The contract Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth has with the United States Department of Energy (DOE) expires in March of 2016. Company officials say they are pursuing a contract renewal.

Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth has a contract with DOE to conduct Decontamination and Decommissioning (D&D) work of the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon.

When Fluor-BWXT was awarded the initial contract it was valued at $2 billion dollars over 10 years.

“Our contract ends in March and has a five year option period that’s priced out. We got a request for proposal from the Department of Energy to submit a revised updated proposal by the end of December,” said Dennis Carr, Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth Site Project Director. “We’ll be going through negotiations for the next three months or so. My understanding is the time period (contract extension) will be a 30 month period, followed by a second 30 month period.”

He said Fluor-BWXT will continue as the project contractor, but they will be bringing on CH2M Hill as a part of their team.

“They (CH2M) are another very large engineering firm, with a primary specialty in environmental remediation. They will be a good fit with us and we’ve worked with them before on other projects,” Carr said.

He said CH2M Hill is currently working on D&D of the Oak Ridge Gaseous Diffusion Facilities.

“The hope is to tie into some of the expertise and lessons learned from those facilities. Some of these buildings are very typical of what they had in Oak Ridge. We’ve been spending quite a bit of time trying to pull in that expertise,” Carr said.

CHM2M Hill will have several on staff associated with the D&D work in Piketon.

Carr said even though they will be in negotiations with DOE the focus will be the same.

One of the stipulations of the original D&D contract being awarded a Community Commitment Plan had to be developed.

Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth has developed such a plan and has been activity pursuing the plans objectives.

The commitment plan states Fluor-BWXT will invest five percent of its fee in a four-county region (Scioto, Pike, Jackson and Ross Counties.) “We will use these funds to establish a community commitment fund. Through this fund, we will target 80 percent to economic development and 20 percent to charitable giving initiatives that provide the greatest impact to the region,” the plan outlines.

From 2010 through 2014, Fluor-B&W Portsmouth had spent roughly $252 million in Scioto, Pike, Jackson and Ross Counties.

For more information about Fluor-B&W Portsmouth visit, www.fbportsmouth.com.