Parsons has provided quality management at the Savannah River Site’s Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF), with little need for improvement, according to a recent assessment from the U.S. Department of Energy.
Agency officials further concluded the contractor has successfully implemented processes and procedures that fall in line with DOE’s Conduct of Operations for facilities in its complex. They added that Energy Department officials at the South Carolina facility have provided adequate oversight as Parsons prepares the 140,000-square-foot SWPF for operations later this year.
Parsons employs about 500 people at the SWPF.
The Conduct of Operations is a detailed document that provides guidelines for how agency sites and their contractors should safely and effectively carry out their missions. The new evaluation from DOE’s Office of Enterprise Assessments comes after the department on multiple occasions has questioned Parsons’ ability to manage the Salt Waste Processing Facility.
Dated June 2019, the review includes observations made from March 4-7 and again from March 25-28. The Enterprise Assessments office reviewed 13 elements of Parsons’ efforts to begin operations at SWPF, which was built to process millions of gallons of radioactive salt waste stored in more than 30 underground Cold War-era tanks near Aiken, S.C. Once converted into a less harmful form, the waste will be disposed of on-site.
Parsons in 2002 inked a $2 billion deal to design, build, test, and provide a year of operations for the Salt Waste Processing Facility. The goal is to have it running by December. But even if that doesn’t happen, Parsons and DOE say the plant will be operational by the January 2021 deadline set in their contract.
Currently, SWPF is undergoing cold commissioning, in which nonradioactive products are run through the facility to test its performance and efficiency.
This was not a standard review of the facility, according to the assessment. Energy Department officials at Savannah River requested the evaluation to identify any issues prior to the upcoming readiness review for SWPF.
The assessment team reviewed SPWF documentation to gauge what is expected of workers, and then observed those employees to ensure they were following protocols. The team also interviewed key personnel and walked through the salt waste facility to study how it functioned during testing.
The assessment does not address the SWPF schedule. But it does say Parsons has shown strong work in areas including equipment operations, safety precautions, logging issues with equipment, and providing oversight of non-management employees.
For example, on safety procedures, evaluators wrote: “The assessment team observed operators appropriately respond to a malfunctioning alarm related to ongoing testing by requesting and receiving permission from the shift operations manager to suppress the alarm.”
Other areas in which Parsons earned strong marks: maintaining safe operations in control areas that serve as coordination points for facility activities; proper usage of the PA systems and other communication outlets when addressing various groups, such as those in emergency facilities; and investigating abnormal events.
The team did critique some Parsons employees on a few issues while assessing protocol compliance. In one case, some workers were not wearing the proper personal protective equipment while tightening a coupling on a hose line. Other issues included workers breaking the plane of an area posted as a confined space, and not verifying that fire doors latched after passing through them.
Parsons addressed these issues with its workers, according to the assessment.
The DOE evaluators also said Parsons could do a better job of using its corrective action system. That would prevent minor issues from reoccurring. The system includes steps that should be taken when an issue occurs, such as identifying the problem, figuring out why it occurred, and what can be done to remedy the issue. The Enterprise Office wrote that
Parsons could avoid more minor problems if it put the plan in action more often. “For example, over the course of the assessment, a number of pump failures were observed and, although SWPF staff informally tracked these failures and had some understanding of the 6 causes, no condition reports had been generated,” officials wrote.
Parsons personnel for the project agreed to consider lowering the requirements for implementing corrective actions. Despite minor critiques, DOE documented no official findings, conclusions that strongly urge a call to action.
Parsons spokesman Bryce McDevitt said the company is pleased with the report. “We are always looking for ways we can do our job safer and more efficiently, and as such we are actively working the few areas that were identified as opportunities for improvement,” he said in a statement.
Per its standard practice, the contractor declined to discuss a spat with DOE earlier this year over disincentive fees on the project. In March, the Energy Department told the company it would have to pay $33 million due to missed deadlines and overspending. The contractor fought back, stating it had to push postpone target dates for various SWPF milestones due to unforeseen equipment issues that DOE was not taking into account.
McDevitt said the two sides are in “ongoing contract and fee negotiations,” but would not elaborate further.
The recent dispute came a year after the Energy Department, in a March 2018 letter, accused the contractor of mismanaging the salt waste facility. Parsons also pushed back on that letter, stating the agency was mischaracterizing issues at the facility.
