Ferri retires, UCOR organization changing

Mark Ferri, who has led the safe, successful deactivation and demolition work at K-25 since UCOR arrived in Oak Ridge in August 2011, has announced that he will retire from the company at the end of February and will accept a CH2M Hill corporate opportunity in the United Kingdom.

Ferri was part of UCOR’s original, handpicked leadership team. His selection proved a wise one, as progress under his leadership has been stellar. Workers have demolished more than two million square feet of the old gaseous diffusion facility, and more than 15,000 loads of waste have been shipped under the “pack as you go” philosophy that he and his counterpart, Waste Management Manager Jeff Bradford, installed as part of the UCOR way of doing business.

Ferri came to UCOR with an impressive resume, having led successful deactivation and demolition, or  D&D, work at some of the U.S. Department of Energy’s highest profile projects, including plutonium buildings at the Rocky Flats Environmental Technology Park in Colorado and uranium and plutonium facilities at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. His career also includes work in the commercial sector, having led deactivation and demolition at Maine Yankee.

Immediately prior to coming to UCOR, Ferri spent time in England, working as the managing director for CH2M Hill Nuclear Business Group and as special advisor to the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change, or DECC.

“It was my fortunate opportunity to come here and be a part of the team to get K-25 to this point,” said Ferri. “The workforce here is the most skilled, talented and dedicated I have ever worked with. All I and the other leaders had to do was give them the tools and the empowerment, and the results were outstanding.

“When we arrived here, there were 27 units standing at K-25 along with much of the equipment from the West units. Now that the West equipment is gone and we are down to six units, it makes sense to combine them with the nine units at K-27. I’ll miss the people here in Oak Ridge, but my wife and I are looking forward to moving on to our next challenge in the United Kingdom.”

According to UCOR President and Project Manager Leo Sain, UCOR will use this opportunity to streamline its organization and gain efficiencies. Bradford, who formerly led Waste Management, will now lead a new organization called D&D and Waste Management. He is also an original member of the UCOR leadership team and has been integral in the successful, vital integration of D&D and waste shipping thus far in the K-25 demolition process.

Steve Dahlgren, also an original member of the UCOR team, who has been leading demolition work at K-27, Poplar Creek, and the balance of other site facilities, will now be D&D Manager.

“This will allow us to more closely integrate work at K-25 and K-27, which is important because they are similar in type and structure and we can better transfer personnel and use lessons learned from one to the other,” said Sain.

Lane Butler will lead the Waste Management organization on an interim basis.

In addition to deactivating and demolishing K-25 and other cleanup work, UCOR, which is officially known as URS-CH2M Oak Ridge LLC, is responsible for other specific scopes of work at ETTP, the Y-12 National Security Complex, and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.