RICHLAND, Wash. – Early career professionals from EM sites gathered this fall at the Hanford Site for a technical information exchange where they shared lessons learned from throughout the DOE complex.

   Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS), the tank farms contractor at the Hanford Site, hosted Savannah River Remediation (SRR), the liquid waste contractor from the Savannah River Site, and Nuclear Waste Partnership, the management and operations contractor at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, for the Fall 2016 Early Career Professional Exchange.

   Eighteen representatives from the three sites, including AECOM employees from Hanford’s Waste Treatment Plant, attended. Similar exchanges were held in November 2015 and April 2016.

   Attendees gave site-specific presentations to each other and senior management. Participants toured B Reactor, the first full-scale production reactor built at Hanford during World War II. 

   Thomas Yamamoto, an SRR tank farms systems engineer, said the exchanges are the perfect setting to facilitate the flow of information between EM sites.

   “Each site was able to network and share their knowledge, experiences, challenges and successes,” Yamamoto said. “The representatives were able to provide insight into some issues that other sites are also experiencing, allowing for easy sharing of lessons learned among attendees.”

   Senior engineering managers from WRPS and SRR created the exchanges to promote intra-site cooperation and collaboration among subject-matter experts across sites.

   “We recognized that establishing lines of communication and building a network of contacts earlier in our careers would have been very helpful in addition to expanding our awareness of the scope and technical activities of the DOE cleanup mission,” WRPS Deputy Engineering Manager Mark Tavelli said.