Williams, under the contract, will provide maintenance and modification services, in addition to planning, management and execution of the plant’s nuclear refueling outage in the second quarter of 2013.

Global Power Services division president Ken Robuck said, "Williams has an outstanding track record providing maintenance, major project and specialty services for Energy Northwest at Columbia."

The two-year contract has an option to extend it until 2018.

US-based Global Power Equipment Group is a designing, engineering and manufacturing firm providing a broad array of equipment and services to infrastructure, energy and process industries.

Energy Northwest is a Joint Operating Agency, comprising 28 member public utilities from across the state of Washington.