EHS Risk Management Lessons From UCOR’s ‘Manhattan Project’ Site Remediation

This report forms one in a series focused on winners of the Verdantix EHS Innovation Awards. During World War II, most of the uranium enrichment for the production of the ‘Manhattan Project’ nuclear bombs took place at the Clinton Engineer Works at Oak Ridge in Tennessee. Put under control of the US Atomic Energy Commission in 1947, the US Department of Energy contracted a joint venture between URS (now AECOM) and CH2M Hill (now CH2M) called UCOR to undertake a large-scale environmental remediation project. The $287 million environmental clean-up involves the remediation of 4.5 million square feet of contaminated land to create the East Tennessee Technology Park (ETTP). UCOR achieves successful EHS risk mitigation through deployment of innovative technologies including drones, RFID devices, barcodes and wearable sensors, as well as using Medgate’s software as a centralised platform for managing industrial hygiene and occupational health.