EM’s Office of River Protection (ORP) awarded its Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP) Project contractor nearly $3.8 million.
Office of Environmental Management
May 7, 2019
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RICHLAND, Wash. – EM’s Office of River Protection (ORP) awarded its Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP) Project contractor nearly $3.8 million, or about 48 percent, of the available fee for the performance evaluation period of calendar year 2018.
“The Department of Energy has high expectations for world-class performance by its contractors,” EM Hanford Site Manager Brian Vance. “Bechtel National, Inc.’s (BNI) improved its performance on the project in some key areas, but needs to strive for continued improvement in several others.”
BNI earned an overall average rating of satisfactory, and demonstrated strengths in the following project areas:
- Working with EM and the Washington State Department of Ecology to obtain permit approval for construction of the Effluent Management Facility, a facility needed to treat secondary waste generated when treating tank waste at WTP.
- Improving coordination, tracking, measurement, and reporting on activities that support a program preparing the WTP and workforce to begin treating tank waste as early as 2022.
- Improving abilities to measure contract performance by aligning multiple schedules.
EM identified the following areas for improvement:
- Maintaining components installed during several years of construction to ensure they don’t fail or need replacement during testing and turnover of systems or during commissioning of the plant prior to startup.
- Achieving project deadlines for testing components and turning over systems from construction to commissioning.
- Resolving system testing and turnover delays due to a backlog of maintenance or procurement for replacement parts.
BNI’s 2018 fee award was on pace with the amount the contractor earned the previous year.
View EM’s scorecard for BNI’s latest award fee here.