Staff Reports
WC Monitor
5/15/2015
Hanford cleanup contractor CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co. has been awarded 98 percent of the possible fee it could earn from the Department of Energy for its performance in Fiscal Year 2014. That was slightly better than the 95 percent of possible fee it earned for work performed in FY’13. For FY 2014 the contractor was paid almost $9.7 million out of a possible fee of slightly more than $9.8 million, DOE said in a fee evaluation summary released this week that rated the contractor’s work as “excellent.” “We reduced risks on the Hanford Site by removing a record amount of contaminants from the groundwater, completing the exterior of the building we will use to move radioactive sludge away from the Columbia River and compliantly managing spent nuclear waste and fuels,” CHPRC President John Ciucci said in a statement. The contractor did not miss any of the 12 of the Tri-Party Agreement deadlines on projects to which CH2M Hill was assigned. It also accomplished a number of DOE’s key performance goals for environmental cleanup at Hanford, DOE said in the evaluation summary.
CHPRC removed 25 pencil tank units from the Plutonium Finishing Plant in 2014, helping it to have all of the tanks in the Plutonium Reclamation Facility of the plant removed this spring. It treated 1.8 billion gallons of contaminated groundwater. It had met its annual goal for removing hexavalent chromium from groundwater near the Columbia River four months ahead of schedule. CH2M Hill also completed the engineering design for ventilation improvements at the Waste Encapsulation and Storage Facility, where nearly 2,000 capsules of strontium and cesium are stored underwater. “The contractor was very responsive to (DOE) needs, especially during the potential government shutdown scenarios,” DOE said in its evaluation summary. DOE praised CH2M Hill for awarding about $2 billion in subcontracts to small businesses since 2008. It also commended its contractor for employee injury rates that it said were much lower than goals for DOE’s environmental cleanup sites. CH2M Hill received star status, the highest status in DOE’s Voluntary Protection Program, in fiscal 2014.
Under the category of significant deficiencies, the evaluation summary listed only work related to the Plutonium Finishing Plant. Although progress has been made to remove the pencil tanks, work to remove contaminated glove boxes in the main portion of the plant progressed more slowly than planned in fiscal 2014. This year work has since been moving faster. DOE did not award any provisional payment of fee for work at the plant for fiscal 2014. The final evaluation of fee for work at the plant will be done after the plant is demolished.
