Bechtel National earned $5 million of the potential $7.87 million 2019 fee for ongoing construction on the Waste Treatment Plant at the Hanford Site in Washington state, the Energy Department said Tuesday.
By claiming an overall score of “good” and winning roughly 64% of the maximum available fee for the 12 months ended Dec. 31, Bechtel improved on its performance from the prior year. For 2018, it received $3.77 million, 47.9% of the available fee of $7.87 million.
According to the performance evaluation from DOE’s Office of River Protection at Hanford, Bechtel was “very good” in three categories: high-level waste and pretreatment; integration of Direct-Feed Low-Activity Waste; and environmental, safety, health, and quality assurance. The company was deemed “good” in two areas: engineering, procurement, and construction; and startup and commissioning. It was only “satisfactory” in project performance, which entails factors such as cost, schedule, and efficiency.
Improving cost is an area for improvement, DOE said. To quicken the project pace, Bechtel drove up overtime costs during the period, the agency said. The scorecard is DOE’s annual subjective evaluation of the company’s performance outside of progress milestones listed in its contract.
“As I’ve said many times, 2019 was a transformative year,” Bechtel Waste Treatment Plant Project Director Valerie McCain said in a memo to employees about the scorecard. Last year, the company completed engineering designs for the facility, delivered all major equipment, and transitioned to a 24/7 shift schedule, she said.
Bechtel has a $14.7 billion contract, which started in December 2000, to build the plant that will vitrify much of the 56 million gallons of radioactive and chemical waste in Hanford’s underground tanks to a more stable glass form. The completion date on the contract is December 2022. Under a federal court deadline, the Waste Treatment Plant is supposed to start treating low-activity radioactive waste by 2023.
