EG&G will help achieve 'continuous improvement'

Fermilab Director Pier Oddone and EG&G Chief Operating Officer Randall Wotring.

The best way to win new projects for the future is "to be the best at what you do today," said Randall Wotring, CEO of the EG&G Division of URS, one of the world's largest engineering design firms and a leading US federal government contractor. For the next five years, EG&G aims to help Fermilab achieve both those goals for the present and future.

At Friday's subcontract signing ceremony in Wilson Hall, Fermilab Director Pier Oddone welcomed EG&G's ongoing work with Fermilab "to help us in a very disciplined way become the very best laboratory we can be. They will help us achieve excellence in operations across the board. In turn excellence in operations enhances our science productivity that must be at a world-class level.''

Oddone focused on EG&G's input on best practices across the lab's organization. EG&G has vast resources and experience across a variety of operations. EG&G has worked with the Department of Energy in the past. The URS parent organization has more than 300 offices worldwide, with nearly 29,000 employees. Jeffrey Cotton will represent the global engineering firm as onsite manager at Fermilab, relocating from EG&G's office in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Jeffrey Cotton

"We see this as a very collaborative effort," said Cotton, who will work from a fourth-floor office in Wilson Hall. "We won't be doing the science, but we'll be working behind the scenes to help the lab do the best science it can. We'll look for continuous improvement in activities here." He described the beginnings of the process as first, taking a survey of activities and operations across the lab; and second, identifying best practices and benchmarks from similar facilities that might be applied to operations at Fermilab. In a final step, EG&G would help the transition to the best practices the lab decides to implement, by providing operational support during the changes.

FRA made the participation of the EG&G engineering firm part of its five-year contract with the U.S. Department of Energy. EG&G was selected from among 11 applicants through interviews and presentations after the lab issued a Request for Proposals. "We were extremely impressed when they described how they would work with an organization like ours," Oddone said. "Our goal is to be not only the best in science, but also the best in operations and management."

Read more about URS

You can help local shortage by giving blood, Feb. 19-20

The Heartland Blood Center is facing shortages, and soon you'll have a chance to help. You can donate blood at Fermilab February 19 and 20, from 8 a.m.-2 p.m. in the Wilson Hall Ground Floor Training Room. Appointments are suggested, but not required. To make an appointment, visit the ES&H website.

Heartland supplies blood to patients in 35 local hospitals, and they currently have less than a one-day supply for O negative, B negative, and AB negative. Read more about the shortage, and how you can help, here.

New Scientist,
February 3, 2007:

Keeping the high-energy dream alive

From her office window at Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois, Young-Kee Kim can see a glorious history. The clusters of buildings connected by a circular roadway mark the location of the Tevatron - the giant underground collider ring that remains, for a few months more, the world's largest particle accelerator.