Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth, prime contractor for cleanup at the Energy Department’s Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, did not perform required reference checks on people it hired at the site over the past three fiscal years, the DOE inspector general said in a report dated Feb. 19.
The IG published the finding after reviewing 25 percent of Fluor’s new hires from fiscal 2013 through 2015 at the Portsmouth site near Piketon, Ohio, according to the report, “Security Clearance Vetting at the Portsmouth Site.” The company, though, was found to largely meet its contractual requirement to conduct “pre-employment investigative screening.”
A senior Fluor HR official told the IG the company “had not conducted reference checks because the checks were not always useful, and the officials were not aware of the contract requirement.”
Fluor officials declined an official exit conference, according to the IG’s report. The inspector general’s “suggested action” for Fluor was “to enforce contractual requirements to conduct reference checks for new hires.” The IG did not require the company to formally respond to this suggestion, according to the report.
The DOE inspector general conducted the report because of a hotline tip it received in May 2015, in which a whistleblower alleged that the company — then called Fluor-B&W Portsmouth — was wasting the government’s money by knowingly referring candidates to DOE for security clearances, despite discovering “derogatory information” about these candidates, such as criminal activity and bad credit.
However, the inspector general said that accusation was not substantiated, and that Fluor is not responsible for disqualifying prospective employees from getting clearance — something only the federal government may do.
The base period on Fluor’s roughly $1.1 billion Portsmouth cleanup contract with DOE’s Office of Environmental Management is set to expire March 28. DOE holds a five-year option worth about $718 million.
