The management and operations contractor for the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina is looking to hire nearly 70 engineers in an effort to keep up with demands as more of its workforce becomes eligible for retirement.
Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) currently has 84 external jobs posted online, ranging from engineer positions to business, safety, and security-related roles. It is unclear how many internal positions need to be filled in-house.
External positions are those advertised to the general public, while internal jobs are filled by current SRNS employees.
The external engineering positions include electrical engineering, design, and architectural engineering, among others. Some are for senior positions that require experience, while others are entry-level jobs.
Savannah River Nuclear Solutions is looking to fill these jobs as soon as possible. All of the new employees will replace workers who are expected to retire, spokeswoman Barbara Smoak said by email. “SRNS recognized the potential retirement impact and through proactive and innovative hiring practices has substantially mitigated much of that issue.”
Savannah River Nuclear Solutions is a partnership of Fluor, Honeywell, and Stoller Newport News Nuclear. Its original $9.5 billion contract expired on July 31, but the Energy Department extended it for another year as it seeks a new contractor.
The Energy Department in August issued a draft solicitation seeking interested parties for the follow-on contract. One-on-one meetings with those parties will begin next Monday. The follow-on deal could be worth $15 billion over 10 years.
The current SRNS workforce sits at 5,438 employees – nearly half of the roughly 11,000 employees at the Savannah River Site. The average age of an SRNS employee is 48, and about 50 percent of the workforce will be eligible for retirement in the next five years or so.
The contractor has hired 2,328 full-time employees since fiscal 2014, including 467 workers in this fiscal year, Smoak said. Another 200 employees have already been hired and are expected to report in the near future.
