The Department of Energy’s Enforcement Office is investigating a November 2022 accident at the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee, which resulted in an amputated finger for a carpenter working on construction of the new Mercury Treatment Facility at the Y-12 National Security Complex.
Contractor APTIM – North Wind Construction was informed of the planned investigation in an April 14 letter from Anthony Pierpoint, the director of the Office of Enforcement for DOE’s Office of Enterprise Assessments.
Enforcement office staff plans to interview workers employed at the Outfall 200 Mercury Treatment Facility Project and look at factors such as the contractor’s construction work planning and control procedures, including tool selection, training, task hazard analyses and safety processes, according to the letter.
The Department of Energy this week formally issued a notice increasing the maximum payout to S&K Logistics, technical assistance contractor at the Moab Uranium Mill Tailings project in Utah, by $1.7 million to $31.5 million.
The move will increase the value of the current agreement by 6%, which buys DOE time because a new task order probably won’t be issued until this summer, according to the Wednesday procurement notice and related materials. S&K is a tribally-owned business that handles chores such as records management and information technology for Moab.
The DOE Office of Environmental Management signaled its intentions last month. DOE plans to compete the Moab technical work amongst seven new holders of indefinite-delivery-indefinite-quantity contracts, according to the notice. The agency “understands the burden competitive acquisitions place on 8(a) small businesses and does not want to increase that burden by unwisely” rushing a new acquisition, DOE said.
Procurement officials with the Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup branch plan to issue a no-bid contract to a Virginia firm to provide training for the agency’s mentor partnerships, according to a Monday public notice.
The Cincinnati-based Environmental Management Consolidated Business Center said in a Monday procurement notice it plans to issue a contract to The Training Connection (TTC) “on a sole source basis.”
“The services provided by TTC include, but are not limited to, designing a customized mentoring web-based system designed to select, match, track and connect up to 50 mentoring partnerships,” and other related training and evaluation materials, according to the notice on SAM.gov. The notice does not list a dollar value for the contract. According to its website, TTC is based in Prince William, Va., and provides various training, mentoring and team-building services.
The Washington state Department of Ecology is happy the Department of Energy has requested about $3 billion in fiscal 2024 funds for the Hanford Site, and is also counting on professional help from that other Washington to help ensure healthy federal funding going forward.
In a presentation Wednesday to the Hanford Advisory Board, two managers from Ecology’s nuclear waste section, Eddie Holbrook and Ryan Miller, said the state agency has “contracted with Van Ness Feldman Solutions in Washington D.C. to boost our federal advocacy work.”
“The firm has over 40 years of focused experience solving challenges that arise at the intersection of business and government,” according to the Van Ness Feldman website. The firm, which engages in legal work and lobbying, is staffed with lawyers and “government advocacy specialists” in areas such as energy, natural resources, climate change and land use, according to the website.
Robert Bennett has left his post as director of the economic development authority for Columbia County, Ga., after being selected as the new CEO for the non-profit promoting economic growth around the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina.
The Augusta, Ga., Chronicle reported April 15 that Bennett has been chosen as the new boss for the Savannah River Site Community Reuse Organization. The job change is also cited on Bennett’s LinkedIn page.
Bennett, who has held the Columbia County economic development job for a decade, is no stranger to the Savannah River organization, having served on its board of directors. Bennett succeeds Rick McLeod, who retired from the Savannah River Site Community Reuse Organization in January after heading the non-profit for 15 years. Since then, McLeod has started his own nuclear consulting firm.
A few weeks after her death, Bechtel National’s Valerie McCain, who oversaw construction of probably the most expensive infrastructure project for the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management, has been named a top 25 newsmaker by Engineering News-Record magazine, DOE said this week.
McCain, the late project manager at the Hanford Site Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant at the Hanford Site in Washington state, died March 26, apparently only weeks after being diagnosed with liver cancer.
Rick Holmes, Bechtel National principal vice president and general manager for Waste Treatment Completion, accepted the award on McCain’s behalf during a ceremony this week in New York City. “If Valerie was here to accept this award, she would have talked about the people, the partnerships with our customer, other contractors and our Tri-Cities community,” Holmes said, according to a DOE press release. McCain knew of the honor prior to her death, according to Bechtel.
