Several management changes have been made at the Hanford Site’s tank farms and Waste Treatment Plant project to help meet the Department of Energy’s goal of vitrifying tank waste as soon as 2022.
A new general manager has been named for Waste Treatment Completion Co. (WTCC), the subcontractor created for construction, startup, and commissioning of the Waste Treatment Plant being built to process up to 56 million gallons of radioactive and chemical waste stored at Hanford. Rick Holmes, a Bechtel principal vice president since 2014, will take the job starting Jan. 8.
About a year ago, Bechtel National, DOE’s prime for the vitrification plant, joined with AECOM to form WTCC as a subcontractor and transferred about 1,370 workers to the new company. Scott Oxenford was WTCC’s first general manager, but he took extended medical leave about six months ago. Mike Costas has been acting general manager since then. Costas told WTCC workers Thursday he has a new, but unspecified, assignment.
Holmes has worked for Bechtel for about 20 years, assigned to chemical demilitarization and national security projects, according to a memo sent to Bechtel employees Thursday. Before that he served in the U.S. Army for 10 years.
His DOE experience includes six years as project manager of the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Project at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. The project constructed the first plutonium-handling and analysis lab to open at LANL since the 1970s. Most recently, Holmes guided the Army’s Pueblo Chemical Agent-Destruction Pilot Plant in Colorado through pilot testing and initial operation.
Other management changes include naming Scott Sax the deputy general manager at WTCC; John Eschenberg the deputy project manager for waste feed delivery for Hanford tank farm manager Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS); and Gary Snow the WRPS acting project manager responsible for waste feed delivery engineering, procurement, and construction activities.
