Mike Nartker
WC Monitor
5/29/2015
To help provide better oversight at one of the Department of Energy’s largest and most complex projects, the Senate Armed Services Committee is looking to have DOE bring in an “owner’s agent” for the Hanford Waste Treatment Plant. The Senate version of the Fiscal Year 2016 National Defense Authorization Act, reported out of committee in mid-May, would require DOE to employ such a capability to help oversee Bechtel National’s work at the WTP within six months of the final bill being signed into law. “Since the current contractor for the Waste Treatment Plant is its own design agent, the owner’s design agent will act as an independent expert on the project,” says the committee report accompanying the Senate bill.
As envisioned by the Senate bill, the owner’s agent for the WTP would be “a private third-party entity with nuclear safety management expertise and without any contractual relationship” to Bechtel National. The owner’s agent would be tasked with providing “design, construction, nuclear safety, and operability oversight” for each of the Hanford vit plant’s main facilities. No later than one year after the bill went into effect, the owner’s agent would also be responsible for “ensuring that the preliminary documented safety analyses for all facilities covered by the contract meet the requirements of all applicable Department of Energy regulations and guidance,” according to the text of the bill. Notably, concerns over the adequacy of preliminary documented safety analyses at the WTP were among the issues identified in the preliminary findings of a DOE Office of Enforcement investigation into Bechtel National’s design work at the WTP. DOE has yet to publicly release the final results of the investigation, which has been underway the past few years. DOE’s owner’s agent would also be responsible for ensuring that Bechtel National acts “promptly” to resolve unreviewed safety questions.
Owner’s Agent Not a New Idea
The idea of DOE enlisting an owner’s agent to help provide oversight at the Hanford vit plant is not a new one. Last year, a panel of independent experts recommended that DOE bring in an owner’s agent for the project in a design and operability review performed on the WTP’s High-Level Waste Facility. “There is currently no organization, independent of the project, reporting directly to DOE with the necessary technical skills, experience, responsibility, accountability, and authority to impact these generally longer term issues,” the panel said in its findings. An owner’s agent would have “the authority to challenge the facility design when operability and facility life-cycle risks are evident,” the panel said. “For example, the owner’s agent or equivalent would participate in formal multidiscipline reviews at appropriate levels of engineering, procurement, construction, and commissioning maturity, thereby increasing confidence in the design and operability of the WTP and reducing life-cycle risk to DOE by ensuring design adequacy.”
More recently, the Government Accountability Office recommended in a report issued earlier this month that DOE “enlist the services of another agency or external entity” to serve as an owner’s agent at the WTP. “In the absence of employing aggressive risk mitigation strategies, DOE will have little assurance that technical challenges will be solved or that emerging ones will be mitigated in design, which may result in portions of facilities’ designs either being unchecked or progressing significantly before problems are identified,” the GAO said.
DOE Considering How to Implement Idea
The DOE Office of River Protection at Hanford declined to comment this week on the Senate bill, referring questions to the Department’s management response that accompanied the GAO report. In that response, acting DOE cleanup chief Mark Whitney said the Department would analyze ways to employ an owner’s agent capability, though did not provide a specific timeline for doing so. “The Department believes that an independent review and evaluation capability can add value to effective project management, and the Office of River Protection will pursue alternatives to secure the benefits of an owner’s agent capability,” Whitney said. “To that end, the Office of River Protection will develop and analyze alternatives to enhance the capability and effectiveness of the Office’s oversight responsibilities. Then, after the best alternative is selected, it will be expeditiously implemented.”
Bechtel Notes Number of Reviews Already Underway
Late this week, Bechtel National noted that a number of reviews have either already been completed at the WTP over the last year, or are currently in progress. “Bechtel will deliver to the Department of Energy a Waste Treatment Plant that will safely process Hanford’s existing tank waste. The WTP Project continuously undergoes rigorous oversight. In 2014, internal and external groups conducted more than 180 audits, reviews, surveillances, and investigations. More than 30 external reviews are planned or underway at this moment. Assessing groups include experts from government, academia, national laboratories, and private industry,” Bechtel National spokeswoman Suzanne Heaston said in a written response. She added, “In any oversight scenario, we will continue to work with DOE to identify and resolve issues, make tangible progress, and protect our workers, the public, and the environment.”
When asked last fall about the idea of bringing in an owner’s agent for the WTP, following the release of the design and operability review for the HLW Facility, Bechtel National Project Director Peggy McCullough told WC Monitor, “They [DOE] have to assure themselves, as we have assure ourselves, that the design is meeting the requirements of the contract. On any project, not just WTP but on any project, you do get to a point where a better idea not placed at the right point in time, is not really a better idea. So as we conduct these reviews with off-site personnel, you have to be careful that we’re not revisiting something that is going to work.” She added, “The bottom line is we’re trying to remove vulnerabilities that might cause a problem in operations. But even in the simplest of jobs, the closer you get to completion, you have to be very careful about what you introduce as new ideas.”
