AECOM-led Savannah River Remediation hired 378 new workers in 2018, and expects to bring on a similar number of employees this year under its liquid waste contract at the Energy Department’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina.
Energy Department cleanup sites such as Savannah River have been pushing hiring programs in recent years to offset an increasing number of retirements due to an aging workforce. The new SRR hires helped the contractor break even on attrition rates in 2018, the company said in a news release,
Savannah River Remediation employs about 2,450 people. The average age of the new hires in 2018 was 37. When SRR acquired the 10-year, $5 billion liquid waste management contract in 2009, the average age of its workers was 54, compared to 48 now, SRR Administrative Services Director David Hollan said in the news release.
The contractor has seen “waves of employees reaching their retirement milestones,” Hollan said, adding SRR is trying “to balance this growing rate of attrition by bringing in the next generation workforce.” About a third of the new hires are military veterans, he added. The company has hired eight people who previously worked for the now-terminated Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility.
Savannah River Remediation is comprised of AECOM, Bechtel, CH2M, and BWX Technologies, and is currently operating under a DOE contract extension through March. The Energy Department originally awarded a new 10-year contract to a BWXT-led team in October 2017, but the deal was undone in February 2018 by a successful bid protest from an AECOM-CH2M partnership. The Energy Department last spring took best and final bids from the three bidding teams, including a Fluor-Westinghouse venture.
Once the successor contract is awarded, much of SRR’s workforce should transfer to the new vendor.
