Executive Council Directory

Mark Whitney is the Executive Vice President and General Manager for the Nuclear & Environment (N&E) Strategic Business Unit of AECOM’s Management Services Group. He is responsible for operations for AECOM’s work with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), the UK Nuclear Decommissioning Authority and government and commercial nuclear facilities in Europe, Asia, and Canada.

More specifically, Mr. Whitney oversees N&E-led operations in high-level radioactive waste (HLW) management at DOE’s Savannah River Site and the Hanford Site (Savannah River Remediation and Washington River Protection Solutions, respectively); the demolition and remediation of Manhattan Project and Cold War nuclear facilities by URS | CH2M Oak Ridge at the East Tennessee Technology Park; Transuranic Waste disposal at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in Carlsbad, New Mexico, by the Nuclear Waste Partnership; and decontamination and decommissioning of the Dounreay Fast Reactor and operation of the Low-Level Waste Repository in the UK.  He also oversees N&E support for the Hanford Waste Treatment and Immobilization Project (WTP) and at National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) sites across the U.S.

Prior to joining AECOM, Mr. Whitney spent 11 years as a member of the U.S. Senior Executive Service with the DOE, serving in a variety of leadership positions, most recently as the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for DOE’s Office of Environmental Management. In addition, Mr. Whitney served as the acting Assistant Secretary for Environmental Management and the Manager of Environmental Management’s Oak Ridge Office. Within NNSA, he was the acting Principal Assistant Deputy Administrator for Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation, where he oversaw the operations of the Department’s global nuclear security and nonproliferation programs, and Assistant Deputy Administrator for Nonproliferation and International Security.

He also served as the Executive Director of DOE’s Moscow Office, where he led the Department’s in-country activities on nuclear security, nonproliferation, and energy security, including power plant construction projects in Zheleznogorsk and Seversk that provided replacement heat and electricity capacity to enable the shutdown of the last Russian plutonium production reactors.

Previous positions include: President, Global Strategies Consulting; International Services Business Unit Manager, Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC); and Director of Russian Programs, Institute for International Cooperative Environmental Research — Florida State University (FSU).

Mr. Whitney is a graduate of DOE’s Nuclear Executive Leadership Training Program and holds a Bachelor of Arts degree and an MBA in Finance & Investments.

Peggy McCullough is a Senior vice President of Bechtel Group responsible for a portfolio of nuclear security sites and projects executing more than $5 billion in work annually including management and operation of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Y-12, Pantex and Bechtel Plant Machinery, Inc. She is also President of Bechtel power with responsibility for Bechtel’s commercial nuclear power business world-wide.

Projects within her Nuclear Security and Operations business line are responsible for safely disassembling U.S. nuclear weapons while ensuring the remaining stockpile is safe, secure, and effective. They apply national security science to a broad spectrum of endeavors from basic science to advanced research and development while modernizing aging, Cold War-era infrastructure for the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration.

McCullough has more than three decades of engineering, procurement, construction, startup and commissioning, and operations experience. She became a Bechtel senior vice president in 2014 and was named general manager of Nuclear Security and Operations in December of 2017.

She joined Bechtel in 1988 and has successfully taken on leadership roles on a number of Bechtel projects covering environmental remediation, demilitarization, nonproliferation and global security.

From 2003 to 2006, McCullough was deputy general manager of Bechtel SAIC, the management and operations contractor on the U.S. Department of Energy’s Yucca Mountain Project. She then served as manager of Functions for the Bechtel division handling government work.

McCullough then served in Australia as project director of the $1.5B Daunia Coking Coal Project in Queensland where she took the project to greater than 95 percent completion under budget and ahead of schedule.

Most recently, McCullough was project director for the $16.8 billion Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant at the Department of Energy’s Hanford site in Washington state, the nation’s most complex radioactive waste treatment plant, leading the team that made significant progress toward construction completion and startup of the plant’s first phase.
Peggy holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from San Francisco State University.

Jeff Stevens is Vice President of Operations for BWX Technologies, Inc., where he oversees operations for the Technical Services Group at 14 U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) sites.

