Kenneth Fletcher
WC Monitor
5/12/2015
B&W Conversion Services, LLC, the managing contractor for the Department of Energy’s two depleted uranium hexafluoride (DUF6) conversion plants, earned 72 percent of the total available award fee for Fiscal Year 2014—$1.51 million out of $2.10 million, according to information DOE released this week. That is up from FY’13, when BWCS earned 66 percent of the total available award fee. “The contractor met the majority of performance goals and objectives for this period,” states DOE’s FY’14 Award Fee Determination Scorecard for BWCS. “Significant achievements include multiple simultaneous line operation of each plant, maintaining a safety conscious work environment though TRC rates are above goals, safe handling of over 3.5 million gallons of hydrofluoric acid and prompt performance of cylinder transfers to support DOE initiatives.”
For its performance award fee, BWCS earned “very good” ratings in quality and effectiveness of cylinder management and quality of technical problem solving. It earned “good ratings” in nuclear safety and quality culture, project management, project support and environment, safety health and quality assurance. Additionally, BWCS earned $1.51 million in performance based incentives award fee, which is directly linked to the amount of material processed during the period. In FY’14 BWCS processed a total of 22,596 metric tons of DUF6 and was paid $67 per metric ton.
The two DUF6 conversion plants, located at DOE’s Portsmouth and Paducah sites, are intended to help disposition more than 700,000 metric tons of material stored in thousands of cylinders at the two sites. BWCS—made up of B&W and URS—took over as the plants’ operating contractor from Uranium Disposition Services in the spring of 2011. BWCS did not respond to request for comment this week on its fee.
Strengths Include Safety, Cylinder Inspections
In its FY’14 fee determination letter, DOE noted numerous strengths. That includes conduct of operations in the control room that “has matured such that all shifts were able to sustain safe control of the conversion process during normal and abnormal conditions,” the letter states. Additionally, BWCS completed “more than the required minimum number of cylinder inspections.” The contractor was also “timely” in supporting the transition of the Paducah facilities from USEC to DOE.
Opportunities For Improvement Include Baseline Approval
While DOE did not find any major deficiencies, there were numerous opportunities for improvement noted. That includes efforts for gaining DOE approval of the contractor’s baseline. “The Contractor required extensive [DOE Portsmouth Paducah Project Office] comments to produce an acceptable Contractor baseline, taking over a three year effort with five revisions to get final DOE approval in May 2014,” the letter states. In other areas, “the Contractor management team submitted programmatic documents requiring significant PPPO review, indicative of lack of attention to produce acceptable work,” according to the letter. BWCS also “spent $89K for a Waste Management review and evaluation for which the Contractor baseline clearly shows internal resources for this work,” the letter says.
