August 2017

Construction Quality Assessment at the Hanford Site Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Nuclear Safety and Environmental Assessments, within the independent Office of Enterprise Assessments (EA), conducted an assessment of construction quality and the implementation of the quality assurance (QA) program at the Hanford Site Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP) from March 6 to 9, 2017.  EA performed this assessment in the broader context of an ongoing program of quarterly assessments of construction quality at the WTP construction site.

The scope of this EA assessment included observing ongoing work activities, reviewing the Bechtel National, Inc. (BNI), program for controlling non-conforming conditions, examining the implementation of certain requirements in the BNI QA program, and following up on issues identified during previous assessments.  EA reviewed the AECOM preservation maintenance program for stored and installed equipment.  AECOM is the operations contractor responsible for preservation maintenance for equipment and systems completed by Construction and turned over to Operations.  EA also reviewed BNI’s corrective actions to resolve deficiencies in the QA and corrective action programs.