ITG PROVISIONALLY LOSES $150,000 IN FEE
WC Monitor
2/21/2014
Idaho Treatment Group, LLC, the managing contractor for the Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Project, has provisionally lost $150,000 in fee for safety issues, though the contractor may be able to earn back a portion, a Department of Energy spokeswoman said late this week. The fee reduction, issued in late September, was first outlined in a report DOE sent to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board earlier this month concerning nuclear criticality safety metrics. According to that report, the fee reduction was due to “Technical Safety Requirement-level violations, recurring events, and demonstrated lack of improvement in worker safety and health.”
According to Danielle Miller, a spokeswoman for the DOE Idaho Operations Office, the Department plans to re-evaluate ITG’s performance in the second quarter of this fiscal year. “The fee reduction that the DNFSB [report] refers to was a provisional reduction, whereby DOE provided ITG the opportunity to earn back this provisional fee by improving its operational and safety performance,” she said in a written response.
The reduction was the third DOE issued to Idaho Treatment Group in Fiscal Year 2013. The contractor also had its fee permanently reduced by $150,000 for the early departure of key personnel; and permanently reduced by 89,426 for what the DOE Idaho Operations Office described as “project and operational safety performance concerns resulting from an adverse performance trend in the AMWTP safety culture and worker safety and health.” ITG’s fee is largely dependent on the amount of waste processed at the AMWTP, for which DOE pays $894.26 per cubic meter of waste shipped. In FY 13, the contractor shipped 4,482 cubic meters, slightly over its target volume. ITG invoiced DOE for 4,000 cubic meters, and after the reductions, DOE paid ITG a total FY 2013 fee of about $3.3 million.
