CH2M Hill Hanford Group: The Job Ended, the Timecard Kept Running

In the CH2M Hill Hanford Group timecards case, parent CH2M Hill Companies Ltd. agreed to pay $16,550,000 to resolve civil False Claims Act liability for inflated labor charges to the Department of Energy. The company also admitted its subsidiary’s participation in the scheme under a criminal non-prosecution agreement. The agreed facts put supervisor approval at the center of it: workers finished an overtime job, left Hanford and claimed the full block anyway. If you knew when the work ended and what the timecard said, you could see the gap.

The Tank Farms Contract ran from 1999 through 2008 and covered managing and cleaning 177 large underground tanks containing mixed radioactive and hazardous waste at Hanford in southeastern Washington. The company had cleanup work to complete and performance incentives to earn. Its agreed account shows how those incentives reached all the way down to the hours workers entered.

How the Hanford Timecard Scheme Worked

The Hanford timecard scheme depended on claiming a full overtime block even when the job took less time. In the agreed facts supporting the civil settlement and criminal non-prosecution agreement, CH2M Hill acknowledged that hourly workers routinely overstated their hours and that certain managers condoned the practice and submitted inflated claims to the Department of Energy.

The overtime arrangement began before anyone filled out a timecard. Workers consistently refused overtime unless the company called it out in eight-hour blocks. The full block became the price of getting volunteers, even when the work took less time.

The agreed facts connected their acceptance to the contract’s financial incentives. Without enough overtime volunteers, the company risked missing projects tied to performance incentives. That threatened fees and profits under the Tank Farms Contract. It also threatened the personal corporate bonuses of certain members of upper management.

The agreed facts put the supervisors’ part in plain words:

We see a remarkable bargain at taxpayers’ expense. Workers got paid for time after they left, management kept the overtime volunteers it needed to pursue incentive fees, and taxpayers covered the unworked hours. The job ended. The claim kept going.

Why Supervisor Approval Mattered

Supervisor approval mattered because the agreed facts described management accepting known false timecards and passing the inflated hours into government claims. The people overseeing the work helped the discrepancy survive the billing process.

The same agreed statement of facts said certain managers and supervisors failed to discipline workers, formally or informally, for routine timecard fraud. Some direct supervisors went further, engaging in patterns designed to keep the fraud from law enforcement and internal auditors. The company acknowledged that the practice extended beyond overtime and had continued for years, in some instances before the Tank Farms Contract.

A study of management override helps explain this failure of controls. Unique Characteristics of Management Override Fraud Cases, published in the Journal of Forensic and Investigative Accounting in 2019, compared occupational fraud involving overridden controls with fraud involving missing controls. It found that a stronger anti-fraud environment was associated with a greater relative likelihood of override among those fraud cases.

At Hanford, the company’s own agreed account gives that distinction practical meaning. Internal auditors existed. Some supervisors worked to prevent them from detecting the false hours.

What the Civil Settlement Resolved

The civil settlement resolved CH2M Hill’s False Claims Act liability for the timecard scheme. The Justice Department announced the resolution on March 6, 2013, with the parent company undertaking the civil payment.

Alongside that settlement, CH2M Hill entered a criminal non-prosecution agreement and admitted that CH2M Hill Hanford Group had participated in the conspiracy. That admission placed the company inside the scheme its hourly workers carried out.

The Department of Energy Office of Inspector General and the Federal Bureau of Investigation provided investigative assistance.

A whistleblower case under the False Claims Act can pay 15% to 30% of what the government recovers.

The Former Employee Who Brought the Case

A former CH2M Hill employee brought the whistleblower lawsuit that first raised the civil fraud allegations. The Justice Department identified that employee as a participant who had pleaded guilty to the same scheme. He received no whistleblower reward because his conviction barred him from sharing in the recovery.

If your questions include your own role in timekeeping or approvals, that is something our whistleblower experts can work through with you.

What Proof Do You Need as a Whistleblower?

For a timecard case, the useful billing evidence connects the work, the hours and the government charge. At CH2M Hill Hanford Group, the company’s admissions traced that connection from early completion of overtime jobs to inflated claims. We work with you to understand where your knowledge fits into it.

At Hanford, the work and the timecard told different stories. The call-out secured volunteers for a job. Once that job ended, the company still accepted claims for the full block. Its agreed facts followed those falsely recorded hours into the claims management submitted to the Department of Energy.

Daily supervisor reports, timecards, payroll records and billing categories can describe different parts of the same job. You may know when the crew left, who approved the hours or where they went on the bill. We work with you to connect that knowledge to the government charge and the decisions behind it.

Idle Time at Hanford: A Different Practice, an Inflated Bill

Other Hanford cases show how a different workplace practice can produce inflated labor charges. In a separate waste-treatment case announced in 2020, Bechtel and AECOM admitted overcharging the Department of Energy for unreasonable and unallowable idle time, while the government alleged that management had failed to assign enough work.

You Know When the Work Stopped

If you saw overtime hours survive on a timecard after the crew had gone, speak with our whistleblower experts about the work and the approvals. We build the case with you around the hours claimed and the decisions behind them, bringing in government contract fraud whistleblower lawyers who understand labor billing. We stay beside you as that inside knowledge becomes a case for recovering public money.