The new BWX Technologies-led joint venture scheduled to take over nuclear waste work at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina announced its top managers on Wednesday.
Savannah River Mission Completion (SRMC) said in a press release that Dave Olson, who has 34 years of experience at the Savannah River Site, will serve as president and project manager in charge of the Integrated Mission Completion Contract at the federal complex next to the Georgia line.
“We recognize the significance of the [completion contract] to the customer and the community, and we are committed to seamlessly and safely transforming SRS liquid waste operations into an end state-driven culture of completion,” Olson said in a press release.
The DOE Office of Environmental Management on Monday gave Savannah River Mission Completion (SRMC) the green light to begin a 90-day transition, after which it will formally take over liquid waste management and other environmental work at the site, an agency spokesperson said this week. That would put SRMC in charge by the end of February.
DOE awarded the deal, worth up to $21-billion, in late October to the team comprising BWXT, Fluor and Amentum, along with teaming subcontractors WesWorks and DBD.
SRMC beat out three other bidders on Oct. 27. The contract award came about 13 months after the agency issued its final request for proposals to succeed the Amentum-led incumbent, Savannah River Remediation. Other members of the incumbent team are Bechtel, Jacobs and BWXT.
In addition to Olson, SRMC’s six-member management team consists of:
- Wyatt Clark, a 35-year veteran at Savannah River who will be operations manager.
- Mark Barth a business manager with 30 years in the field.
- Mike Borders, who has been a tank farm manager with the incumbent contractor team will lead optimization and integration.
- Joel Cantrell, who has 21 years experience and will serve as environment, safety, health and quality manager.
- Tom Burns, in recent years a manager for the Salt Waste Processing Facility built by Parsons, who will be engineering manager.
Meanwhile, BWXT said it is promoting Joey Hoskins to Barth’s former job as vice president of business development at BWXT. Hoskins who joined BWXT in 2007 was most recently the director of business development at the company.
The Integrated Mission contract includes liquid waste stabilization and disposal, operation of tank farms as well as the Defense Waste Processing Facility that turns high-level radioactive waste into a more stable glass. The new team will also take over operation of the Salt Waste Processing Facility from Parsons, which built the facility.
The Government Accountability Office has received no bid protests of the contract award and the window for such a challenge is now apparently closed given more than 10 days have passed since bidders were briefed on DOE’s reason for its award.
There are about 35 million gallons of radioactive liquid waste stored in 43 underground tanks at the Savannah River Site, which produced materials used in nuclear weapons, such as tritium and plutonium-239, during the cold war, according to the DOE.
The new agreement is basically a 10-year deal that DOE could elect to extend for another five years, meaning the new team could be in place at Savannah River for 15 years.
