The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Financial and Contracting Oversight has pushed back by one week a planned hearing on the Department of Energy’s major cleanup contracts. The hearing is now scheduled to be held June 27 beginning at 10:30 a.m. The panel has asked DOE and its set of major cleanup contractors for a significant amount of information on all contracts between 2002 and 2012, including whether performance milestones in contracts had been met, satisfaction ratings given to contractors, whether fee had been denied in certain instances and safety violations that may have occurred. Companies asked to provide information include B&W, Bechtel, CH2M Hill, EnergySolutions, Fluor, Parsons, and URS.
Late last week, the panel released a set of invitation letters to federal officials and contractor executives asking them to testify at next week’s hearing that help to shed more light on what the hearing will entail. Among those who have been asked to testify is Jack Surash, who heads up acquisition and project management in DOE’s Office of Environmental Management. Surash was asked to be ready to testify on “how the Department’s recent acquisition policy changes, including the transition from maintenance and operations contracts to cost-benefit contracts and the designation of projects as capital asset projects, have affected the Department’s ability to manage and oversee contracts” as well as to how DOE measures performance and evaluates contractors for fee. DOE Inspector General Gregory Friedman has been asked to testify on “weaknesses in the Department’s acquisition policies, including cost estimation and risk analyses,” among other topics. Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board Chairman Peter Winokur has been asked to testify on the Board’s oversight of DOE’s cleanup activities and “the Department’s safety culture, including risk assessments and quality assurance processes,” along with ongoing safety concerns at projects such as the Hanford Waste Treatment Plant and the Savannah River Site’s Salt Waste Processing Facility.
