NIOSH renews ORAU contract for sick worker program

Contract could be worth about $150 million over five years

For the second time in about five years, a federal health and safety institute has renewed its contract with Oak Ridge Associated Universities for the support it provides on a sick worker program. The new contract could be worth about $150 million during a five-year period.

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health awarded the contract to a team headed by ORAU in Oak Ridge. Under the new contract, ORAU and its partners Dade Moeller and Associates Inc. and MJW Technical Services Inc. will continue to support NIOSH and its work under the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act, or EEOICPA, a press release said.

Last renewed in 2009, this contract has been managed by ORAU for more than a decade, and this is the second time NIOSH has renewed with ORAU and its partners, the release said.

“We’re pleased to receive this continued vote of confidence from NIOSH in our team’s ability to effectively carry out this important work for workers and their families,” said Andy Page, ORAU president and chief executive officer. “Our mission is to continue providing the same level of quality and commitment to this program that NIOSH has come to expect from this great team.”

Under the terms of the new contract, the ORAU team will help collect data related to claims and petitions, conduct dose reconstruction research, conduct claimant interviews, oversee the Special Exposure Cohort (SEC) petitioning process, and estimate occupational radiation doses. Results from the completed dose reconstructions are ultimately provided to the claimant and the U.S. Department of Labor for use in adjudicating claims filed under EEOICPA.

The contract is for one year, with four one-year options valued at about $30 million per year.

Partnering with ORAU are Dade Moeller and MJWTS. Dade Moeller is an employee-owned business specializing in occupational and environmental health sciences, the press release said. MJWTS is a privately owned radiological consulting company that provides professional and technical services to the nuclear industry.

Since the original contract for this work in 2002, ORAU and its partners have assisted NIOSH in:

• Completing more than 48,000 preliminary dose assessments for NIOSH review
• Conducting more than 140,000 interviews with claimants or their survivors to gather information to explain dose reconstruction results
• Conducting more than 466 trips to identify and secure relevant data and records
• Assembling and indexing 125,000 documents into a searchable and retrievable database
• Writing and managing periodic review for 1,330 technical documents that collectively reconstruct much of the history of the nation’s nuclear weapons complex
• Assessing 200 SEC petitions
• Evaluating 130 SEC petition evaluations reports written resulting in the addition of 107 SEC classes

“ORAU’s leadership in dose reconstruction work has been well demonstrated over many years,” said U.S. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, R-Tenn. “As a representative of Oak Ridge and many of our energy employees, I have heard from workers how important the EEOICPA program is to the men and women who became ill from their work supporting our Cold War efforts. ORAU’s work in support of energy employee illness compensation cases allows former employees and their families to move through the legal process and receive the compensation they deserve.”

The new contract will require much of the same work that the ORAU team has been doing. Some of the work will continue to be conducted from project offices located in Cincinnati, Ohio. The team includes health physicists, industrial hygienists, scientists, and support staff from all three partner organizations and from several specialty subcontractors.