This is one of several interviews in a series about the changes we can expect at the Lab during 2025.

Several leadership changes have taken place on the Facilities Engineering team since this interview took place in December 2024. Dean Sedlachek, who served as Facilities Engineering Department Head for five years, transitioned to a new role as Facilities Deputy Division Director, with Dan Flaherty, formerly the Project Engineering Manager, assigned as the interim Engineering Department Head. Zeid Arnout (not interviewed) was named interim Project Engineering Manager. The interview below was made prior to these assignments and Dan was the Project Engineering Manager at the time.

The Facilities Engineering Department, which sits within the Facilities Division, is dedicated to providing safe, sustainable, and highly reliable utilities and infrastructure that power the Lab’s world-class user facilities and research programs. Recently, the department underwent a months-long transformation process aimed at better aligning with the evolving needs of the Laboratory. This resulted in the creation of two distinct yet complementary programs – Plant Engineering and Project Engineering – designed to proactively address the demands of the Lab’s growth, including new construction, while also maintaining and enhancing the existing facilities.

Three department leaders, Daniel Flaherty, interim Engineering Department Head, Scott Shapiro, Manager for Plant Engineering, and Sharon Jan, Operational Performance Improvement Program Manager, described how the recent strategic realignment allows Facilities Engineering to evolve and adapt to meet the complex demands of modern research infrastructure.

 


 

What are the major changes for Facilities Engineering for 2025?

Sharon: In August 2024, we officially established two distinct but interdependent programs within Facilities Engineering: the Plant Engineering Program, led by Scott, and the Project Engineering Program, led by Dan. This alignment represents a proactive effort by our department to anticipate and meet the needs that have come from the Lab’s immense growth (i.e., new construction), as well as the existing needs of the Lab. Historically, Facilities Engineering was a smaller, more reactive department, but we knew we needed to adapt to meet increased demand for Facilities Engineering expertise.

Scott: When I started about four years ago the efforts of our Facilities Engineering team were split into project support, which we’re continuing to do, and emergency response. That left a huge gap for the work needed to sustain our existing infrastructure. With this strategic alignment we can improve how our site is run. Splitting those responsibilities between Project and Plant support allows Dan and myself the bandwidth to implement changes and take advantage of the opportunities we have now.

Dan: For the Project Engineering program, this year is about partnering. We spent a year building the metrics, building the tools we need to understand and really address our resource needs, our time needs, our turnaround times, and our service level agreements. Now we have the tools and the numbers necessary to bring to our science partners and say this is a realistic expectation of how much it will cost and how long it will take and how we can help bring those projects to successful completion.

Scott: Something else that will help us support the Lab is we’ve added our first-ever reliability engineer, Carmen Garcia Lizarraga. Her expertise helps us understand system interactions, evaluate risks, and develop targeted maintenance plans to prevent equipment failures. She analyzes failures not just to fix individual problems, but to identify site-wide implications and implement broader improvements. She’s building new programs to make this process seamless and consistent.

Dan: We’ve also added the Power System Stewardship Program, led by Cezary Jach. This program is developing a site-wide electrical system master plan, equipment condition assessments, and an enhanced electrical maintenance program necessary to meet our DOE performance metrics.

 

How will these changes you describe support and advance the Lab’s research mission?

Scott: From my program perspective, how we’re contributing to that is ensuring the reliability of all of those utility and infrastructure systems that our Science Divisions rely on, whether it’s compressed air, power, natural gas, or water. The Lab’s age presents many infrastructure challenges and understanding these helps us better scope projects to avoid surprises during execution. This includes accounting for whether there’s sufficient electrical infrastructure or obsolete systems that need updating. This alignment lets us be proactive in understanding where the issues are and addressing them. We want to minimize, if not prevent, any interruptions to research. That’s really the primary focus from the Plant Support side.

