Newport News Nuclear BWXT-Los Alamos (N3B) garnered 83 percent of its potential fee for its first five months on the job as legacy cleanup contractor at the Energy Department’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.
After taking over from Los Alamos National Security, N3B earned roughly $2.4 million of a potential $2.9 million from April 30 through Sept. 30, 2018. It was one of three largely positive fee scorecards issued by DOE’s Office of Environmental Management so far this month.
Navarro Research and Engineering pocketed 94 percent of the potential fee for its work in the 2018 fiscal year as Environmental Program Services vendor at the Nevada National Security Site.
The company previously known as Wastren Advantage took home about 98 percent of the potential fee in its latest reporting period for providing analysis and testing services at the 222-S Laboratory at the Hanford Site in Washington state.
Newport News Nuclear BWXT-Los Alamos got 74 percent, or $1.36 million of almost $1.9 million available in the subjective fee, according to the scorecard. The contractor was classified as “very good” in regulatory compliance and “good” in the four other subjective categories: quality assurance/safety, schedule, cost control, and management. It took home 100 percent of its potential objective fee of more than $1 million.
“We’re pleased with what we accomplished in the first five months of our contract, including 100 percent completion of Consent Order milestones and Safety Management Procedure revisions, as well as goals to ship and dispose of 300 cubic meters of low-level and mixed waste and completing readiness to ship transuranic waste to WIPP [the Waste isolation Pilot Plant],” N3B spokesman Todd Nelson said in a Wednesday email.
The contractor took a deliberate approach in establishing its remediation approach “to ensure safety and a heightened sense of operational discipline,” Nelson said. “We also initiated and integrated new work into our contract that wasn’t there in the beginning, namely packaging and shipping transuranic waste from LANL’s Technical Area 54 for the first time in more than four years.”
In December 2017, the joint venture between Virginia-based Huntington Ingalls Industries subsidiary Stoller Newport News Nuclear (SN3) and BWX Technologies won the DOE contract worth roughly $1.39 billion over a decade. The work includes protecting a major regional aquifer and remediation of contaminated legacy waste sites in and around LANL.
Some areas N3B could improve include data and document quality, security and badging, and more timely purchasing, the scorecard says.
Navarro
At the Nevada site, Navarro earned $942,000 of almost $1 million in total fee available between Oct. 1, 2017, and Sept. 30, 2018. The Tennessee-based company got $337,000 of a potential subjective award fee of $367,000, plus $605,000 of a potential $632,000 in incentive fees.
Navarro aced its scorecard, getting “excellent” ratings in all six subjective categories: business relations; management of key personnel/subcontracts; cost control; schedule; quality of products and service; and health and safety.
Navarro also did well on the incentive fee, which is comprised of objective performance measures for program integration, underground test area, soils, industrial sites, and the radioactive waste acceptance program.
A year earlier, Navarro secured $835,975 of a potential $857,037 for the period from Oct. 1, 2016, through Sept. 30, 2017, for environmental work at the Nevada Site.
“Navarro continues to demonstrate outstanding safety, health, and radiological performance,” according to the DOE scorecard. It experienced no injuries or lost workdays during fiscal 2018. “It has been more than 13 years (over 3 million hours) without a lost-workday case under Navarro’s leadership,” DOE said in the review.
The department lauded Navarro for reducing its federal procurement review time from three to six months previously to two to thee weeks in the past fiscal year.
There department cited no significant deficiencies.
Veolia Nuclear Solutions-Federal Services
The former Wastren Advantage earned almost $212,000 of a potential $217,000 from Sept. 21, 2017, to Sept. 20, 2018, according to its latest scorecard for work at the Hanford lab. That improves on its prior period from Nov. 21, 2016, to Sept. 20, 2017, when it won 96 percent of its possible fee — $184,000 of $191,000.
The Wastren corporate name was retired after the Ohio-based company was bought and folded into Veolia Nuclear Solutions-Federal Services in January 2018. However, the DOE scorecard still cites the company as Wastren Advantage.
At the Hanford lab, the vendor tests highly radioactive samples from tank waste, which supports waste storage tank closures and waste transfers between tanks.
In the latest review period, Veolia Nuclear Solutions-Federal Services won 100 percent of its potential $130,000 fee for the three performance-based incentive areas: delivery, evaluations and proficiency tests, and maintaining holding times. It got 94 percent of a potential $87,000 for four special emphasis areas: business interfaces and efficiency, analytical reporting and data quality, environmental stewardship and compliance, and worker safety and health.
The contractor holds a five-year, $50 million contract set to expire in September 2020. The Energy Department has announced plans, however, to shift from two contractors to one at the 222-S laboratory. AECOM-led Washington River Protection Solutions, (WRPS) provides support services, maintenance, and other work for the 70,000-square-foot facility as part of its $7.1 billion tank farm management contract at Hanford, which last fall was extended 12 months until September 2019.
The Energy Department, which hopes to improve productivity by overseeing one contractor rather than two at 222-S, issued a draft request for proposals for a new contract in July and expects to issue a combined award in early 2020.
