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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Health, Safety Plan Penalty Costs Hanford Firm $2 Million

Associated Press

The company overseeing cleanup of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation has lost $2 million in performance fees for submitting a poorly prepared health and safety master plan.

John Wagoner, the Department of Energy’s manager at Hanford, outlined the penalty in a highly critical letter Jan. 23 to Hank Hatch, president of Fluor Daniel Hanford Inc., saying Fluor Daniel was not meeting its contractual obligations.

Fluor Daniel, which took over management of the site on Oct. 1, loses parts of its $4.88 billion, five-year fee for each promised goal it does not meet.

The “Environmental, Health and Safety Plan” is supposed to bring all the companies’ practices under one health and safety policy.

But Fluor’s plan “contains a lot of policy statements and discussions of intentions but very few specifics on how the policy and intentions will be met,” Wagoner said in the letter.

“Each subcontractor … brings with it diverse safety cultures and methods for achieving (safety) performance. How is (Fluor) going to ensure a seamless, coherent safety management system for the site?”

Fluor spokesman Nolan Curtis did not return telephone calls Tuesday from The Associated Press. However, he told the Tri-City Herald the company will work with the Energy Department to develop an overall safety and health plan for the site.

“We don’t agree with it. But they are the client, so that disagreement is a moot point,” Curtis said.

He said numerous safety programs are in place and working well.

“The site is operating under a safe manner,” Curtis said.

Key problems with the plan, Wagoner said, include:

Not mapping out clear expectations and requirements in the safety management plan.

“Virtually no guidance is provided … to the flow-down of work planning and execution from (Fluor) to the subcontractor to the personnel actually performing the work,” Wagoner wrote.

Not contractually requiring major subcontractors to help develop safety management plans.

Not looking at individual smaller successful safety management plans scattered about Hanford. Instead, Wagoner said, Fluor is apparently “starting from scratch.”