Some Employees Say More Significant Changes Needed
Mike Nartker
WC Monitor
6/20/2014
Fluor-B&W Portsmouth, LLC, the D&D contractor for the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, is working to make improvements to its non-destructive assay program in the wake of a recent assessment that identified concerns, and expects to be able to resume by the end of this month shipments of waste off-site for disposal that were paused after the assessment, according to a contractor spokesman. FBP halted its NDA program in late May after the assessment identified potential quality concerns—a move that impacted the contractor’s ability to ship off-site for disposal equipment removed from one of the Portsmouth plant’s three former enrichment process buildings. “We concluded our review of how NDA measurements are performed on converters and compressors from the X-326 building and found we needed more rigor in our procedures and operational practices for collecting this data,” FBP spokesman Jeff Wagner said in a written response late last week.
Outlining the changes FBP is making, Wagner said, “Based upon the feedback from our internal assessment we are making some modifications to operating procedures to incorporate feedback from our NDA field technicians and engineers. We are also revising our NDA training program to include greater focus on pre-job preparation, measurement collection and conduct of operations. FBP continues to ship other waste streams not affected by the NDA program review. We have also completed a review of NDA measurements collected to date and have validated their usability to support component shipments. FBP anticipates completing our necessary procedural modifications and supplemental training to support lifting our internal program pause by the end of the month."
Employees Raise Management, Training Concerns
Some FBP employees, however, have said a more significant overhaul of the contractor’s NDA program is needed, expressing concern over the experience of program management and the level of training provided.“The upper management needs to be removed from all contact with the program. Some knowledgeable people need to be put in those positions. The incentives need to be removed from the production … Their big thing is always safety and ISMS [Integrated Safety Management System], and the running joke is yes unless it interferes with production,” one FBP employee told WC Monitor. “The overriding problem … is lack of training and the DOE putting performance-based incentives, in the form of monies, on the table for these projects to be completed in a certain amount of time,” the employee said, adding, “FBP has made the problem worse by hiring management that has no background in NDA or even in the sciences, and trying to push people and intimidate people to get these projects done some they can get their bonus money.” In FY 2013, slightly more than $700,000 in fee for FBP was tied to the contractor’s ability to ship waste from the X-326 building off-site, according to a Department of Energy award fee plan.
As an example of concerns over training, the FBP employee said, “Before FBP took over, to even get into the NDA group, you had to have at least an associate’s degree and you spent at least six months in the field with somebody who had more than five years experience taking measurements. FBP, since they’ve taken over, we have mostly contracted staff. We probably have eight-to-10 in house technicians and 37 contracted technicians. Very few, if any of those technicians, have a degree. Most of them are off the street or were … clearance escorts. None of them have had classroom training.”
The employee also expressed concerns over how program procedures are prepared. “Their procedures are really bad and have been for a long time, and they keep having people that don’t know what they’re doing write them,” the employee said. “For example, one of the main procedures that a technician uses out in the field to perform their measurements, FBP has only been on site three years, we are working on Revision 9 of this procedure. … Before, in the past 15 years, none of procedures got more than three revs [revisions]. I don’t think we have one with less than six.”
When asked about the concerns raised by some FBP employees, Wagner said in a written response this week, “We disagree with those statements and won’t comment further.”
