Jeremy L. Dillon
RW Monitor
8/22/2014
Bechtel Government Services Canada has joined with Hatch Ltd. and Golder Associates Ltd. to bid on the new contract to manage Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd.’s Chalk River laboratories under the team name Canadian Nuclear Revitalization Partners, the team announced this week. The Canadian government’s procurement for a contract to manage Atomic Energy of Canada Limited’s nuclear laboratories, including the Chalk River Laboratories, the Whiteshell Laboratories, the three prototype reactor sites and the Laprade heavy water storage site under a Government-owned Contractor-operated (GoCo) model, is still in the Request for Response Evaluation phase. “The CNRP team is an exciting combination of industry leaders with demonstrated experience and impressive depth,” said John Howanitz, general manager for Nuclear Security and Operations at Bechtel. “Our team complements the labs’ mission and is equipped to ensure that the laboratories and surrounding communities thrive. CNRP is a purpose-built team designed to meet Canada’s objectives and promote the world-class status of the enterprise.”
From Bechtel’s perspective, having Canadian partners is a key part of the company’s approach to the work. “Working in Canada is different form working the U.S.,” Bechtel Manager of Marketing and Business Development and CNRP Representative David Campbell told RW Monitor this week. “We’ve been working in Canada for 70 years, and we have taken an approach that I think is very different from what we or others may approach a U.S. [Department of Energy] contract. We looked around and we spent a lot of time with our traditional competitors and teammates, and we thought the best approach was to partner with people who understand the on-the-ground environment, who have real experience on infrastructure, regulation, and environment— things that will be key for any successful execution moving forward, not just background capability and past performance.”
Campbell later added that Bechtel is focused on a long-term strategy. “The first contract is very important. It’s unique, new for them, and so they need someone who understands that, but there are longer durations here that are different than any in the U.S. We have our model in the U.S. Canada is looking to do something different. They want to stabilize and move forward with what they are doing, but there is a longer term play here to create an organization that is not principally a government-funded organization. We think we fit that very well.”
Campbell said CNRP will seek to deliver a technically capable team that can leverage the site to reach its full capacity. “We have capability on some of the technical requirements, but Canada isn’t just looking for, in our interpretation, someone to come in and bring in a bunch of people to provide technical capabilities,” Campbell said. “They are looking for a transformative organization that will change the site and help the people who are there, who are every technically capable already, move forward and create an enabling organization.” Included in some of these transformations, Campbell said, is leveraging the skilled workforce at the site. “At the end of the day, our view is that that workforce is very technically capable, but to some degree has been, because of the nature of being more of a governmental organization, probably restricted to some degree from being able to do and perform to its full potential. I think the government acknowledges that. And that’s going to be our approach: how do we best unleash the workforce to go off and do what it already knows how to do?”
When asked how the Canadian bid will differ from Bechtel’s unsuccessful bids in the UK cleanup market—including a bid earlier this year on the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority’s Magnox sites—Campbell said he couldn’t comment specifically on the UK experience but noted: “If this ends up being a race to the bottom from a price perspective, I would say we remain having those challenges,” Campbell said.
Four Teams Pursuing Work So Far
Canadian Nuclear Revitalization Partners joins three other teams that have as of late July qualified to move forward in the procurement process, Natural Resources Canada announced in earlier this month. The other teams include: Innovation Canada Alliance, made up of B&W, Battelle, and the U.K. firm Cavendish Nuclear; Canadian Nuclear Energy Alliance, made up of EnergySolutions, CH2M Hill, Lockheed Martin and SNC Lavalin; and Northern Nuclear Laboratories Alliance, which is believed to be made up of URS and Ontario Power Generation, although the companies have not officially made any formal announcements. Additional teams have until Sept. 9 to submit under the RFRE, an extension from the previous Aug. 6 deadline, and current teams have until Oct. 29 to add supplemental team members.
The timeline for rest of the procurement appears on a trajectory for a spring 2015 decision date. According to the Natural resources Canada RFRE, the Request for Proposal should be released this coming fall with a closing date in early 2015. Selection and approval of a preferred bidder would then take place in Spring of 2015 with contact finalization happening in summer/fall of 2015.
