The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory's efforts to cut costs have made it the most competitive lab in the Department of Energy's national system, Doug Olesen said Monday.

Olesen, president and chief executive officer of Battelle Memorial Institute, was in the Tri-Cities on Monday night to honor PNNL employees and is here today for management meetings. Battelle-Northwest operates PNNL for DOE.

"I'm well satisfied with (PNNL Director) Bill Madia's efforts here, which bodes well for this laboratory's future," Olesen said Monday.

Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary has repeatedly praised the Battelle's cost-savings efforts and its science.

In May, President Clinton ordered DOE, the Department of Defense and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to review whether national laboratories are cost effective and should continue to operate.

"Those labs must run as efficiently as possible," the president said earlier.

That's what Madia has tried to do.

"We want to become the premier laboratory in the system," Madia has said.

He has cited several cost-saving steps. Those include using a credit card for procurements not exceeding $5,000 to speed purchasing, using an electronic time recording system to eliminate paperwork and mistakes, using a statistical report to reduce federal regulations requiring every piece of equipment to be tagged and identified annually and cutting travel costs.

Olesen and Madia hope those efforts will convince DOE to extend by five years its five-year contract that ends Sept. 30, making the laboratory an exception to the agency's policy to rebid expiring contracts.

Contract extensions have been given at the Argonne, Oak Ridge and Brookhaven national labs.

"If we're performing at a level that exceeds DOE's expectation, then it won't be in the best interest of the government to recompete this contract," Madia said.

Battelle-Northwest operated the laboratory with a budget of $585 million in the fiscal year ending Sept. 30. The 1996 budget is $530 million, with about 90 percent of the total funded by DOE and other federal customers.

PNNL is attempting to increase its private business, Olesen said.

"We're getting much more focused in certain industrial sectors, trying to align technology and development with need," he added. That focus includes chemicals for agriculture uses, pharmaceuticals, medical products, the automotive industry and energy sources.