KENNEWICK — The Hanford tank farm contractor will receive almost $39 million in incentive pay from the Department of Energy for its work in fiscal 2019.
Washington River Protection Solutions, owned by Aecom and Atkins, earned about 94 percent of the total pay possible.
That is up from 93 percent of the total possible pay earned for the previous fiscal year. However, the amount of pay possible was greater last year and the contractor was awarded about $9 million more a year ago.
Some of this year’s award fee will be shared with workers.
They are eligible for a Workforce Incentive Program bonus of up to $1,160 per employee in their paycheck this week, said John Eschenberg, contractor chief executive, in a memo to employees Monday.
“I am pleased with DOE’s recognition of our strong performance, as I believe it clearly reflects their confidence in our team’s high level of dedication and commitment to safety and mission progress,” Eschenberg said.
The contractor manages underground tanks holding 56 million gallons of radioactive and hazardous chemical waste, including emptying waste from leak-prone single shell tanks into sturdier double shell tanks.
It also is preparing to start pretreating some of the waste and transferring it to the Hanford site’s vitrification plant for glassification to allow permanent disposal of the waste.
The waste is left from the past production of plutonium at the nuclear reservation for the nation’s nuclear weapons program from World War II through the Cold War.
‘Very good’ ratings
DOE reimburses Washington River Protection Solutions for most of its costs at the tank farms and also makes award payments to allow the contractor to profit from its work.
The company did best on finishing particular scopes of work, such as specific design and infrastructure work.
It received 99 percent of the pay available, or $27.6 million of almost $28 million available.
For performance that was measured subjectively by DOE, the contractor is eligible for about 85 percent of the maximum fee available.
A scorecard released by DOE for its work from Oct 2018 through September 2019 concluded it had earned about $11 million of the approximately $13 million available.
Most of its ratings were “very good.”
It earned an “excellent,” or 96 percent of the pay available for its implementation of its safety program.
But it earned only 73 percent of the pay available, which was still a rating of “good,” for its safety program related to nuclear operations.
A scorecard released by DOE said the company needed to work on developing complete and error-free safety-related documents outlining risks to support treatment projects for tank waste.
It also needs to do better at anticipating what changes it will need to permits issued by the state Department of Ecology for planned work, DOE said.
Progress on projects
Its list of achievements was longer.
They include:
• Completed installation of a third temporary barrier over the surface of the ground above underground tanks to prevent precipitation and snow melt from spreading contamination deeper into the soil.
The barrier over the SX Tank Farm was finished five months ahead of schedule.
• Beat the goal of treating 2 million gallons of contaminated waste water at the Effluent Treatment Facility in the center of the Hanford Site by 1.4 million gallons.
• Collaborated with DOE to speed up by three months certain changes to safety-related plans of concern to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board.
The plans are related to controlling potentially flammable gases in tanks.
• In assigned work unrelated to the tank farms, it finished moving pension funds from government to private administration at some DOE sites elsewhere in the nation where cleanup has been completed.
The changes returned $38.5 million in taxpayer savings to DOE.
• Received a Voluntary Protection Program award for safety and health outreach, as well as the DOE program’s Star of Excellence award.
This is WRPS’s 12th year of work on what was initially a 10-year contract.
DOE extended the contract until as long as September 2020 to allow it time to award a new tank farm contract and allow for a transition period.
