When your mission is to safely clean up some of the most complex nuclear facilities in the world, information is not a support function—it is the mission. 

At United Cleanup Oak Ridge (UCOR), we are responsible for environmental remediation across the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee. That work includes deactivating and demolishing former nuclear facilities, managing transuranic and liquid waste, maintaining aging infrastructure, and preparing land for safe, future use. 

Every decision we make depends on trusted information. And a lot of that information goes back decades. 

A mission built on decades of records 

Some of the documents we manage date back to the 1940s and 1950s, when Oak Ridge played a critical role in the Manhattan Project. Engineering drawings, safety basis documents, surveys, procedures, sampling reports—millions of records created across different eras, formats, and systems. 

For years, our challenge wasn’t just storing information. It was finding it, trusting it, and ensuring it was governed correctly—sometimes for hundreds of years. 

As federal mandates pushed us to become fully electronic, that challenge grew. Paper backups disappeared. Manual processes increased. Records specialists spent years learning how to summarize documents, apply metadata, and assign more than 800 different retention schedules. Even experts sometimes disagree. 

We needed a way to shrink the complex—without compromising security, compliance, or mission integrity. 

Documentum as our system of record 

OpenText™ Documentum™ Content Management has been part of my career—and UCOR’s—since the early days. Today, Documentum CM is our sole system of record. Everything we create ultimately lives there. 

With OpenText Documentum Content Management for Engineering, we’re extending consistent governance across engineering projects and preparing to bring additional functions like HR and supply chain into the same ecosystem. 

For us, Documentum is the backbone. It’s where projects, engineering content, and records come together in one authoritative place. That foundation matters, especially in highly regulated environments like ours. 

But we also knew that to move forward, we had to do more than store documents. We had to make them work harder for us. 

Crawling and walking before we run with AI 

That’s where OpenText™ Knowledge Discovery came in. 

Before you can apply advanced AI, you have to clean and understand your unstructured data. OpenText Knowledge Discovery helps us do exactly that. It automates document summaries, enriches metadata, assists with classification, converts audio and video to text, detects PII, and performs OCR on difficult historical documents. 

In short, it makes decades of content searchable, understandable, and usable. 

I often describe Knowledge Discovery as how we crawl and walk before we run with AI. It prepares the data so future AI—like OpenText™ Aviator, which is on our roadmap—can deliver real value instead of noise. 

One of the biggest differentiators for us is that we can do all of this securely, on premises, which is essential in government and regulated environments. 

The power of partnership 

Technology alone doesn’t solve problems. People do. 

Our proof of concept with Knowledge Discovery followed a “train the trainer” model, guided by OpenText Professional Services. Within nine weeks, we were already processing legacy documents, testing predictive retention scheduling, and building workflows using NiFi-based connectors. 

I’ll be honest—I couldn’t have done it without the OpenText experts. They helped us stand the system up quickly and pushed us further than I initially thought possible. That experience turned me into a champion—not just within UCOR, but across the DOE ecosystem. 

Creating a blueprint for the DOE 

Today, we’re demonstrating these capabilities across other DOE organizations and national laboratories. We’re sharing best practices, aligning solutions, and helping to create a repeatable modernization blueprint. 

That collaboration matters. The labs and cleanup sites may have different missions, but we all face similar challenges: data silos, aging systems, regulatory pressure, and the need to do more with fewer resources—while protecting taxpayers. 

With Knowledge Discovery, we’re already seeing real impact: 

• Faster discovery of legacy records 
• Reduced manual metadata and summarization work 
• Improved compliance and risk reduction 

Audio and video content is now searchable. Sensitive information is easier to identify and protect. Records specialists can focus on validation and quality instead of manual data entry. 

And this is just the beginning. 

Looking ahead 

With OpenText Aviator on the horizon, we’re exploring advanced use cases like preventative maintenance, contractual compliance checks, and automated record validation—asking smarter questions of our information and getting real answers. 

Our goal is simple: shrink the complex. Build a clean, harmonious ecosystem of solutions that supports our mission, enables innovation, and saves taxpayer dollars. 

And with OpenText as our partner, we’re well on our way. 

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