The Department of Energy could formally reply to subcontractor complaints at the Hanford Site in Washington state “within the next few days or the next few weeks,” Brian Vance, the top manager at the facility said Wednesday.
The DOE Office of Environmental Management executive made his comments during a virtual meeting of the Hanford Advisory Board.
Before Vance’s comments, board member Pam Larsen expressed “disappointment” that some small firms around Hanford did not have subcontracts renewed during transition to new contracts for Central Plateau cleanup and site services, and that the new prime contractors hired away some small business employees at DOE’s urging.
“We are concerned about what happened with the Central Plateau Contract,” Larsen said, adding she hopes this pattern will be avoided with the $26-billion Hanford Integrated Tank Disposition Contract.
Vance, as a couple of his headquarters colleagues did last week at the online Waste Management Symposium, rallied to DOE’s defense.
“Since you opened or cracked the door, I will run through it,” Vance said Wednesday.
DOE was trying to fix issues raised in a 2020 report by the agency’s Office of Inspector General, which found some primes “were trying to achieve their small business goals” by hiring small firms to do work the primes should be doing, Vance said.
The DOE needs to avoid a “co-employment” situation, where primes end up paying both their own direct employees and staff for subcontract firms, which typically are paid a premium, for doing the same tasks, Vance said. The DOE tried to make it clear what subcontractor work is reimbursable, he added.
“I’m not sure that was communicated well by the primes to the subcontractors,” Vance said. Anytime there is a contract transition, “there are some winners and losers,” he added.
One company has taken its grievances about recent prime-contract transitions at Hanford to federal court.
Pro2Serve, Oak Ridge, Tenn., claims it was part of a Leidos-led team’s winning bid to take over Hanford site services and was wrongly excluded from work under the new prime contract. Pro2Serve sued, and a federal judge in Virginia allowed the case to go forward. Leidos says it never assured Pro2Serve a subcontract and claims the case boils down to Pro2Serve’s reaction to DOE’s decision not to issue the Tennessee-based company a sole-source subcontract.
The Hanford Site Manager, Vance, also said Amentum-led Central Plateau Cleanup is proceeding with significant small business awards in the area.
Speaking of Central Plateau Cleanup, the remainder of the work on the Plutonium Finishing Plant, much of it rubble removal, will likely resume in April, and be completed by the end of the current fiscal year, Vance said. Rubble removal was about 25% done in March 2020, when Hanford moved to essential operations in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Both Central Plateau Cleanup and the new landlord, Leidos-led Hanford Mission Integration Solutions, completed transitions Jan. 24. In addition, the new 222-S Laboratory manager, Navarro-led Hanford Laboratory Management and Integration began its transition Jan. 5 and should complete that process in mid-April, Vance said.
