Contractors at the Hanford Site in Washington state overlooked some factors in conducting cost analyses before deciding whether to lease rather than purchase office trailers and other space for their work, according to a recent audit by the Department of Energy inspector general of the agency’s leased space.
Those omissions included failing to ensure trailers were clear of radiological contamination and failing to consider vendor removal costs, the IG found.
An exception was the Hanford waste tank farm contractor, Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS). When the AECOM-led company performed a cost analysis of leased office trailers, it decided to end the leases and purchase the trailers.
Nine leased trailers could be purchased for $736,822, according to the WRPS analysis. But the cost of work to ensure the trailers had no radiological contamination before they were returned to their owners was more than $2.1 million. In addition, removing the trailers would require $104,300, the audit report said.
Additional cost savings might have been realized if Hanford contractors Mission Support Alliance and CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co. had conducted similar reviews, the audit report said.
The audit was conducted to determine if the 15 million square feet of leased space across the DOE complex, with annual rent costing the department roughly $314 million, was being managed in accordance with applicable regulations and policies. Based on a sampling of space leased at 45 sites, the inspector general determined that DOE and its contactors largely stayed in line with those rules, according to the April 3 report.
However, “Contractors at the Hanford Site had not properly classified 25 leased trailers as real property,” the IG said. “Though not originally part of our sample of leased space for 45 facilities, after identifying that trailers were misclassified at the Hanford Site, we selected an additional 25 leased trailers and determined that all 25 were misclassified.”
The audit also found incorrect or incomplete information on 29 of 45 leased spaces within DOE’s Facilities Information Management System (FIMS), its system for inventorying corporate real property.
“As a result of the identified issues, the Department does not have correct information to make sound business decisions and may incur additional costs,” the audit report said.
The audit recommended evaluating contractor leased space in the scope of the annual FIMS data validation review. It also recommended clarifying requirements for classifying trailers.
The Energy Department agreed with recommendations. Before the audit was completed, Hanford Site contractors were required to update trailer classifications in the FIMS.
The audit looked at leased space at DOE headquarters in Washington D.C.; in Oak Ridge, Tenn.; the Hanford Site; and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Washington state.