Mr. Stevens has 30 years’ experience in managing government and commercial delivery organizations. He has led complex nuclear programs, including the decommissioning of DOE’s three gaseous diffusion facilities in Oak Ridge, Tenn., which spanned 4.9 million square feet and housed more than 328 million pounds of radioactively-contaminated material; the

Savannah River Site’s Waste Management organization; and the Rocky Flats decommissioning program. Jeff has implemented cultural change, overhead reductions, corporate restructuring/integration and infrastructure development.  During his career, Mr. Stevens has led more than 100 decontamination and decommissioning, waste management and remediation projects at more than 60 nuclear/radiological sites, integrated decommissioning programs in 400 facilities, decommissioned more than 150 facilities, remediated 65 sites, and made more than 12,000 waste shipments.

A graduate of the Colorado School of Mines, Mr. Stevens holds a Bachelor of Science in Mining Engineering, with minors in Metallurgical Engineering and Mineral Economics. He served as Lieutenant in the United States Navy, where he was selected for the elite Navy Nuclear Propulsion Program, earning engineering officer certification from the Navy and the Department of Energy.

Greg Meyer has over 35 years of nuclear operations and safety experience. As senior Vice president for Operations, Greg is responsible for Fluor Corporation’s Environment and Nuclear business line, which includes operations serving the Department of Energy, the National Nuclear Security Administration and the National Decommissioning Authority in the UK.

Before joining Fluor, Greg served four years at B&W Pantex, half that time as President and General Manager. In addition to his career at the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Pantex Plant, he has held significant senior management positions in operations, project management, and project support at three other Department of Energy sites: Hanford, Richland, Washington; Savannah River, Aiken, South Carolina, and Rocky Flats, Golden, Colorado. He has been a nuclear operations project manager, a safeguards and security director and an Environment, Safety, Health and Quality director.

Mr. Meyer completed a 24-year career in the U. S. Navy. A graduate of the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program, he served on five nuclear submarines and two submarine squadron staffs. Highlights of his career included assignment as Commanding Officer of the USS Scranton (SSN-756) and an overseas diplomatic post in Geneva, Switzerland, where he was the Joint Chiefs of Staff Representative to the Conference on Disarmament and a senior member of the U.S. Delegation that negotiated the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban treaty.

Mr. Meyer received his BS in marine engineering from the U.S. Naval Academy and MS in nuclear engineering from the University of Wisconsin. He is a graduate of the National War College. He is certified as a Certified Safety Professional and Project Management Professional.

Bob Wilkinson is the president of Mission Support Alliance (MSA), a joint venture with Leidos and Centerra Group. Bob has close to 26 years of experience at Hanford and leads the MSA team, providing a broad range of site and infrastructure services to the Department of Energy and other contractors at the Hanford Site.

Formerly the chief operating officer at MSA, he has a wealth of experience working with site services and the Hanford contractors, providing integrated support to maximize efficiencies. Prior to joining MSA in 2015, he served as the manager of Environment, Safety, Health and Quality at Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS), responsible for environmental protection, safety and health, security and emergency services, radiological controls, quality assurance, contractor assurance and vapor recovery support, as well as having acted as their chief operating officer and the manager of Base Operations. His professional background has included managing the demolition of nuclear and high-risk industrial facilities, remediation of waste sites, and surveillance and maintenance of 530 waste sites, nine nuclear facilities and 150 radiological/industrial facilities at Hanford.

Bob’s tenure at Hanford has afforded him with the opportunity to work in all aspects of operations – tanks farms, operating nuclear facilities with emphasis on waste packaging and treatment, project management, environmental compliance, construction management, engineering, quality assurance, emergency response, and radiological control — and all phases of project execution, ranging from early startup to commissioning.

Bob graduated from Montana State University with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and earned a master’s degree in business administration from Eastern Oregon University. Bob is a Certified Project Management Professional and a Certified Human Performance Evaluator.

He was named Manager of the Year in 2008 by the Mid-Columbia National Management Association.

Mr. Hall has many years of experience in technology development, program management, systems integration, process development, systems engineering, environmental restoration of nuclear chemical facilities and waste management. He is currently Executive Vice President and COO of L&L Associates, Inc. L&L Associates Inc. is headquartered in Orlando Florida and has expertise in developing successful program management and program strategies to accomplish complex technical and programmatic missions for the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense

In his capacity of Executive Vice President of L&L Associates, Inc. Mr. Hall has served as interim Chief Operating Officer for Kaiser Hill Company at the Rocky Flats site from April 2001 until January 2002. In this position, his leadership helped to restore a positive working relationship with the DOE customer, raise the ESH&Q level of performance, and improve the cost and schedule earned value from a negative to a positive trend before turning his position over to his successor.

