AIKEN, S.C. – Savannah River Nuclear Solutions’ (SRNS) Supply Chain Management (SCM) Center of Excellence (COE) team has been named the 2026 Innovator of the Year by the South Carolina Manufacturing Extension Partnership (SCMEP). The award was presented during the SC Workforce and Manufacturing Summit in Columbia, South Carolina.
As the Savannah River Site (SRS) advances toward full production operations and enhanced procurement capabilities for the National Nuclear Security Administration, the Field Procurement COE, established in June 2025, has become essential in supporting the growing scale and complexity of national defense and environmental missions. Embedded directly within program and project areas, procurement professionals now partner with eight mission organizations, working alongside engineers, planners, maintenance teams, project managers, and customers from project conception to execution.
“The FP COE was established to focus on area-specific operations and to better support SRS missions during a period of rapid expansion and major facility upgrades,” said Fred Freeman, Senior Director, SCM Planning and Execution. “This shift replaced reactive purchasing with proactive planning, preventing problems before they could impact cost, quality, or schedule. The result has been a cultural and operational transformation that has improved quality, accelerated project delivery, strengthened customer partnerships, reduced risk, and established procurement as a true strategic advantage across one of the nation’s most important nuclear security sites.”
Key improvements include standardized technical requirements, expanded specialized writing support, and the implementation of the Forecast and Planning tool, an enterprise-wide system providing visibility into procurement schedules, milestone tracking, acquisition status, and long lead material planning. SRNS leadership can now rely on predictive data rather than historical snapshots, reducing schedule uncertainty and improving responsiveness.
“This award is a direct reflection of the remarkable work this team has accomplished since 2025,” said Jeff Griffin, SRNS President and Chief Executive Officer. “From streamlining processes to building smarter solutions that make our operations safer, more efficient, and more collaborative, the Field Procurement COE has delivered measurable benefits while supporting some of the Department of Energy’s most critical and urgent national security and environmental cleanup missions.”
Key accomplishments:
- Met 100% of procurement milestones tied to performance-based incentives
- Achieved 100% on-time completion of customer package reviews by the Statement of Work (SOW) COE team and a near-perfect 98.6% SOW first-pass yield
- Delivered 9,000 procurement line items ahead of schedule, accelerating some project timelines by up to 14 weeks
- Improved requisition accuracy through better first-pass yield performance, reducing errors to under 2% for all requisitions reviewed or created by COE teams
“This team understood the call for urgency,” said Jay Johnson, SRNS Deputy Senior Vice President, Business Services and Chief Contracting Officer. “When critical material is needed, they don’t hesitate. In one instance, team members jumped in a truck to pick up material themselves to save days in the schedule. These are the types of decisions we need to see across the enterprise, consistently identifying alternative solutions to keep mission milestones on track. We are incredibly proud of this achievement.”
Savannah River Nuclear Solutions, a Fluor and HII partnership company, is responsible for the management and operations of the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site, located near Aiken, South Carolina.
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