ROCK ISLAND ARSENAL, Ill. – The vast majority of the support Army Contracting Command provides is directly tied to the nation’s service members and what they need to complete missions. A different type of contracting mission here at ACC-Rock Island – the chemical demilitarization, also known as chem demil mission – was focused on destroying the nation’s chemical munition stockpiles.
The work being done by ACC-RI, and its precedent contracting offices, over the past 20-plus years has led to the successful mission accomplishment of eliminating the U.S. chemical weapons stockpile. In the summer of 2023, the last two plants operating under contracts awarded by ACC-RI, destroyed the last of these obsolete chemical weapons, which had been stored since the 1950s.
Completion of this high-profile mission brought the U.S. in compliance with the International Chemical Weapons Treaty to destroy all chemical munition stockpiles by Sept. 30, 2023. ACC-RI and its precedent contracting offices were responsible for providing the contracting support for the years of planning, construction, operation and closure of these facilities.
In total, ACC-RI’s support chem demil mission took place at nine stockpile sites: Johnston Atoll; Newport Chemical Depot, Indiana; Umatilla Chemical Depot, Oregon; Deseret Chemical Depot, Utah; Pine Bluff Chemical Activity, Arkansas; Anniston Chemical Activity, Alabama; Edgewood Chemical Activity, Maryland; Pueblo Chemical Depot, Colorado; and Bluegrass Chemical Activity, Kentucky.
All of the sites other than Pueblo and Bluegrass fell under the Chemical Materials Agency (CMA) and reached mission completion by January 2012, while Pueblo and Bluegrass, the two sites that reached mission completion in 2023, fell under the Program Executive Office Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternatives (PEO ACWA). Main plant operations at Blue Grass ran from Jan. 17, 2020-July 7, 2023, and from Sept. 7, 2016-June 16, 2023, at Pueblo.
First of a kind equipment
Utilizing adaptable contracting was vital in addressing the unique nature of the Pueblo and Blue Grass missions and the associated challenges. Whereas the seven sites falling under CMA destroyed chemical munitions via incineration, the Blue Grass Chemical Agent-Destruction Pilot Plant (BGCAPP) and Pueblo Chemical Agent-Destruction Pilot Plant (PCAPP) sites were developed as chemical agent destruction pilot plants, prioritizing worker, public and environmental safety.
“These sites used all first-of-a-kind equipment that involved a lot of research and development,” said Christina Orcutt, branch chief over the chem demil contracting mission. “These sites destroyed weapons using technologies that had not previously been used, so it was a very unique environment and this contract has been very much in flux since the beginning.”
Even in the design and testing phases, various contracting tools were looked at, said Orcutt, and once the plant was operating with these new technologies, there were areas where the team learned what worked and where changes and adjustments needed to be made.
This is very different from the other chem demil sites that utilized incineration, as these contracts were developed and – in general – remained static and did not necessitate many alterations.
“With those contracts, they kind of had a process down and could use the same or similar methods,” said Orcutt. “In Colorado and Kentucky is where the game really changed.”
The requirements generation for the Bluegrass and Pueblo missions began back in the 2000-2001 timeframe, and has seen the need for flexibility for the duration of the mission.
Christina Reyes, contracting officer on the BGCAPP program, said the contract structure at these two chem demil sites is much more complex than it is on a lot of other programs; one reason is due to different fee structures.
“The way that we break it out and come to terms and agreements on it does vary by phases, sometimes we'll renegotiate those fee structures, sometimes incentivizing more towards safety,” said Reyes. “It started off utilizing incentive fees and now we're doing award fee.”
Orcutt said that because BGCAPP and PCAPP have been award fee contracts, they are unique to the center.
“The fee structure is set up so we have a whole document where we have a board that meets and goes over the contractors performance every six months and it's through multiple areas like management, cost, safety, environmental, basically just gauging how the contractors are doing with regard to all these individual areas and then they take this comprehensive report to determine what percentage of their fee pool they've earned for that six month period,” said Orcutt. “It's a helpful, in-depth monitoring of the contractor’s performance.”
Reyes said moving to the award fee structure helped bring all parties onto the same page than when they were doing incentivized milestones.
“That was challenging in the past because there would be a lot of back and forth where the contractor thought they met the milestone, but the government had a different opinion,” said Reyes. “Changing it over to award fee has really relieved a lot of that back and forth and we've been more on the same page, more open with the contractors under award fee and they do self-assessments under award fee.”
Overcoming obstacles
In addition to being first-of-a-kind pilot plants, there were some other notable differences – and challenges.