Mr. Hall has advised and assisted the DOE in technical baseline assessments of complex wide programs such as the WTP Best and Brightest External Pretreatment Flow sheet Review, the Bulk Vit External Review, and continues to serve as a technical advisor to the Department.

Mr. Hall has served as President and General Manager of Lockheed Martin Hanford Corporation where he managed the Tank Waste Remediation Project. This project, which included storage, characterization, and future retrieval systems of over 55 million gallons of both high and low level radioactive waste in 177 underground storage tanks located in Richland Washington, was reengineered and set on a success path under his leadership. His responsibilities at Hanford also included site wide Information Resource Management and Systems Engineering functions supporting fifteen contractors with a workforce of over 8000 people.

Previous to the Hanford project, Mr. Hall was Vice President of Lockheed Martin Environmental Management and Enrichment (EMER) for five DOE sites located in 3 states (Tennessee, Kentucky, and Ohio) with a work force of approximately 7500 people and an annual operating budget of over $1 billion. Under his leadership, Environmental cleanup programs were initiated and enhanced in Groundwater Treatment and Remediation, Radiological and Chemical burial ground recovery and disposition, startup and operation of the first US-DOE TSCA incinerator and High Level and Low Level Nuclear Waste stabilization.

In collaboration with DOE, Mr. Hall led a first of its kind small business outsourcing program for over $200 million per year of environmental restoration work within East Tennessee. During his tenure, the Oak Ridge Gaseous Diffusion Plant received multiple awards for excellence including Al Gore’s Hammer Award for cost savings and a DOE Tiger Team rating of 89%. Under Mr. Hall’s leadership, the EMER program grew from $250M program to a $900M funding level. This accelerated all five sites towards Environmental compliance agreements and clean up of the DOE Gaseous Diffusion legacy waste.

From 1960 – 1990, Mr. Hall participated in the development of weapon systems and space programs for Martin Marietta of Orlando, FL. His Aerospace experience has included the design, test, production and fielding of numerous electronic and missile programs including space launched systems. Under Mr. Hall’s leadership, Martin Marietta developed and initiated a unique chemically controlled Zero Discharge System for environmentally compliant state of the art ultra-micro circuit development and processing. In 1986 he led the Martin Marietta Corporation in achieving regulatory compliance in its Baltimore, MD., Cape Canaveral, Orlando and Tennessee Operations. This effort involved designing, implementing or converting all Martin Marietta chemical processing operations and production operations into EPA and state of the art compliance. It also involved establishing remediation programs for burial grounds and groundwater cleanup. Mr. Hall’s Aerospace experience includes the THOR-Delta Space launch Systems, Pershing deployment, Copperhead, Hellfire, LANTIRN, CNCE, and Patriot systems. He provided the technical and project leadership to transform the Orlando Production Operations into a statistically controlled (SPC) Zero Defect Enterprise. These operations were granted one of the first Audit Free Status by DCAA.

Awards and Honors

Mr. Hall has received numerous awards, including a Hammer Award for enhanced work planning for Lockheed Martin Hanford. DOE-RL gave special recognition to Mr. Hall’s company at Hanford. His experience in both DOE and DoD facilities spans four EPA regions in the US. He is the recipient of seven Total Quality Management Awards (TQM) presented by the governor of Tennessee for work at the K25 facility. He has received the Hedgepeth Award for environmental conservation in the state of Florida. Mr. Hall has extensive experience in Leadership, Project Management and Programmatic Technical Proposal development. Mr. Hall has been an inspirational leader and mentor to many of the key personnel leaders in the DOE enterprise.

