$10 billion Hanford cleanup contract protest settled. Coronavirus still an issue

The appeal of a Hanford nuclear reservation contract award worth up to $10 billion over 10 years has been denied.

The decision by the Government Accountability Office allows DOE to move forward with assigning central Hanford environmental cleanup work to the contractor it picked in December, Central Plateau Cleanup Co.

However, the COVID-19 pandemic may delay the start of the planned 60-day transition to the new central Hanford environmental cleanup contract awarded to Central Plateau Cleanup Co.

Hanford workers were told in a message on Friday that DOE is evaluating the transition because of the new coronavirus.

Central Plateau Cleanup Co. is a team led by Amentum, formerly Aecom, and includes Fluor Federal Services and Atkins Nuclear Secured.

“We are pleased with the GAO’s decision and look forward to working with the Department of Energy,” said Keith Wood, spokesman for Amentum, on Friday.

“We have assembled a tremendous team anxious to being working with the talented Hanford workforce, and we look forward to sharing our transition plans to continue work on this important DOE cleanup mission,” he said.

Protest filed in January

A losing bidder, Project W. Restoration LLC, filed a protest over the contract award in January with the Government Accountability Office. Bechtel, which is building and starting up the $17 billion vitrification plant is the lead owner of the company based in Reston, Va.

The GAO denied the protest on Thursday, making the denial public on Friday.

However, the protest is covered by a protective order and will not be made public until some information is redacted.

The current contractor for central Hanford environmental cleanup is CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co. It employs close to 1,700 workers.

CH2M, owned by Jacobs Engineering, is on its 12th year of work after having its 10-year contract extended until as long as September 2020 to give DOE time to transition to the new contract.

Because of the new coronavirus pandemic, only work essential to safety has been done on the Hanford site for the past six weeks, with no date set for returning to full operation.

About 10 to 15 percent of workers are reporting to the site and about 60 percent of workers are telecommuting to support work being done at the site. Almost all workers are being paid thanks to the economic stimulus bill passed in March.

New contract type

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.

Specific tasks will be assigned to Central Plateau Cleanup Co. under what DOE calls a master indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract.

The company may be reimbursed for the costs of some tasks and then 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 company.

The central Hanford cleanup contract work includes digging up contaminated soil and debris; cleaning out and 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.

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.

Support services contract

A week before GAO denied the protest over the central Hanford cleanup contract award, it denied a protest of a $4 billion contract for sitewide services at Hanford.

DOE also continues to consider how it will move forward with the transition from current contractor Mission Support Alliance to Mission Integration Solutions, given the new coronavirus pandemic.

The transition period for that contract is 120 days and the new contract is worth $4 billion over 10 years.

Mission Support Alliance employs almost 2,000 workers.

Typically new contractors hire most of the workers under the previous contract, but bring in their own management team.

This story was originally published May 1, 2020 at 12:56 PM.