Stuart Honn, contracting officer for PCAPP, said the permitting that's required before you can actually move out and start doing the job was challenging, as permit specifications vary from state to state.
“Referencing back to all the previous sites, just because it worked in Indiana or Oregon doesn't mean it's going to fly with the state regulators in charge of the permitting in Kentucky or Colorado,” said Honn.
Reyes said obtaining the environmental permits while in the midst of contract requirement changes necessitated continual attention.
“Sometimes these happened at an inconvenient time, so overall it was a lot of work to go through all the environmental permits to get declaration to start operations,” said Reyes.
While not unique to the BGCAPP and PCAPP contracts, the COVID-19 pandemic did have a profound effect on the facilities, especially at BGCAPP, which became operational in January 2020. While in that infant stage, the pandemic’s safety protocols had to be majorly adjusted while keeping the facilities operating all day every day to still meet the international treaty deadline.
“That’s a big kudos and tip of the hat to everybody involved to come up with a means to address the challenges posed by COVID in a factory setting and the balancing act that was required to still be able to make the progress necessary to comply with the International Chemical Weapons Treaty,” said Honn.
Another safety consideration, Reyes said, was that the contracted employees were working with very old munitions, some of which were degraded and even leaking, forcing case-by-case decisions whether the munitions could even be processed through the main plants, or whether they would be destroyed by an alternate method.
Finally, the fact that these two sites are sunset programs pose unique challenges.
“Prior to the BGCAPP and PCAPP sites, there was always a next site, but here, there is no next,” said Honn. “The skill that these employees possess both on the contractor side as well as the government side means there's been a very strong emphasis on retaining skilled employees on the contractor side and the government side. Employee retention has been more of a challenge with BGCAPP and PCAPP than it was at the previous seven sites.”
Next stage
Now that the operations phase of the chem demil mission at these sites has achieved completion, they are in the closure phase.
“The current stage is focused on decontaminating the facilities and the equipment from any leftover residue agent and then decommissioning and taking apart all of that equipment, and then after that, there's a demolition phase,” said Reyes. “Certain facilities on the site will be taken down or stripped down to only lights on, so they're working through which facilities are being stripped down or totally demolished for the next phase.”
Orcutt says the hope is that the facilities that remain standing will be repurposed, whether that be for a Government Owned Contractor Operated facility, or other.
“They’ve both had site visits where they have brought in other people from the area and other industries to start figuring out what they can use those facilities for or what would be a potential use to move in there,” said Orcutt. “Obviously they'd like to do something to keep jobs in their areas, so they're hopeful to be able to reuse those.”
As the BGCAPP and PCAPP facilities work their way through closure and potential repurpose, the three employees all felt a great sense of reward at having met the mission’s timeline, and all for different reasons.
Reyes, who has worked specifically on the BGCAPP program since the fall of 2020, said she is also familiar with the PCAPP program, having worked on that program from 2007-2013, the last two years of that time as a contracting officer.
“It's very rewarding to finally have reached this point,” said Reyes. “I was on PCAPP when I was an intern and then moved into my contracting officer role also on PCAPP, during the construction and systemization phase at Pueblo.”
She said at that time, there were complications with the design that were being reconfigured regularly, causing some delays.
“It started to get to a point where we wondered are we ever going to get to operations,” said Reyes. “But once they got there, they moved through both sites and they did an awesome job with no safety issues. It's really rewarding and everybody from the contractors, ACWA, and ACC-RI all worked as a team and played a big role in making this happen.”
Honn said he feels fortunate to have been assigned to PCAPP three years ago.
“Good timing's not usually my forte, so I feel lucky to have landed here on the chem demil program to support the completion of the PCAPP operations phase, a monumental milestone that has been 20-plus years in the making,” said Honn. “It’s an honor to have been a part of the outstanding team that has helped the United States fulfill its international treaty obligation.”
Orcutt, who was the contracting officer on BGCAPP from 2015-2020 and PCAAP from 2018-2020 before being promoted to branch chief over both of these missions, said she hasn’t ever worked on another program where she has been so embedded within the customer’s program office. Working so closely with them has given her great visibility into the technical issues and figuring out how contracting can help develop ways to address the smaller issues to keep the program moving on time and fiscally responsible.
“In the Army, and within contracting as a whole, there's not a lot of areas in which we can see our work having had a direct impact on the safety of the U.S. and its people, while ensuring that we're doing our part from a global standpoint,” said Orcutt. “These sites were unique examples of successful collaborations, cutting-edge research and design, and execution that I’m proud to be a part of.”
For more information, including history and news on the U.S.’s chem demil mission, visit https://www.cma.army.mil/about/ and https://www.peoacwa.army.mil/.
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