Kenneth Fletcher
WC Monitor
3/27/2015
LATA Environmental Services of Kentucky, LLC, the cleanup contractor for the Paducah site, earned about 83 percent of its available award fee in Fiscal Year 2014, for a total of $918,639 out of $1.1 million available, according to fee information the Department of Energy released this week. In the subjective categories of performance, the contractor received an overall “very good” rating and earned $337,329 out of $443,854 in total available award fee. It also earned 87 percent of its performance based incentive fee, or $581,310 out of $665,781 available. That is a drop from FY’13, when LATA earned 90 percent out of an available $3.37 million in fee. The determination comes as this year cleanup at the site is transitioning to the new deactivation contractor, Fluor Paducah.
DOE praised LATA Kentucky for working with the Department, USEC and Kentucky regulators on transfer agreements and permits for the transition last year of the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant to DOE. Other positive performance issues noted include: “LATA Kentucky performed multiple fieldwork projects without safety or environmental incident. Additionally, LATA Kentucky achieved over 2.8 million hours without a lost workday case. LATA Kentucky created, conducted and implemented an excellent mentoring program for college students. LATA Kentucky managed several projects in a manner to reduce project costs,” the scorecard states.
However, the contractor has several “opportunities for improvement,” DOE noted in a March 4 award fee letter. “LATA Kentucky has struggled translating changes in the regulatory documents to changes in the project estimates to complete the work,” the letter states. Additionally, “LATA Kentucky has demonstrated an adverse safety trend related to poor procedure and work control implementation as reflected by some procedural non-compliances, non-adherence to work restriction, inappropriate personal protective equipment (quantum wear use rather than fire retardant protective clothing) and failure to manage broken transite according to work control at C-410.”
