In fiscal 2015, Energy Department contractor LATA Environmental Services of Kentucky nabbed about 75 percent of its possible award fee, good for just under $2.5 million in the final year of the company’s five-year remediation contract for the Paducah Site in Kentucky.
LATA has been officially off the job since its contract, worth just over $425 million at the time of its award in 2010, expired in July 2015, and Fluor Federal Services took over Paducah cleanup.
Elsewhere at Paducah, Swift & Staley Inc. (SSI) — potentially on the job at the site through 2020 under a five-year contract worth just north of $175 million, including a two-year option — fared a bit better, netting just a fee award of just under $3 million, or almost 90 percent of the possible award for 2015.
Meanwhile, BWXT Conversion Services, prime contractor for depleted uranium hexafluoride (DUF6) cleanup at Paducah and Portsmouth, Ohio, got hammered in its fiscal 2015 evaluation. For the year, the company got only 59 percent of its possible award fee, or about $1.3 million. This nevertheless equates to an adjectival rating of “good” on DOE’s scale. BWXT Conversion Services started work on its five-year, $411-million DUF6 cleanup contract in 2011.
For the LATA contract, and many others, DOE awards fees in two ways. Adjectival ratings, a subjective appraisal of work that is not easily quantified, covers areas such as project management and administration. Measurable cleanup work, on the other hand, is graded based on performance.
It was in the performance category where LATA left most of its money on the table in fiscal 2015, according to DOE’s latest, and final, award fee determination scorecard for the contractor. The document was posted online this week.
LATA earned just 60 percent, or about $1.4 million, of its possible 2015 award fee. The company failed to finish cleaning up contaminated soil at the former uranium enrichment facility, and likewise didn’t wrap up certain construction projects before handing the site over to Fluor. Among the construction projects left incomplete were a boiler, carts to carry waste into waste disposal cells, and cascade heaters and panels, according to the scorecard.
Also at Paducah, SSI got an almost-spotless report from DOE. Across a wide spread of services provided, such as security, cybersecurity, administration, and grounds-keeping, DOE identified only “minor-problems.” Among these are “multiple security issues,” the details of which were not part of the latest award-fee determination scorecard, discovered during an review conducted last year by DOE’s Oak Ridge Office.
These security issues, however, “could have been avoided with additional training, management oversight, and general site awareness of DOE security program [cq],” DOE wrote.
Meanwhile, BWXT Conversion Services lost out on much of its award fee because DUF6 conversion plants at Paducah and Portsmouth were shut down “for prolonged periods due to significant safety issues,” according to the latest award fee scorecard.
Among these safety issues was a chemical spill in March 2015 at Portsmouth, after which a worker had to be airlifted off the site for medical attention.
Under its contract with DOE, BWXT Conversion Services converts DUF6 into less dangerous uranium oxide. On the performance-based side of the contract, the company gets a fee based on how much uranium oxide it creates in each award period.
For fiscal 2015, BWXT earned a total of almost $745,000 for conversion work. That includes just over 10,000 metric tons of DUF6 the company actually processed for a fee of $710,736, and a credit for processing another 500 metric tons or so for roughly $34,000 more, according to the latest award fee determination scorecard. DOE said it credited the company with extra because of “an excusable delay,” the details of which the scorecard did not explain.
BWXT Conversion Services’ contract covers running the two plants and ongoing surveillance and maintenance of steel cylinders there that contain the DUF6. Conversion began in July 2010 at Portsmouth and is expected to conclude around 2032. Paducah operations started in February 2011 and are slated to finish in 2044.
Annual DUF6 processing capacity at tops out at 13,500 metric tons a year at Portsmouth, and at 18,000 metric tons a year at Paducah, according to the contract.
DOE said earlier this year it will award a new DUF6 operations contract in the fourth quarter of the government’s 2016 fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.
The contractors did not immediately reply to requests for comment about the latest award fee determination scorecards.
