John Ciucci to Serve as New Head of CHPRC
WC Monitor
6/20/2014
John Ciucci has been picked to be president of CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co. at Hanford effective Oct. 1. He will replace John Fulton, who last week announced his retirement from the position effective Sept. 30. Ciucci came to Hanford in 2011 as the chief operations officer for CH2M Hill, the contractor responsible for central Hanford and groundwater cleanup. Bill Kirby, the deputy project manager for Washington Closure Hanford, will move to CH2M Hill to take Ciucci’s former position on Oct. 1. Ciucci has 30 year of experience leading operations and projects, including 24 years in Department of Energy nuclear project management. “He has managed billion-dollar programs, improved safety performance and ensured cost-effective project completion on schedule and within budget,” Fulton said in a message to employees.
Before taking the Hanford job, Ciucci served as the director of environmental management for the Nevada National Security Site. He also has held leadership positions at Rocky Flats for CH2M Hill; for British Nuclear Fuels in Oak Ridge and at Sellafield; and for Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory Naval Nuclear Program in West Mifflin, Penn. He has a master’s in chemical engineering from Pennsylvania State University. Kirby now is responsible for the day-to-day operations of cleanup for Washington Closure. He has more than 30 years of experience in the nuclear industry, working in project management, decommissioning, engineering and construction. He has previously worked at the Idaho Cleanup Project and Rocky Flats.
Wash. Closure Earns More Than $30 Million in Schedule Incentive Fee
WC Monitor
6/20/2014
The Department of Energy has paid Washington Closure Hanford a long-worked-for fee of $31.2 million for completing more than 800 cleanup tasks in the Hanford river corridor since its contract began in 2005. The company took a risk and agreed to a 10-year cost and incentive fee contract that covered its costs and provided a relatively modest amount of fixed annual fee, according to Washington Closure. The contract also included the opportunity for two large incentive fees, one for finishing work early and the other for keeping costs in check. The Schedule Performance Incentive Fee offered $32.8 million if incentivized work was completed 22 months before September 2015. Washington Closure earned most of that money by completing work a full 20 months early.
Washington Closure has cleaned out and demolished 284 buildings and excavated 523 waste sites, some of them pieces of irradiated nuclear fuel and waste that could catch fire when exposed to the air. The last work to be completed for the fee was lifting the underground 340 Vault, which weighed 1,100 tons, high enough on Jan. 31 to allow a transport trailer to later be backed underneath it to haul it to the Environmental Restoration Disposal Facility. Additional time was needed after January for DOE and, in some cases, DOE regulatory agencies to document and verify that the work had met all requirements. Part of the payment will be shared with about 1,200 current and former employees. Knowing they could share in the payment gave workers the same incentive as the contractor to complete work and do it safely, said Scott Sax, Washington Closure president. The payment to Washington Closure was contingent on safe operations. “We’re very pleased with the work done and how they performed,” said Mark French, DOE director for Hanford work near the Columbia River.
Work Also Done Under Budget So Far
Work also has been done under budget to date, putting Washington Closure in line for a cost performance fee as work is completed under its current contract next year. Washington Closure now anticipates it will finish work about $250 million under budget on a $2.8 billion contract. The contract allows Washington Closure to keep 20 percent of money saved at the end of the contract as an incentive payment, which could amount to a payment of about $50 million. The rest of the cost savings are plowed back into cleanup, allowing more work to be completed. The substantial savings shows that “this has been a very, very good contract mechanism for the taxpayer,” French said. It ensured that the taxpayers were not making payments for work that had cost overruns or that failed to be completed on schedule as the contract concluded, Sax said.
Work Has Changed Over Contract
The schedule incentive fee originally included a possible $40 million payment. That was reduced to a maximum of $32.8 million as some work was pulled out of the possible award amount as proposed funding for cleanup along the Columbia River was less than planned starting in 2012. However, Washington Closure could earn another schedule award as additional cleanup is completed. Work was both added and subtracted from the contract since work stared in 2005, and the value of the contract grew from $1.8 billion to an anticipated $2.8 billion. Much of the increase is due to the discovery that far more waste needed to be excavated that estimated once digging began on burial grounds and more waste also was disposed of at the Environmental Restoration Disposal Facility. Additional work was added when economic stimulus money became available in 2009. A change in plans to allow Pacific Northwest National Laboratory to continue to use some Hanford buildings in the 300 also increased work, because utilities had to be individually isolated to allow continued use, Sax said. In other cases, buildings that were expected to continue to be used have been scheduled for demolition and added to the Washington Closure contract.
Reductions in the work scope included removing work at the K Reactors from the Washington Closure contract because the K West Reactor basin continues to hold sludge. The 618-10 and 618-11 Burial Grounds and the 324 Building, which sits over a highly radioactive waste spill, are expected to be part of a contract extension for Washington Closure. Talks on an extension of the Washington Closure contract past 2015 are underway and the issue should be resolved soon, Sax said.
