About

In October 2023, the U.S. Small Business Administration approved a six-year Mentor-Protégé Agreement between Akana and VNS Federal Services, LLC (VNSFS). Under our joint venture offering, AVAE is focused on successfully assembling high performance project teams with the talent, experience, and capacity to deliver solutions for our clients.

Akana and Veolia have a strong working relationship at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Hanford nuclear site and Nevada National Security Site (NNSS) where we have delivered projects collectively. The majority of our services are focused on projects for federal contractors, often with multiple projects running simultaneously. AVAE coordinates and integrates project teams to meet our clients’ needs.

The AVAE team includes industry experts on the engineering planning, design, fabrication, installation, testing, and operation of integrated systems that support the processing of nuclear material and waste during facility operations, remediation and removal of equipment and systems, and during facility modification activities. AVAE has a multi-disciplined team of licensed professional engineers and support staff ready to engage and create integrated solutions to the complex challenges facing the federal market. Our engineering teams have developed custom solutions for projects including commercial and facility design, nuclear waste tank ventilation systems, remote retrieval systems, water collection and treatment systems, and even sewage systems when the need arises. Using our teams’ subject matter experts, AVAE can add value during each phase of a project.

AVAE partners with clients to help strategically plan and execute projects in a manner that safeguards projects through completion regardless of today’s environment of incremental funding, emerging technical challenges, and changing regulatory requirements. Our managers and professional staff have the technical expertise to manage activities through the lifecycle of a program, while maintaining the ability to address emerging mission needs. Our team is focused on reducing overall cost and improving performance for individual projects. We achieve this by identifying and managing technical risk and providing simple, innovative technologies.

AVAE’s capabilities and experience paired with the reach-back to our parent companies create a team that can resource and support multiple large projects simultaneously. Through AVAE, VNSFS and Akana have established a joint offering focused on delivering industry-leading solutions.

View our project experience

About Akana

Akana is a Native American-owned professional services company specialized in providing design, engineering, planning, environmental, and construction management services. Akana has extensive U.S. Department of Energy A-E experience with 19 completed task orders under two separate contracts totaling more than $12M for MSTS at the Nevada National Security Site.

Akana has also worked as a subcontractor to support projects for Washington River Protection Solutions, Central Plateau Cleanup Company, and for Bechtel at the Waste Treatment Plant at the DOE Hanford site.

Akana has additional AE IDIQ contracts with the U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Indian Affairs, and Indian Health Service. Akana is headquartered in Portland, Oregon, and also has an office in Seattle, Fife, Pasco, Washington; and Las Vegas, Nevada.

Learn more about Akana here.

About Veolia

VNS Federal Services, LLC is the mitigated U.S. branch of Veolia Nuclear Solutions. VNSFS provides Waste Management, Deactivation/Demolition and Remediation, Technology Deployment, and Engineering to the U.S. Federal Government and its prime contractors. VNSFS has more than 20 years of experience at DOE sites, including the Hanford, Portsmouth, Paducah, and Nevada cleanup sites; as well as the Oak Ridge, Idaho, Los Alamos, and Pacific Northwest national laboratories.

Veolia is a 170-year-old, $43 billion global enterprise and one of the largest infrastructure, water processing, remediation and waste management companies with nearly 220,000 employees, and more than 10,000 employees in North America alone, across numerous business sectors. Veolia experts serve industry, government, and commercial clients in improving performance, managing water, waste, and energy. Veolia has earned the number one spot in Engineering News-Record’s (ENR) list of Top 200 Environmental Firms for the past three years.

VNSFS has an NQA-1-compliant and ISO 9001 Certified Quality Assurance (QA) Program that accommodates both nuclear and commercial activities. VNSFS works in accordance with applicable DOE orders, Code of Federal Regulations (e.g. 10 CFR 830), and National consensus codes and standards (e.g. AISC, ASME, ASTM, ANSI, IBC, IPC, IEEE, NFPA).

Learn more about Veolia here.