am committed to make this part of our work culture. It will take all of us to achieve this, and it won't take external proscriptive inspections of all of our work places.

Also, an ES&H opportunity and challenge for us is to successfully move to Occupational Safety and Health Administration external regulation at Argonne-East similar to the private sector, which DOE has committed to.

Reputation, Visibility, Image and Community Relations

On the subject of Argonne's reputation, visibility, image, and community relations, I think we all can agree that Argonne's relations with surrounding communities are good and getting better. And it also is clear that our science and technology capabilities and achievements warrant more recognition than the very good recognition they get.

We already have good communications and outreach programs in place with our science and technology publications, our participation at technical conferences and workshops, and through our public affairs, education, and industrial technology programs. And a couple of new projects under way will attract more people to the Laboratory, or bring the Argonne name, message, and accomplishments to more people, or do both.

One important project in this area is the Community Leaders Roundtable.

In the past, when "storms" threatened key Argonne programs, our neighboring communities have been there to help Argonne weather such storms. To keep those relations solid and the information channel open, we have embarked on several initiatives -- including the Community Leaders Round Table, a project I'm proud to say that DOE-CH and I initiated as one of my first actions shortly after coming here.

In partnership with Cherri Langenfeld, Tim Crawford, and their DOE colleagues, we established this ongoing forum last fall. It is an organization through which we can better inform community leaders about activities at Argonne-East and any expected impacts on our neighbors.

We encourage them to inquire about any aspect of Argonne, from environmental concerns to knowledge about radioactive materials and radiation effects, to community outreach activities, to Argonne's future science and technology directions. Over 30 community leaders from towns, homeowners associations, governments, businesses, and public-interest groups attend each meeting.

These meetings have already made significant progress in unveiling the "unknowns" about Argonne and by improving openness and support.

It is this kind of proactive foresight that helps establish trust and prevents relatively minor problems from becoming much bigger ones.

VRC / ASTIC

To Argonne-East staff members, a visible new outreach project is the Argonne Science and Technology Information Center now under construction on the Visitor Reception Center site at North Gate. Phase One will be opened shortly, and Phase Two will open in the Fall. I urge all of you to drop in and explore the interactive displays and exhibits, and tell your friends too.

When it opens, this center will be an attractive gateway to Argonne, our facilities, and our people, and it will entice many more people to the laboratory, along with heightening their "science awareness."

Argonne works well and hard on outreach now, but nonetheless we are not well enough known -- for example, in comparison with the best universities. This is due in part to a long history of DOE "closed behind- the- fence" behavior which was much more appropriate decades ago.

Communication, reputation and image programs do help, but management especially needs the understanding and cooperation of our scientists and engineers to achieve maximum results.

Historically, the scientific community has been very effective in communicating with its peers, but not nearly as effective communicating with the public and business. Yet the public, business, and the government agencies their tax dollars fund, pay the bills, and they want to and are entitled to know that their tax dollars are doing something worthwhile.

If they don't know that, if we don't tell them, and do so in language someone other than a scientist can understand, then those stakeholders and customers will want those dollars used for something else. Something they know will benefit them.

Therefore, while we continue our emphasis on describing our achievements in journals such as Physical Review and Science magazine, let us take the next step and realize that those same Argonne achievements described in Discover magazine, Fortune magazine, or the New York Times are just as important to Argonne and our future.

In summary, let's do everything we can to ensure that Argonne gets the recognition it deserves, and the support such recognition brings with it.

Education

One Argonne endeavor that produces much recognition and support is our education program.

You may not know that Argonne is the largest DOE national lab in terms of educational outreach, with many hundreds of undergraduate students, graduate students and post- docs working here. Pre- college programs supported by the National Science Foundation and the State of Illinois continue, and we expect to grow Internet-based curriculum development programs as part of President Clinton's recent initiative.

When I was in Washington last week, Secretary Peña talked at length about his strong interest in education, especially in DOE's grade- school and high- school programs.

As one result, a DOE- ER committee is being formed to address education programs for kindergarten through 12th grade. I am planning to join and I believe Argonne will be a central contributor.

In the months ahead, you can expect to hear more about what we are doing in education, and what more we can do to achieve the secretary's objectives.

Enhanced STAC Role

Finally in the area of management and governance, I want you to know that we have been working with Art Sussman and David Schramm, and with other members of the Board of Governors, to expand and invigorate the board's role in our science and technology programs, both through the board's agendas and through the mechanism of the board's Science and Technical Advisory Committee -- or STAC -- the committee responsible for overseeing the lab's research process and performance. In effect, STAC will become the principal board committee and will involve many more board members more deeply in our strategic planning as well as division oversight.

The result will be a positive, fuller engagement of Board and STAC members, with improved Board oversight and improved value to Argonne.

Summary

I have covered much ground in my first State of the Lab report, because there is much I believe you needed to know. To sum up the key points:

We have a strong vision of Argonne as a excellent provider of science, technology, engineering and technical services, and Argonne as a leader with quality results which are of value to our customers and stakeholders.

We have many attributes and elements of this vision, but we are not there yet. We are going to go forward, but there still are challenging hills to climb.

We face business-base challenges, competitive challenges, budgetary challenges, and operational-efficiency challenges.

However, we have the talent, the infrastructure, and the multi- disciplinary core capabilities to overcome those challenges and seize many opportunities in our mission areas in the years ahead.

I have described a few of our many accomplishments and a number of our promising initiatives that support that conclusion.

In summary, I strongly believe that Argonne National Laboratory is a vital national lab with an excellent future as we go into the 21st Century.

In the past hour or so, I have tried to present a realistic picture of the state of our laboratory. Where we go from here -- how we capitalize on our strengths and how we perform with respect to the opportunities and challenges -- depends in large part on each of you.

I not only need your support, I need your enthusiastic support, as we together move this laboratory forward. Management, including me, also needs your ideas. If you have suggestions as to how we can improve our performance, strengthen and expand our customer focus, use our budget dollars more efficiently, and in general get Argonne in top competitive shape to enter the 21st Century, I want you to let us know what those suggestions are.

With the end of the Cold War, the advent of global competitiveness, and continuing pressure on the federal R&D budget, our future will most certainly not be business as usual.

But it will be a dynamic time.

It can be an exciting time.

And I'm very much looking forward to experiencing it with you.