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DOE Shuffles Environmental Managers

The Department of Energy is reassigning 40% of the 70 senior executives in its Environmental Management program.

The reassignments, part of the DOE's Environmental Management Program review, are intended to "strengthen, streamline and delayer the leadership of the program," the agency said. The action also reduces the number of senior executives in EM headquarters by about 30%.

"The purpose of these reassignments is to better leverage the unique talents of these executives, force better integration between the field and headquarters of the real, on the ground challenges confronting the program, and to stimulate new thinking and creative solutions to our cleanup challenges," said Jessie Roberson, assistant secretary of Environmental Management.

These changes are consistent with recommendations from a recent top to bottom review of the EM program. Cross rotational assignments will be used with greater frequency across senior levels of the organization to ensure that executives have both field and headquarters expertise.

Twenty-seven senior staff are involved in the first round of executive reassignments. Reassignments include moves from headquarters to the field, field to headquarters, moves between field offices, and positional moves in headquarters.

The 30% reduction in headquarters executives is being achieved by executives leaving the senior executive service, reassignment into senior advisor positions, and moves to other field or headquarters organizations.

"Executive reassignments will continue in order to better develop the program's leadership cadre and to keep a fresh and dynamic perspective about solving the EM challenges," Roberson added.

Some of the reassignments announced Wednesday include:

  • Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary James Owendoff will become the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Science and Technology.

  • The current Deputy Assistant Secretary for Science and Technology, Gerald Boyd, will move to the Oak Ridge Operations Office in Tennessee as Assistant Manager for Environmental Management.

  • Two of EM's site managers, Harry Boston, now at the Office of River Protection in Washington state, and Susan Brechbill of the Ohio Field Office, will relocate to EM headquarters. Also moving to headquarters is Robert Roselli, Deputy Manager for the Richland Operations Office at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington.

  • Roy Schepens, currently at Savannah River Site in South Carolina, will replace Boston as the Office of River Protection Site Manager.

  • A new position, to be filled by William Murphie from headquarters, is being created to manage the Portsmouth, Ohio and Paducah, Ky., sites of the DOE's two gaseous diffusion plutonium enrichment plants.

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