Gearing up to defend its turf as top dog of the Energy Department’s legacy liquid-waste cleanup operations, Los Angeles-based AECOM is moving an executive with experience in nuclear waste management into a senior position at its company’s Nuclear and Environment Strategic Business Unit, according to an internal memo dated Aug. 22.
Effective Oct. 1, Terri Marts will become senior vice president of special projects for the Nuclear and Environment branch, according to the memo, a copy of which was provided to Weapons Complex Monitor.
Marts’ “focus will be the growth and development of the Northeast Region in the energy, environment, defense and technology markets,” including operation of the National Energy Technology Laboratory, Todd Wright, the former Savannah River National Laboratory manager who in June took the reins at AECOM’s N&E business as general manager and executive vice president, wrote in the memo.
For most of the last two years, Marts was an AECOM senior vice president, in which capacity, according to her LinkedIn profile, she worked at the Energy Department’s Hanford Site near Richland, Wash., “managing the integration of AECOM activities in the Washington region and leading the activities in support of the planning and completion of the high level waste mission.”
Since March, Marts has run AECOM’s consulting subsidiary Professional Solutions. She kept that chair warm for William Condon, who on Oct. 1 will replace Marts as vice president of AECOM’s technical services sector and president of Professional Solutions, according to the Aug. 22 memo. Condon is a longtime liquid-waste-cleanup hand whose most recent responsibilities as manager for the One System and Chief Technology Office included managing coordination of AECOM’s high-level waste business at Hanford.
Marts’ pending appointment was announced internally as prospective bidders for a follow-on to the AECOM-led liquid-waste cleanup at DOE’s Savannah River Site were putting the finishing touches on proposals for an estimated 10-year, $4 billion-to-$6 billion contract that includes permanent disposal of millions of tons of salt waste. Bidding closed Tuesday.
AECOM is a power player on liquid waste cleanup throughout the DOE weapons complex, though it noticeably lacks a leading presence at the department’s Idaho site. There, in February, rival Fluor scooped up a five-year, cost-plus Idaho Cleanup Project Core contract worth up to $1.4 billion. AECOM was widely speculated to be Fluor’s competitor for the work.
AECOM also has big roles in liquid waste cleanup at DOE’s Hanford Site in Washington state. The company is a major partner on Washington River Protection Solutions, prime contractor for the Hanford tank farms that contain more than 50 million gallons of primarily liquid radioactive and chemical waste left over from plutonium production during the Cold War nuclear arms-race. AECOM is likewise a major subcontractor on Hanford’s Waste Treatment Plant, which is under construction and legally obliged to begin immobilizing high-level liquid waste from the tank farm by 2036.
Both Marts and Condon are nuclear-industry veterans with URS pedigrees, though Condon’s runs the deeper. Condon joined URS Corp. 25 years ago. Marts spent nearly 23 years with Westinghouse, leaving that company in 2000 and eventually joining URS in 2009. AECOM acquired URS in 2014.
