RICHLAND, Wash. - EM’s Office of River Protection awarded its Analytical Laboratory contractor nearly $212,000, or 98 percent, of the available award fee for its work at the Hanford Site during a performance evaluation period from Sept. 21, 2017 through Sept. 20, 2018.
EM releases information relating to contractor fee payments - earned by completing the work called for in their contracts - to further transparency in its cleanup program.
Each year, technicians at Wastren Advantage Inc., test some 25,000 samples of materials at the 222-S Laboratory in the 200 West area in support of the Hanford cleanup. The lab receives, handles, tests, analyzes, and stores samples from numerous projects on the site. Wastren workers have expertise in fields including nuclear engineering, nuclear physics, organic and inorganic chemistry, waste management, biology, and ecology.
The contractor met the full fee criteria for all three of its performance based incentives, and achieved an average of 94 percent on the subjective criteria, known as special emphasis areas. Of that criteria, Wastren received above 95 percent in two areas and above 92 percent in the other two.
Demonstrating active worker participation in safety and health programs, Wastren achieved the DOE Voluntary Protection Program Legacy Star status in fiscal 2018.
Wastren significantly improved laboratory operations by initiating new project management approaches, identifying and resolving quality-affecting issues, improving the analytical instrument maintenance program, expanding the use of automated bar code reading, and identifying improvements to sample analysis and waste handling processes that have significantly improved the laboratory performance, according to the scorecard.
Extensive external and internal assessments of Wastren’s performance revealed few programmatic or operational weaknesses. The scorecard noted four key areas of improvement, including communicating with project managers in the field and meeting original deliverable due dates.
View the fiscal 2018 scorecard for Wastren.
Source: U.S. Dept. of Energy, Office of Environmental Management
