Bechtel National won about 74% of its potential award fee for work on the Waste Treatment Plant at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site during 2021, according to a fee scorecard released Thursday.
The company claimed roughly $5.8 million out of a potential $7.9 million for construction on the vitrification plant between Jan. 1 and Dec. 31, 2021, according to the DOE document. The outcome beats the company’s 70% result in 2020 and the 64% for 2019.
“I’m happy to share the positive news that the Office of River Protection has recognized our team’s strong performance in 2021 with the Project’s highest-ever annual rating,” of 73.6%, Valerie McCain, Waste Treatment Plant project director and Bechtel senior vice president, said in an email message to Bechtel staff at Hanford.
In late 2023, DOE expects the plant to start solidifying low-level radioactive tank waste, left over from decades of plutonium production during the Cold War arms race with the Soviet Union, into a glass form.
Vitrification of high-level radioactive tank waste at the Hanford plant is not scheduled to start for more than a decade and that timeline could be influenced by long-running “holistic” talks between DOE, the Washington Department of Ecology and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Construction money for the High-Level Waste Facility gets a big boost in the fiscal 2022 budget deal recently passed by Congress.
Bechtel’s subjective job performance was deemed “good” in four areas — project performance, environmental safety and health, engineering and construction for direct-feed low-activity waste (DFLAW) as well as startup and commissioning/operational culture category, according to the DOE review. Bechtel was also judged “very good” by DOE on integration of DFLAW and “excellent” on its work on the High-Level Waste Facility.
A common thread running through DOE’s “areas for improvement” was ensuring proper site coordination and resources as the Waste Treatment Plant moves from construction to commissioning, startup and eventually around the clock operations of DFLAW.
Bechtel should “ensure that support programs (maintenance, engineering, work control, etc.) are developed and implemented in advance of need dates during the commissioning phase to mitigate schedule risk,” DOE wrote in the scorecard. The company should also anticipate changes in maintenance and staffing requirements to deal with problems that arise as the plant prepares to start operations.
Bechtel has already implemented actions to fix several of the areas for improvement cited by DOE, McCain said in the message to employees.
Bechtel achievements during 2021 include moving from startup testing to commissioning of the Low-Activity Waste (LAW) Facility and Effluent Management Facility. Bechtel also received permit updates from the state for those facilities as well as the Analytical Laboratory.
Bechtel has a $14.7-billion contract to build the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant. The contract dates to December 2000 and is currently scheduled to run through the end of 2022.
