Pacific Northwest Site Office: Continuing campus progress through the pandemic

Despite a hectic year and operating in a maximum telework mode, the Richland campus of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) continues to develop, improv, and prepare for the future. Throughout the pandemic, PNNL and our Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest Site Office (PNSO) have assessed, adapted, and added controls to ensure the safety of those that require campus access. All while continuing to plan, prepare and execute strategies to safely and securely enable successful scientific and research operations. 

To support the need for clean energy and energy research the Department of Energy (DOE) is investing heavily in PNNL including the addition of several state-of-the-art facilities, as well as securing the underlying parcels of land to ensure the Laboratory remains an enduring national asset. The Energy Sciences Center (ESC) funded by the Office of Science is well into the construction phase and is set to open in late 2021. 

This $90M high performance, sustainable facility will have over 140,000-square-feet of research space and house over 200 PNNL scientists, engineers and research support staff as well as visiting researchers. Not only will the facility support collaborative research and discovery in energy related fields, but it will also demonstrate it through existing, and developing, research partnerships with industry and universities. 

As the ESC construction nears completion, planning and decision making is already underway for the neighboring Grid Storage Launchpad (GSL) facility. 

GSL was just given the green light to proceed into the final design phase with construction beginning next year. The $75M project will support additional energy research, including efforts to strengthen and modernize the nation's power grid. DOE’s Office of Electricity (OE) has identified energy storage as a national priority and their sponsorship of GSL will ensure PNNL will continue to be a significant contributor in energy and grid research once the facility comes online. 

To most of the local community, PNNL is the Sycamore-tree-lined campus in northern Richland, however only a small portion of that area was in fact federally owned. One of the challenges of selecting, placing and constructing new facilities has been the requirement for placement on federal land. This has limited how we approach new construction and modernization of our campus.

The PNNL Richland campus is bounded on all sides, from the Hanford site to the north, to Port of Benton and privately owned land along the others, limiting campus expansion. Working with Battelle, which operates PNNL and owns the original portion of the PNNL’s campus, DOE was able to transition ownership of several parcels that allow for the development of new facilities in the near- and long-term aligned with PNNL’s future facilities and development plans. 

Over the last seven years we have completed four new federal facilities on our campus. Scientific collaboration and integration of efforts is a major driver for new facility placement. The missions of ESC and GSL benefit from proximity to other research facilities which would not have been possible without securing land for federal use as part of the enduring PNNL Richland campus. Departmental ownership of these formerly Battelle owned properties promotes the long-term security of PNNL while positioning us for growth. Going forward the Sycamore tree line does indeed surround our core campus… and denotes your arrival at PNNL.

Aside from our campus, many other changes are underway in the way we work, the systems we use, and the tools we employ. While remotely working alongside the laboratory staff during the pandemic, we have been able to strengthen collaboration and will seek to employ these lessons learned along with new technology to position PNNL for the future. While working remotely can be more efficient for some tasks, we see a future with increasing utilization of hybrid work models – together with Battelle we have begun to prepare by way of a “Future of Work” initiative to enable this mixed mode workforce. This will require reconfiguration of some of our current facilities, implementation of new technologies, etc. – and becomes an even more important tool for space planning if we realize the growth we are forecasting. 

During the pandemic we have sought out and employed creative solutions to keep staff safe and continue the important work of PNNL while keeping an eye on the future. New and modernized facilities and innovative tools will transform the way we work in the future, providing capabilities, supporting collaboration, driving innovation, discovery and world-class science and technology.

Often these solutions provide opportunity for innovation in other areas, like the first virtual Science Bowl and virtual internship experiences, while continuing to encourage students, themselves affected by the pandemic, to excel in mathematics and science and to pursue careers in these fields.

This story was originally published April 30, 2021 at 12:16 AM with the headline "Pacific Northwest Site Office: Continuing campus progress through the pandemic."