LESSONS LEARNED THROUGH OPTIMIZATION OF THE VOLUNTARY CORRECTIVE ACTION PROCESS

Valuable experience in environmental remediation was gained at Sandia National Laboratories/New Mexico (Sandia) by concurrently conducting Voluntary Corrective Actions (VCAs) at three Solid Waste Management Units (SWMUs). Sandia combined the planning, implementation, and reporting phases of three VCAs with the goal of realizing significant savings in both cost and schedule. The lessons learned through this process have been successfully implemented within the Sandia Environmental Restoration (ER) Project and could be utilized at other locations with multiple ER sites. All lessons learned resulted from successful teaming with the New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) Hazardous Waste Bureau (HWB), Sandia management, a Sandia risk assessment team, and Sandia waste management personnel. Specific lessons learned included the following: (1) potential efficiencies can be exploited by reprioritization and rescheduling of activities; (2) cost and schedule reductions can be realized by combining similar work at contiguous sites into a single effort; (3) working with regulators to develop preliminary remediation goals (PRGs) and gain regulatory acceptance for VCA planning prior to project initiation results in significant time savings throughout the remediation and permit modification processes; (4) effective and thoughtful contingency planning removes uncertainties and defrays costs so that projects can be completed without interruption; (5) timely collection of waste characterization samples allows efficient disposal of waste streams, and (6) concurrent reporting of VCA activities results in significant savings in time for the authors and reviewers