New Hanford cleanup contract worth up to $10 billion awarded

The Department of Energy awarded a new Hanford environmental cleanup contract worth up to $10 billion over 10 years, it announced Thursday afternoon.

Under the current contract, nearly 1,700 workers are cleaning up contamination primarily in the center of the massive nuclear reservation and finishing up some environmental cleanup near the Columbia River.

The winning bidder for the new Hanford Central Plateau Cleanup Contract is a team of Aecom Management Services in Germantown, Md.; Fluor Federal Services in Greenville, S.C.; and Atkins Nuclear Secured in Oak Ridge, Tenn.

The contracting team, called Central Plateau Cleanup Co., will do work similar to what is now being done at Hanford under the expiring contract of CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co.

The central Hanford cleanup contract work includes digging up contaminated soil and debris; tearing down defunct buildings with radioactive or hazardous chemical contamination; operating large, lined landfills for radioactive and hazardous chemical waste; and cleaning up contaminated groundwater.

The federal government is spending about $2.5 billion a year for environmental cleanup of the 580-square-mile Hanford site, with most work done by privately owned contracting teams.

It was the second major Hanford contract award this month.

The nuclear reservation is contaminated from the past production of plutonium for the nation’s nuclear weapons program from World War II through the Cold War.

Contract award based on value

A 60-day transition period is planned for the new contract.

DOE said in a statement that the Aecom-led team would provide the best value to DOE, considering its proposed leadership team, technical and management approach, past performance and cost. It did not say how many teams bid on the contract.

Typically, most workers employed under the expiring contract are hired by the new contractor management team. A website with information to answer worker questions about the transition was posted Thursday.

The Central Plateau Cleanup Co. will be required to subcontract some work to small businesses.

Aecom currently holds the expiring tank waste contract at Hanford with Atkins, and it is the primary subcontractor to Bechtel National at the vitrification plant construction and startup project.

Fluor is best known at Hanford for being the site’s main cleanup contractor from 1996 to 2008.

The new contract uses DOE Office of Environmental Management’s new end state contracting model, which is designed to assign discrete scopes of work to be completed, as needed. DOE has said it will provide more realistic, reliable pricing and incentives to help reduce DOE’s financial liability for cleanup.

The specific tasks will be assigned to the new contractor under what DOE calls a master indefinite-delivery, indefinite quantity contract.

The new contractor may be reimbursed for the costs of some tasks and then be rewarded with incentive pay to allow it to earn profit, which is the typical contracting model for Hanford cleanup.

Other work may be done for a pre-determined price to be paid to the new contractor.

CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation, owned by Jacobs, is on its 12th year of work after having its 10-year contract extended until as long as September 2020 to give DOE more time to award a new contract and then transition contracts.

Among its current projects is cleaning up the highly radioactive spill under the 324 Building just north of Richland, completing the final demolition of the Plutonium Finishing Plant down to slab on grade and preparing to increase the capacity of the 200 West Pump and Treat Facility to clean contaminated groundwater.

Other key Hanford contracts

A week ago DOE announced that it was awarding a 10-year, $4 billion contract to provide sitewide services at Hanford, keeping much of the current contract ownership in place.

The contract went to Hanford Mission Integration Solutions of Richland., which is owned by Leidos Integrated Technology of Maryland, Centerra Group of Florida and Parsons Government Services of California.

The current sitewide services contractor, Mission Support Alliance, is owned by Leidos and Centerra.

Its 10-year contract was recently extended for up to six months through May 25 to allow time for the contract award and a transition period of four months.

Hanford also has accepted bids for a third of its four largest Hanford contracts, its tank farm contract.

Washington River Protection Solutions is responsible for 56 million gallons of radioactive waste in underground tanks, including emptying leak-prone tanks and preparing some of the waste for treatment at the Hanford vitrification plant.

Like CH2M, it is on its 12th year of work after having what was initially a 10-year contract extended until September 2020.

Bechtel National, the remaining large Hanford contractor, has a contract through 2022 to complete commissioning of vitrification plant facilities for low level waste treatment and the completion of commissioning of the rest of the plant will be considered in a future contract modification, according to its contract.

This story was originally published December 12, 2019 at 3:58 PM.