Bechtel National earned more than $6.5 million, or 83% of its total potential fee, for Department of Energy work in 2022 on the long-anticipated Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant at the Hanford Site in Washington state.
Overall, the company earned $6.53 million out of a potential $7.87 million in fee for the calendar year ended Dec.31, DOE said in a fee scorecard posted online Monday.
This 2022 subjective rating is up from the 74% Bechtel pocketed the prior year when it took home $5.8 million out of a potential $7.9 million.
This time around, Bechtel was judged by DOE’s Office of River Protection at Hanford to be “very good” in five of the six areas rated and “excellent” in the other one.
One area where DOE said Bechtel could improve are procedures for verifying that systems are good to go following maintenance or commissioning. Another area for improvement includes better spare-parts and preventative-maintenance programs, DOE said.
On the other hand, DOE said Bechtel has quickened the pace for critical procurements “despite supply chain challenges.” Bechtel has also strengthened its relationship with other DOE contractors at the site as well as the Washington state Department of Ecology, according to the federal review.
“We received terrific news today from our Office of River Protection (ORP) customer that our team has earned its highest-ever annual rating for our 2022 performance,” Valerie McCain, Bechtel’s project manager, said in an email today to its employees. The email was viewed by Exchange Monitor.
“Thank you for your continued commitment to our mission to vitrify waste and protect the [Columbia] River and our community,” McCain went on to say. “This year will prove to be historic, and these scores reinforce we are on the right path.”
Bechtel has the contract, which began in December 2000 and currently valued at $15 billion, to build the plant to solidify most of Hanford’s 56 million gallons of liquid radioactive tank waste into a more stable glass form. Absent a DOE extension, the contract is set to expire June 22.
The fiscal 2024 budget request from President Joe Biden for DOE said the agency now expects to start the first Direct-Feed-Low-Activity Waste operations at the plant “no later than 2025.” As recently as a few months ago, DOE was talking optimistically about starting to make glass in December 2023.
Now, it seems likely the agency might need extra time granted in a July 2022 amendment to a consent decree allowing DOE and Bechtel an extension to make up for time lost during the COVID-19 pandemic.
