The Department of Energy awarded a contract worth $4.5 billion Thursday to CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co. for cleaning up central Hanford.

It's the second of three prime contract awards DOE has been working on over the past year.

CH2M Hill is the sole owner of the company winning the bid, but the team also includes Areva Federal Services, East Tennessee Materials & Energy Corp. and Fluor Federal Services as major subcontractors.

"The team that we brought in has expertise in all of the major scope areas of the central plateau contract," said John Lehew, president of the new company.

The transition to CH2M Hill could begin as soon as July 1 and be completed in 90 days, putting it in charge of central Hanford cleanup as soon as Oct. 1. The contract's base period is five years, with a possible extension for five years to reach the full value of $4.5 billion.

Now most of the affected work is done under a Fluor Hanford contract that ends Oct. 1 after 12 years. Because Fluor Federal Services is a subcontractor on the contract awarded Thursday, Fluor will retain a presence at Hanford.

"DOE's announcement that the CH2M Hill-Fluor-Areva team won the Plateau Remediation Contract is great news," Fluor Hanford President Con Murphy said in a message to employees Thursday. "We applaud CH2M Hill for its leadership on this bid and are proud to be a member of its team."

CH2M Hill holds the expiring contract for managing Hanford's tank farms storing 53 million gallons of radioactive waste. The new tank farm contract was awarded to a company led by URS's Washington Division with EnergySolutions earlier this month. CH2M Hill and URS bid on both contracts, each winning one.

As is customary under Hanford contract changes, CH2M Hill will bring in its own management team, but most of the work will continue to be done by those already employed by Fluor Hanford. Current workers who transfer to CH2M Hill will retain their traditional Hanford retirement and health care benefits. However, new employees will receive what DOE calls "market-based" pension and health insurance plans under the DOE bid request.

CH2M Hill is working to launch a website within the next few days to provide more information to workers and the community, Lehew said.

"We bring in a very strong safety culture," he said. "Safety and compliance are foremost in the planning and executing of work." Key to that is full involvement of the workers, he said.

CH2M Hill plans to tackle the highest-risk projects first to reduce or eliminate health and environmental hazards while reducing costs, he said.

CH2M Hill has done similar work for DOE at Rocky Flats, Colo.; Mound, Ohio; and Idaho, and said it will continue to partner with prequalified small businesses to meet aggressive cleanup milestones.

The new contractor already has selected several small-business subcontractors, including Tri-City offices of Perma-Fix, Babcock Services and ARES.

CH2M Hill Hanford Group developed a reputation as an important supporter of Tri-City projects, including pledging donations over the last seven years of $2 million to Columbia Basin College and $2 million to Washington State University Tri-Cities.

CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation will continue that tradition of community support, Lehew said.

"CH2M Hill and Fluor have been very good corporate citizens," said Carl Adrian, Tri-City Development Council president. With the award of the central Hanford and the tank farms contract, the community will benefit from the retention of trusted companies with a strong community presence and newer players, he said.

Hanford's regulators -- Washington state and the Environmental Protection Agency -- both said they were pleased the contract had been awarded.

"We have worked with CH2M Hill and believe its experience and professionalism will provide a solid foundation and enable a smooth transition," said Jane Hedges, state Department of Ecology manager of the nuclear waste program.

The contract structure puts a clear focus on getting cleanup done in central Hanford, said Nick Ceto, EPA's Hanford program manager.

Under the contract, CH2M Hill is to demolish the rest of the Plutonium Finishing Plant, start cleanup of "canyons" used to process irradiated fuel to remove plutonium and continue cleanup of waste sites and buildings. It also will be responsible for protecting and cleaning up the site's ground water.

In addition, it will place the K East and K West reactors in long-term storage by tearing them down to little more than their radioactive cores and sealing them to allow radiation to decay over the next 75 years. That work had been assigned to Washington Closure Hanford as part of cleanup along the river corridor, but emptying and demolishing the reactors' basins has been delayed and may require work at the reactors after the river corridor contract is done.

Lehew and his family moved to the Tri-Cities last summer. Before that, he was site project manager for the $5.8 billion Dounreay, Scotland, decommissioning project. In 22 years of nuclear operations, decommissioning and environmental restoration experience, he also served as project manager at the Mound site and worked at Rocky Flats.

He has a master's in ecological engineering from the Colorado School of Mines and is a reactor engineer and reactor supervisor through the Navy Nuclear Propulsion Program.

DOE has yet to award the third prime contract, for Hanford services sitewide such as security, information technology and utilities. That work now is done under the expiring Fluor Hanford contract.