Education

BS in Mathematics/Engineering, Rollins College 1964
MS in Physics, Rollins College 1970
Advanced Study-Systems Eng., Univ. of Florida 1970-1975

Professional Activities

• Served on Secretary of Energy’s Quality Council
• Served as an appointee of the Florida Governor to the Florida State
• Emergency Response Commission
• Worked extensively with the EPA regions III, IV, V, X (Northwest) and 7 separate state Regulatory agencies.
• Board member of the Tri City Development Economic Council in
• Richland, WA
• Worked extensively with Congressional delegations
• Adjunct professor in mathematics in the Florida College System
• Served as an advisor to the Engineering Department at the University of Central Florida
• Board member for numerous community activities
• Director Emeritus of EFCOG and is one of the original members of this organization dedicated to contractor support to the DOE mission.

As Vice President and General Manager, Linda Kobel leads LATA-Sharp Remediation Services, LLC (LSRS), providing a unique blend of operations management, financial management and business development to the government (both DOE and DOD) and commercial industries.  LSRS is the  field execution arm of Los Alamos Technical Associates, one of the most successful small businesses in the DOE/NNSA environmental remediation services field, having performed over one billion dollars in environmental projects over the last 5 years alone.

With a strong knowledge of operations and financial management functions at the Department of Energy as well as both nuclear and fossil plant sites, she has an exceptional understanding of planning, integration and risk management required to maximize project success. In addition to leading LSRS, Ms. Kobel provides leadership, mentoring and oversight of LATA’s DOE portfolio, which currently represents over $450M in contract value and has managed the full spectrum of business services for two large DOE sites (Portsmouth and Paducah).

Prior to joining LATA, Linda was the President of Enercon Federal Services where she integrated companywide government operations and sales including planning, budgeting, forecasting and revenue management with a focus on compliance and project integration. As a Senior Vice President for EnergySolutions, she was responsible for providing strategic business solutions for DOE contracts including serving in concurrent roles as Business Manager for both the Portsmouth Environmental Remediation and Uranium Disposition Services contracts. She achieved outstanding personal and team results early in her career during her tenure with the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations.

From 1994 to 2008, Ms. Kobel was the Chief Operating Officer (COO) and Co-Founder of Link Resources, Inc., a global operations and management company that provides senior consulting services and facility operations to fossil and nuclear utilities, health care, insurance, manufacturing, technology, government and non-profit sectors, as well as DOE operations at sites such as Hanford, Oak Ridge National Labs, and Idaho.  At Link Resources, Ms. Kobel provided due  diligence and transition services to the power plant industry where her entrepreneurial and business instincts; along with clarity of strategy and vision, contributed to multiple companies’ continued growth and success.

Her blend of “big business and small business” experience, coupled with her passion for linking people, processes, and operations and how strategic business solutions can improve company efficiencies qualifies her as a unique candidate for contributing to EFCOG’s mission of promoting excellence in DOE Operations.

Linda holds a BBA in Management from Kennesaw State University.

As Business Manager and Chief Financial Officer for Savannah River Remediation LLC, Sandra Fairchild is responsible for all aspects of financial, procurement, contract, information technology and budget management affecting SRR, the Liquid Waste Contractor located at the Savannah River Site (SRS). The current contract value is $3.1 billion.

Ms. Fairchild has over 28 years of diversified experience in the fields of technical planning and controls management, procurement, contracts administration, accounting, earned value management, pension and benefits administration, information technology including cyber security, risk management and governmental negotiations. She is licensed by the state of South Carolina as a certified public accountant.

Prior to her current position, Ms. Fairchild was Chief Financial Officer for Washington Savannah River Company (WSRC) Liquid Waste contract and Management and Operations organizations. In these positions, her responsibilities involved the oversight of $1 billion annual operating programs with highly diverse missions.

During her career, she has held positions of increasing financial management responsibilities, including WSRC Operations Business Unit controller, with responsibilities for financial oversight of $500 million construction projects, and WSRC Closure Business Unit controller, where she had responsibilities for financial oversight of Environmental Management and National Nuclear Security Administration programs.

Prior to working at SRS, Ms. Fairchild was senior auditor for the South Carolina State Auditors Office. In that capacity, she had responsibility for oversight of companies receiving federal or state funding.

Ms. Fairchild is an honorary lifetime member of the Aiken Junior Women’s Club, a member of the Aiken High School Booster Club and serves as Treasurer for the Aiken Technical College Foundation.

Education

• College of Charleston Bachelor of Science, Business Administration
• Certified Public Accountant