Savannah River Nuclear Solutions is dedicated to developing small and diverse businesses, having committed nearly $1.3 billion to them on a local, regional and national level over the past five years.
“60 cents of every dollar we spent last year went to a small business, a large percentage of which is owned by women and minorities,” said Lisa Tanner, senior director of supply chain excellence and small business liaison at SRNS. “When we are working on a service contract or making a purchase, we start at our portals and work abroad. We want to create jobs and grow our local business.”
Since 2018, funding allocated by SRNS to small businesses to purchase materials and services to operate the Savannah River site has created 15,700 local jobs and 82,800 regional jobs.
A team with SRNS subsidiary CTI Associates is working to dismantle a decades-old structure at the Savannah River Recycling Site.
“The current long-term expansion of SRNS is unprecedented, and the key to that expansion and economic growth has been our community and the foundation we’ve always built on, which is small business,” said Lance Waddell, SRNS senior vice president of business services.
Small businesses provide SRS support through services such as consulting, environmental engineering, information technology, maintenance, and human resources.
According to Tanner, SRNS small business support includes helping companies grow through the award-winning SRNS Mentor-Protégé program.
“Not only does our company recognize the financial responsibility to support local and regional businesses and industries, but we also have a genuine interest in their maturity and well-being,” said Tanner. “Our mentor-guardian program achieves this goal.”
SRNS recognizes the essential role that mentor-protected firms play in filling specialist job positions and finding cost efficiencies for the site.
said Jay Johnson, SRNS’s vice president, contracts and supply chain management. “This unique experience has increased the value they add to energy management tasks.”