The Tennessee Valley Authority has awarded a 7-year contract to the Philadelphia-based engineering firm of Day and ZImmerman to supply workers and temporary help during outages at TVA's nuclear power plants.
The contract, which TVA directors approved at their quarterly board meeting in Knoxville this week, is valued at $950 million through 2023 and could be extended for an additional three years, according to TVA Nuclear Chief Joe Grimes.
"Our goal is to drive performance, innovation and continuous improvement at a lower cost," Grimes said. "This approach supports a variable workforce for both craft and non-craft workers to execute nuclear outage and supplemental maintenance work, as needed, at all three of our nuclear sites."
Grimes said TVA solicited bids from major nuclear engineering and staffing agencies for outage and maintenance work and he described the bidding competition as "rigorous."
The contract workers are key to helping TVA meet higher workloads during refueling and repair outages and should help TVA as it continues to operate Browns Ferry, Sequoyah and Watts Bar nuclear plants with fewer of its own full-time employees.
TVA currently has about 3,500 employees in its nuclear division, but TVA President Bill Johnson said that number is being cut through a voluntary reduction-in-force initiative following the completion of work on the Unit 2 reactor at Watts Bar.
TVA has no immediate plans to build any more nuclear plants and will try to sell its unfinished Bellefonte Nuclear Power Plant this fall.
Day & Zimmermann is a century-old, family-owned company specializing in construction and engineering, staffing and defense.