The cleanup contractor for the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee earned 94%, or $10.4 million, of a potential $11 million fee for its work during the six-month period ended March 31, the Energy Department said in a new performance scorecard.
In the process, URS-CH2M Oak Ridge (UCOR) earned kudos from the DOE Office of Environmental Management for figuring out ways to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic and the impact of record rainfall at the site during January and February.
The joint venture between Amentum and Jacobs earned 100% of its potential objective criteria fee of $4.1 million. It also earned 90%, or $6.3 million, of a potential $6.9 million in subjective fee criteria.
This marks another strong performance by UCOR, which in its last performance evaluation won 97% its potential fee for the last half of fiscal 2019, pocketing almost $20.4 million of a potential $21 million.
During the latest review period, DOE said the contractor exceeded its subcontracting goals for categories such as small, disadvantaged, woman-owned, and veteran-owned businesses. The agency did not provide any subcontracting figures. In addition, UCOR “worked closely with DOE to proactively develop comprehensive plans to operate in a pandemic environment,” according to the document.
Like most of the 16 nuclear cleanup sites under the DOE Office of Environmental Management, Oak Ridge scaled back operations dramatically from late March, with most employees either working remotely or collecting paid leave. On May 18 the Oak Ridge Site entered Phase 1 of remobilization, which involves starting to summon employees back inside the fence – starting with those in key office jobs or those in low-risk occupations that don’t require much personal protection equipment.
The scorecard did not elaborate on the wet weather issues, but online precipitation data for Knoxville, located about 25 miles away, indicate that city received seven inches of rain in January and 10 inches in February.
The contractor was generally effective in its health and safety program, recording lower amounts of time lost due to worker injury or illness than DOE’s targets, DOE said.
In addition, UCOR started training and other preparation for upcoming environmental work in Beryllium contaminated facilities at the Y-12 National Security Complex, DOE said. With remediation winding down at the East Tennessee Technology Park, the former uranium enrichment complex, the next remediation contract at Oak Ridge is expected to shift more toward work at Y-12 and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
There are areas for improvement, according to the scorecard. The vendor experienced transportation problems, including an episode in which an employee at the East Tennessee Technology Park had an accident with a tractor trailer truck. There was also a technical safety requirements violation at the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment facility when a valve failed and resulted in a two-hour power outage in the building.
In addition, UCOR needs to improve its identification of potential hazards before beginning jobs, the Energy Department said in the scorecard.
UCOR has a $3.3 billion decontamination and decommissioning contract that started in August 2011 and is currently set to expire at the end of July — although DOE has said it intends to keep the contractor on beyond that point. The agency in February announced its intention to award a sole-source deal to URS/CH2M Oak Ridge (UCOR) in the form of a one-year extension, plus options for two additional six-month periods.
The contractor has already taken down most of the structures on the ETTP property. Demolition should begin this summer on the recently-deactivated K-1600 facility, a 42,000-square-foot long used for uranium enrichment work at Oak Ridge, and most recently used by Centrus Energy to test its owned advanced enrichment technology.
