Kenneth Fletcher
WC Monitor
12/19/2014
After delays and cost increases at Hanford’s Plutonium Finishing Plant were highlighted in a recent Department of Energy Office of Inspector General report, DOE has directed cleanup contractor CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Company to complete a corrective action plan due in mid-January. The IG report, released in September, found issues with CHPRC’s ability to plan, manage and execute work, which contributed to the delays and cost increases. “It is RL’s expectation that CHPRC implement effective and consistent core project management practices in the execution of the PFP scope,” states an Oct. 28 letter from DOE to CHPRC obtained this week through a Freedom of Information Act request.
The letter continues: “This includes, but is not limited to, conducting work safely, anticipating and addressing problems before the problems impact schedule and cost, performing project self-assessments, instituting a rigorous and committed productivity issue management process, and developing project corrective actions that are formally tracked through completion.”
Work Delayed from 2013 to 2016
D&D work at the former plutonium processing facility was originally expected to be complete by September 2013 for a total of $581 million, but now is not slated for completion until September 2016 for a total of $932 million, according to the IG report.The IG cited several problems with the work performed by CHPRC, including productivity issues, insufficient labor resources and a malfunctioning crane. Productivity issues have been confirmed in DOE and CHPRC value engineering studies, which showed that 80 percent of planned work was not performed when scheduled in 2012. The problems were in part due to rapid staffing changes at the project at the end of the Recovery Act. The IG recommended that the DOE Richland Operations Office take several steps to improve administration of the CHPRC contract.
‘More Progress is Needed’
Since the IG’s field work at PFP, there has been some project performance improvement, but “more progress is needed,” DOE said in the Oct. 28 letter. The corrective action plan should address the weaknesses in the IG report, provide action to improve project productivity issue management, address the effectiveness of previous actions and provide “an affirmative commitment and a process to track and trend newly developed corrective actions,” DOE said. When asked to comment, a CHPRC spokesman said: “CHPRC is conducting a thorough root cause evaluation. We plan to submit the corrective action plan to DOE-RL by January 15, 2015.”
