The Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state can use education along with the specter of financial loss in pushing ethical standards for contractors, the site’s local fed said recently.
The DOE has mandated ethics programs for major contractors and this effort is “very similar to a safety program” in that it’s designed to “reinforce expectations of ethical behavior,” Hanford Site Manager Brian Vance said Oct. 7. He spoke during an online meeting of the Hanford Advisory Board.
Bad ethics reviews can endanger “dollars now” and “contracts later,” Vance said.
On the education front, the Department of Energy “issued ethical booklets to all of our employees” at Hanford, Vance said. Contractors have also started having regular “ethics moments,” he added.
Vance responded to a board member’s question on what DOE is doing to push high professional standards in light of last month’s Department of Justice announcement that Waste Treatment Completion Co., an entity composed of Bechtel and what is now Amentum, agreed to pay almost $58 million for alleged overbilling at Hanford.
The case dates to 2016, when four whistleblowers alleged overcharges for idle time by the companies at the Hanford Waste Treatment Plant. The same whistleblowers in May 2017 filed a complaint under seal in U.S. District Court under the False Claims Act.
The DOE has been given extra attention to ethics at Hanford since release of an Office of Inspector General report in November 2018, Vance said. The report looked at various challenges at Hanford, including whether DOE does enough to ensure workers can raise safety or mismanagement concerns without fear of reprisal.
Contractors that fail in this regard can be forced by DOE to forfeit fees as part of the agency’s regular assessment of companies that work for the government, Vance said. Likewise, negative ethics findings can be entered into DOE’s automated Contractor Performance Assessment Reporting System, Vance said, potentially resulting in black marks on an entity’s permanent record.
