Total Environmental Restoration Contracts: this 10-year contract will bring in $240 million worth of environmental cleanup to the state, with the bulk of the work subcontracted to small business.

• Author: Bonham, Nicole A.
• Position: Pat Roth and Charlie Rives discuss - Interview

To understand the local economic imp act of the Total Environmental Restoration Contracts at work in this state, Alaska Business Monthly went to the process' two key sources for an overview. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers serves as the TERC contract owner, with Jacobs Engineering as its primary contractor in Alaska, at work under a decade-long contract.

Pat Roth, the Corps' program manager for Formerly Used Defense Sites, spoke to ABM from Anchorage, reviewing that agency's role in the TERC contract process.

TERC accomplishes a number of purposes, including that it allows the contract owner to contract out to one entity all aspects of a cleanup or restoration project under one umbrella.

For Jacobs Engineering, Operations Manager Charlie Rives offered that company's insight.

ABM: What is TERC exactly? And how does it work?

Roth: TERC is not its own separate program, but a contract mechanism to get work done.

ABM: Who are the players in the TERC contract-and who are its clients?

Roth: The Corps' role in relationship to the contract is that we're the owners of the contract. The contract is between the Army Corps of Engineers and Jacobs Engineering. Of the clients that use the TERC, probably the largest client is the Corps of Engineers themselves (for cleaning up defense sites).

Some of the clients that come to the Corps to get work done, over the last several years, have included the other Army active installations; also the Air Force has come to us, the Coast Guard, the Forest Service.

ABM: So essentially, the flow of this process would be that a particular agency or entity has a need for a cleanup or restoration project. First it must meet certain requirements to fit as a TERC project. Then the Army Corps of Engineers would work through Jacobs Engineering to coordinate all of the different related work for that project?

Roth: Yes. Up to date ... the actual cost of work performed under the contract has been $122 million. That's the total, over a 10-year contract, with the total capacity of $240 million.

ABM: How far are you into the contract now?

Roth: We're into the seventh year. About 74 percent of it has been subcontracted ... that comes out to just over $90 million. (Of that percentage), large businesses have gotten about 23 percent of the (subcontract) work, which means that small businesses have picked up another 77 percent.

Out of all the subcontracted work, 60 percent of it should go to small businesses (as part of the contract...