Mark French, Director of projects and facilities at EM Richland, was named the 2018 Department on Energy Federal Director of the Year.
Office of Environmental Management
April 30, 2019
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WASHINGTON, D.C. – Mark French, director of the projects and facilities division at EM’s Richland Operations Office (RL), was named the 2018 Department on Energy Federal Project Director (FPD) of the Year at the 2019 DOE Project Management Workshop last week. It is the first time the award has gone to an FPD at Hanford.
French was honored for his role as the FPD for cleanup of Hanford’s expansive Columbia River Corridor, home to former plutonium production reactors, facilities, and waste sites from the Manhattan Project and Cold War; and the design and construction of systems to remove radioactive sludge from an underwater basin along the river.
"EM is very proud of Mark for receiving this award. He is a dedicated, accomplished federal project director who has worked hard to get the best value out of our cleanup dollars, maintained focus on our completion mindset, and brought this river corridor project to a finish more than a year ahead of schedule and $69 million dollars under budget," EM Assistant Secretary Anne White said.
DOE Under Secretary for Nuclear Security and National Nuclear Security Administration Administrator Lisa E. Gordon-Hagerty presented the award to French at the workshop.
“I congratulate Mark French of the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site on being named Federal Project Director of the Year," Gordon-Hagerty said. "Mark is the kind of dedicated and talented federal project director that deserves this award and our respect. We are lucky to have him, along with his ability to face complex issues and see them through to successful completion,”
The projects French oversaw as FPD are among the most lauded and impactful cleanup work completed at Hanford to date.
“Mark’s leadership, steady hand, and ability to work through issues are what made a difference on these landmark Hanford cleanup projects,” Hanford Site Manager Brian Vance said. “When our regulators and stakeholders point to tangible, physical cleanup progress at the site, this work to remove structures and contamination from the river corridor is always at the top of their list.”
Covering 220 square miles, the River Corridor Cleanup Project (RCCP) was the largest DOE environmental cleanup effort in the country. Almost 350 contaminated facilities were demolished; three full-scale plutonium production reactors were dispositioned; and more than 12 million tons of contaminated debris was moved away from the river. The project began in 2005, and was completed in November 2018.
Meanwhile, radioactive sludge removal systems were completed 18 months ahead of the scheduled completion date of February 2020, and at $20 million below the original total project cost of $311 million.
“The synergy we developed between federal and contractor teams, combined with the clear mandate we had, helped us find the magic on this work again and again,” French said. “We worked through our fair share of challenges, but there was a universal enthusiasm and commitment from the front line all the way up. I will always be proud to have been a part of changing the landscape at Hanford.”
French began with RL as a program manager in 1995. He was responsible for Hanford’s first transuranic waste shipments to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, and also worked on Hanford’s spent nuclear fuel program before becoming the FPD for the solid waste stabilization and disposition project in 2005. He was named the FPD for the RCCP in 2008.