Hanford contractor awarded $21 million in incentive pay, including for traffic safety

Hanford contractor Mission Support Alliance has been awarded almost $21 million in incentive pay for last year’s work, or about 94 percent of the maximum possible.

The contractor provides the basic services that keep the nuclear reservation running, including security; fire protection; utilities; cybersecurity and information management; wildlife protection; training; and vehicle and road maintenance.

It’s the largest award won by the contractor, owned by Leidos and Centerra Group, since its contract began in 2009, said Bob Wilkinson, contractor president, in a memo Thursday congratulating workers.

A year ago Mission Support Alliance was awarded $20.4 million, which was also 94 percent of the money available.

For the last year, fiscal 2018 ending in September, more fee was available — $22.2 million, up from $21.7 million the previous year.

“The contractor met or exceeded the majority of performance goals and objectives for the performance period,” the Department of Energy said in a pay scorecard that was made public.

Among the contractor’s initiatives, DOE praised its work to improve traffic safety at the 580-square-mile site and on nearby highways that may be used for commuting by the site’s more than 9,000 workers.

Driver safety at Hanford

Mission Support Alliance has led an effort to plan, and recently launch, a traffic safety initiative.

It includes education for workers on topics like distracted driving and communication with the Benton County Sheriff’s Office on traffic enforcement.

Engineering improvements are being assessed. They include better marking for pedestrians in parking lots and better marking poles and other obstructions that drivers could back into in parking lots, and improved signs with blinking lights to make them more visible in Hanford’s frequent fog.

DOE said it saw improvements in reducing traffic risk and preventing accidents, although the fall brought a series of crashes between worker vehicles and elk and deer. One killed a Hanford worker driving a motorcycle to work.

Room for improvement

The DOE scorecard said there were no significant deficiencies in all areas the contractor’s work to operate the site, but it did provide the contractor with a few areas for improvement.

Mission Support Alliance had eight electric lock-and-tag violations. The lock-and-tag system provides a procedure to ensure electrical and related systems are turned off and locked in an off position to protect workers and prevent property damage during maintenance or similar work.

The violations included incidents with an electric shock and a cut electric line, which could have resulted in injury to a worker or damage to property, DOE said.

Additional safety violations that DOE attributed to inadequate planning and control of work included insufficient fall-protection controls at construction sites.

DOE also advised Mission Support Alliance to improve its processes for conducting legally required environmental studies, after failing to complete some studies delayed improvements made at the South Area Fire Station.

The scorecard also included many significant achievements:

▪ Exceeding the fire protection requirements of its contract and implementing additional programs to prevent fires.

▪ Strengthening is partnerships and collaboration with other Hanford contractors to support safe environmental cleanup of the site, which is contaminated from producing plutonium for the nation’s nuclear weapons program.

▪ Creating an electronic Facility Information Management System to track the status of buildings, including maintenance and inspections. DOE Headquarters has adopted the Hanford system for use across the cleanup complex. “MSA is recognized as a leader in this area,” the scorecard said.

▪ Submitting legally required environmental cleanup documents ahead of schedule and good coordination on them with other Hanford contractors.

▪ Creating a web-based information and map system for areas where cleanup is completed but monitoring and surveillance continue. It has been lauded as a valuable tool by DOE and contractor officials.

This story was originally published January 24, 2019 at 12:22 PM.