Dan: From a Project Support side, we’re looking to build predictability. We’re working to detect project problems earlier by making sure that the early stages don’t get missed. We’ve defined a bunch of requirements at early stages. We’ve worked through who should be doing them. We’re going to work on building those into our engineer of record contracts and to our Facilities service level agreements. We have a record number of projects coming to the Lab. There’s a huge assortment of large capital projects and a corollary huge assortment of small capital projects that need attention. So we’re also looking at how we execute projects in coordination with the Projects and Infrastructure Modernization division (PIM).

Sharon: The vision that I’ve been helping to support is making sure that Facilities Engineering can contribute effectively to the mission. With the growth in both our department and the Lab’s needs for technical expertise, we’re focusing on maturing our service delivery model and execution. We’ve formalized our annual strategic planning to align with Lab objectives, improved our service management, and collaborated on developing the Lab’s building permitting process to enhance safety.

 

What excites you about going into 2025 with these changes in place and your plans?

Sharon: Dean [Sedlachek, Deputy Division Director, Facilities] always says his goal is that all engineers can come in every day and feel really proud about their work. I find that to be a motivating vision. What can we do to minimize what can be hard about our jobs and maximize that sense of accomplishment? Seeing that translated into better outcomes for the Lab as a whole, I think a lot of what we’ve talked about fits into that.

Scott: It’s exciting to have a clear vision and to demonstrate our progress toward everything we’re achieving. Having come from oil and gas, it’s fascinating to see reliability engineering making just as much impact in a government lab as it does in heavy industry. It’s really exciting to me to see these programs going into place and having an impact and getting positive feedback around it.

The changes we’ve made better connect our engineers to how the work they do contributes to the incredible research that we’re doing here. It’s about having us all connected through that mission.

Dan: We haven’t opened a major building in a few years, and now we’re coming up on opening BioEPIC, we’ll be pretty close on Collaboration Commons, and potentially at the end of next year LAMP will start some key work. We also have the work for NERSC 10. It’s going to be a lot of work and it’s probably more large capital projects than we’ve ever done before, and it’s going to be exciting. We’re going to need to stretch and that’s how you grow. We’re going to be challenging ourselves next year.

 

How will you address the challenges that come from these changes?

Dan: The way we get through those challenges is by keeping our eyes on the greater interest of the Lab. We have to keep our eyes focused on the Lab’s greater mission, because that’s what makes our Lab special. To do that, we need to partner more with our stakeholders, with project management, and with science because when you’re operating in a facility in an organization where you are constrained on what you can do, the only solution is greater teamwork. So if we all ask ourselves, “Is this the right choice for the Lab?” I think the answers will come.

Scott: One way we’re addressing challenges in the next year is by implementing a data-driven approach to prioritize our work effectively. By leveraging metrics, trends, and KPIs, we can clearly identify where our efforts will have the greatest impact. This enhanced transparency and allows us to align with our Science, Operations, and Projects partners, ensuring we’re all moving in the same direction to deliver maximum value.

Sharon: I would say the big challenge, which is also an opportunity, is that there’s a lot of growth and construction at the Lab. How do we meet that need? I think Dan said it perfectly. We’re focusing on deepening our relationships and collaborations with all of our partners to make sure we’re all driving to the same goal.

 

What have you learned about the people of the Lab?

Scott: I’m struck by how mission-driven and dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge our research partners are. It’s important to understand how passionate they are about what they’re trying to achieve – we [in Facilities Engineering] have to be able to step back and see the entire site from their perspective. We have to see the big picture and help our scientists see what we’re trying to accomplish for all the programs across the Lab.

The other thing that I learned is that our Facilities teams are equally mission-driven. People are here specifically to be a part of the great things that this Lab can achieve.

Sharon: I’m really impressed by the depth of experience that people have. I think that it’s pretty remarkable the kind of bench of knowledge that we have. I think it’s really cool as well, people’s willingness to work and improve.

Dan: Everybody has strong feelings and believes that they’re doing the right thing for the Lab. The people here really care about doing the right thing and care about advancing the mission.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *