Richard Kacich, who was appointed deputy director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in November, on Feb. 8 will become the top manager for the lab’s legacy waste cleanup contract with the Energy Department, according to an internal memo.
“In addition to Rick’s broader responsibilities, I have asked him to take on a direct leadership role for the Laboratory’s activities under the new Legacy Clean-up Bridge Contract,” LANL Director Charles McMillan wrote in a Wednesday all-hands email obtained by Weapons Complex Morning Briefing.
The bridge contract, between DOE’s Office of Environmental Management and Los Alamos National Security (LANS), the lab management consortium led by Bechtel and the University of California, was awarded in September and could be worth some $310 million through September 2017. The one-year base period is worth roughly $160 million; a pair of six month options are worth just over $70 million each. It is intended to be followed by award of a longer-term contract for lab cleanup work.
Also effective Feb. 8, LANL’s Associate Directorate for Environmental Programs, the group within the lab that oversees cleanup activities, will be renamed the Associate Directorate for Environmental Management — a change reflecting the impending split of LANL management and operations from legacy cleanup activities. Cleanup had for years been funded by the Environmental Management Office, but managed under LANS’ operations contract with the National Nuclear Security Administration. That deal also expires in September 2017.
Kacich spent 30 years in industry before joining LANL, most recently at Bechtel, where he was project operations manager for the Waste Treatment Plant the company is building to treat some 56 million gallons of radioactive and chemical waste at DOE’s Hanford Site in Washington state.
"The changes announced today at Los Alamos National Laboratory are an organizational realignment that leverages the extensive environmental management experience of our new Deputy Lab Director, Rick Kacich," a LANL spokesman wrote in an email.
Randy Erickson remains associate director of the soon-to-be-renamed Associate Directorate for Environmental Programs.
