AECOM has named Bruce Covert as deputy general manager at the Waste Treatment Completion Co., based at the Energy Department’s Hanford Site in Washington state.
Waste Treatment Completion Co. is a joint venture formed by Bechtel and AECOM in January 2017 that acts as a subcontractor to Bechtel National for startup of low-activity waste vitrification at the Waste Treatment Plant by 2023.
Covert starts his new post this week, reporting to Waste Treatment Completion General Manager Rick Holmes.
The $17 billion plant is designed to convert much of 56 million gallons of radioactive and chemical waste, now held in underground tanks at the former plutonium site, into glass for final disposal. About 90% of the material is believed to be low-activity waste.
Covert formerly served as president and project manager of AECOM-led Nuclear Waste Partnership, which manages DOE’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M. Covert, who has about 30 years in nuclear posts at AECOM and its predecessor companies, spent two years helping WIPP resume waste disposal operations in early 2017 after being offline for about three years following an underground radiation release. Covert left the post in August; AECOM said at the time he was being reassigned to another senior management post in the company.
AECOM Executive Vice President of Nuclear and Environment Services Mark Whitney said last week, in an internal memo obtained by Weapons Complex Morning Briefing, that Covert’s next post would be at the Hanford WTP.
Covert succeeds Scott Sax, who will continue to support the project through approximately the end of January as he concludes work on important key management initiatives. “This move will allow him to assume a new role for AECOM that we will be announcing prior to his departure from WTCC,” Whitney wrote.
AECOM’s nuclear and environment business is part of its Management Services unit, which is being sold to a joint venture of two New York investment firms for about $2.4 billion. The deal announced in October is expected to close within the next three-to-four months.
