A draft federal audit said Fluor Hanford's employees were not working 25 percent of the time inspectors observed them in July and August.

The draft report concluded 25 percent of the observed employees were doing activities obviously not work-oriented.

These included sleeping, nonbusiness Internet use, watching TV, reading nonbusiness materials such as newspapers and magazines, balancing checkbooks, playing pingpong and putting on makeup. If there were any doubts on an employee's activity, it was counted as work-related.

But Fluor, in conducting its own follow-up observations, checked out the situation and found a much smaller percentage of people not working.

In late September, the federal Defense Contract Audit Agency concluded that Fluor could save about $56.6 million a year by decreasing nonwork activities at the 200 Area and the K Basins.

Right now, the Department of Energy and Fluor are studying the DCAA's final report -- issued Sept. 29 -- to scrub the numbers and pinpoint where the problems are.

DOE declined to release the DCAA's report Wednesday, pending it and Fluor completing their studies of the DCAA's conclusions and figures. A late September draft was leaked to the Herald.

The report's findings worry DOE and Fluor, said Jeanie Schwier, DOE's chief financial officer at Hanford. But the report has wrinkles that have to be analyzed before DOE and Fluor can get a better grasp on idle workers at the site, said Schwier and Ed Penn, Fluor's vice president for business systems.

"We're not saying we don't have an idleness problem. But it's not to the degree in this report," Schwier said.

Penn added: "We take to heart what the DCAA has given us."

DOE requested the DCAA check on idle time among Hanford workers last summer. This was a routine inspection to help DOE grade Fluor's performance as Hanford's lead contractor, Schwier said. However, this audit does not address productivity and efficiency issues, she added.

The DCAA and DOE worked out agreed-upon criteria and methods. They conducted 555 visits to the K Basins, 200 East Area and 200 West Area in July and August to monitor idle workers.

However, the observers did not go into any radiological or hazardous materials areas that required extra protective measures. So, the observers concentrated on administrative and maintenance buildings and areas including lunchrooms, offices and hallways.

The report extrapolated its figures to conclude each employee probably spends two hours and 22 minutes a day doing nonwork activities. Then, the report sliced the idle 25 percent of the inspectors' observations to 21 percent to account for work breaks.

However, because the observers did not go into areas containing hazardous or radioactive materials, Schwier and Penn said that skews the percentages of work and nonwork times.

Also, the DCAA audit assumed a lunch hour of 11 a.m. to noon. In actuality, Hanford uses a flexible lunch hour to be conducted sometime between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. to give some leeway to individual crews and the work they are tackling, Schwier and Penn said. Scrubbing the DCAA's observations to account for the flexible lunch hour eliminated all the TV watching and pingpong playing plus all but one of the observations of a worker sleeping, they said.

Also, a Sept. 18 Fluor memo said that 50 percent of the DCAA's observations were in the K Basins area.

"Management is concerned about the high nonworking observations, but the operations being conducted at K Basins are not normal production operations," the Fluor memo said.

The K Basins project consists of preparing operators and equipment to begin removing spent nuclear fuel from a huge, water-filled indoor pool by Nov. 30. Training, testing, perfecting operating procedures and the final fix-it work all contribute to down time at the K Basins, the memo said.

Schwier said Fluor immediately e-mailed its managers about the DCAA's observations after receiving the first preliminary report last summer.

Penn said the DCAA report did not pinpoint where it found the greatest concentrations of idleness.

Fluor is conducting its own follow-up observations to include the areas controlled for radiological and hazardous materials and to better pin down the problem areas.

Fluor checked out the 200 West Area on Oct. 23, finding 11 instances of people not working out of 189 observations -- translating to 5.8 percent, Penn said.

Additional internal inspections will be conducted with Fluor hoping to check 36 full-access and limited-access facilities by mid-December, Penn said.

The DCAA draft audit recommends tighter management of employees and for Fluor to study staffing and workload needs to decrease idle times.