Growing pains
With 811 acres spanning 2.5 miles more than 6,000 personnel. You might wonder who tracks all those people and corresponding vehicle traffic on site. Well, it’s actually a council of representatives from various departments who are tasked with bringing integration and decision making to site wide activities and projects that impact the development and utilization of site infrastructure, facilities, and/or plant personnel. And the chair of that council is Jane Nations, Y-12 site master planner.
Nations has worked at Y-12 for more than 25 years. She has a degree in electrical engineering but loves what she does planning for Y-12’s future, and working with drawings and plans. She started out in the Condition Assessment Survey Group, then moved on to become manager of the CAS and Facility Information Management Systems, space management, and served as the Y-12 Energy manager. She eventually made her way to her current role, where she also serves as chair of the Site Planning Council.
SPC was first organized in 2007, but the heavy influx of personnel in the last 18 months has kept the council busy. Recent projects such as the Uranium Processing Facility, Mercury Treatment Facility, and Biology Building demolition has brought in so many new employees that buildings and parking spaces became congested quickly.
“The Site Planning Council is a forum to address and track site wide issues and concerns, including impacts to the protected area resulting from UPF and the West End Protected Area Reduction projects,” Nations said.
In terms of office space, Jack Case Center is at currently at 108% capacity. New Hope Center, Building 9110, the guard headquarters, and HEUMF are all at or above capacity. Parking is also limited around the site.
“We are working hard to improve the congestion felt on site, in the buildings, and in the parking lots. We are developing some guidelines to help manage office space and are working to identify additional parking spaces, but we have limitations when it comes to security and mission needs,” Nations said.