New Contractor Takes Over Hanford Operations Fluor Daniel President Tells Workers They Are His First Priority

The new contractor in charge of cleaning up the Hanford Nuclear Reservation met with employees around the site Tuesday to celebrate the changing of the guard.

Fluor Daniel Hanford Inc. replaced Westinghouse Hanford Co., which had been the U.S. Energy Department’s lead contractor on the site for a decade.

Hanford, which produced plutonium for the U.S. nuclear arsenal for four decades, now is the nation’s most contaminated nuclear site. Cleanup is expected to take decades and cost tens of billions of dollars.

At least one employee was skeptical about the new management.

“Nothing’s going to change. It’ll still be business as usual here,” said a chemist analyzing radioactive wastes who declined to give his name.

“They’re promising the moon and the stars, but nothing ever changes here. No one’s willing to take a chance and change anything,” said the chemist, who has worked at Hanford for eight years. “They still have the same attitudes they did 40 years ago.”

But Ric Allen, a procurement clerk for 22 years at Hanford, was excited after hearing Fluor Daniel’s president, Hank Hatch, address about 400 workers.

“The spirit with which Hank and his staff came in here has been refreshing,” Allen said. “We were so apprehensive about what was going to happen today (with the changeover) that it’s encouraging to hear how willing Hank is to hear what the workers have to say. He’s very approachable.”

Hatch and other executives from the 13-company team that took over management of the site spoke to workers in three different areas. Hatch told the workers that they were his first priority, followed by the Energy Department, the community and Fluor’s investors.

“If we fail one of them, we fail all of them. To satisfy one of them, we must satisfy all of them. That’s what we intend to do,” he said.

Hatch said the 54-day transition period, between the announcement that Fluor won the $4.88 billion contract from the DOE and the beginning of the new fiscal year, went very quickly.

One of the hardest parts, he said during the drive between meeting points, was assigning Hanford’s 8,000 or so employees from the previous three contractors to the current 13 companies.

“The main challenge … had to do with, of all things, payroll,” Hatch said. “We had about 2 weeks to deal with the assignment of all the employees.”

Other than new company names on their paychecks, most employees won’t see any changes until at least Jan. 1, Hatch vowed. He declined to discuss what changes might be in the works, or when changes were likely.

“We need time to listen and learn,” he said. “Right now, the employees are in a better position to know how to improve the site than we are.”

The DOE contract places new emphasis on performance. Fluor Hanford and its subcontractors will be paid only when project goals are accomplished on schedule. They also are charged with helping to stablize the local economy and ease dependence on Hanford. The team has agreed to help create 3,000 new jobs over the next five years.