Southern Ohio Cleanup Co., a joint venture of Amentum, Fluor and Cavendish Nuclear USA, won the potentially decade-spanning, $5.87-billion Decontamination and Decommissioning Contract at the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site in Ohio, the agency said Thursday.
Another five-years of work could be tacked onto the end of the 10-year ordering period, meaning it could run for 15 years, DOE’s Office of Environmental Management said in a press release.
Barring a successful bid protest, the Amentum-led team would succeed incumbent Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth, which has been doing this work at the former gaseous diffusion plant site since August 2010. That incumbent contract is currently valued at $5 billion and scheduled to expire at the end of September.
The DOE cleanup office received two submissions that met requirements of its May 2022 request for proposals, according to the press release. The other is believed to be led by half of the incumbent team, BWX Technologies. BWXT is believed to lead a team that also includes Jacobs and APTIM, according to industry sources.
“Through a healthy and rigorous competition,” the Environmental Management office determined the Southern Ohio proposal “provided the best value to the Government considering key personnel, past performance, management approach and cost and fee,” according to the release.
A government administrator for the village of Piketon, Ohio, Jennifer Chandler, said the locals welcome DOE’s issuance of the new contract. Piketon residents “wish to thank DOE for requiring the new contractor to develop a community commitment plan and to apply preferences for local businesses to perform meaningful work at the site,” Chandler said in the email to Exchange Monitor.
The press release notes that some work currently done under the Fluor-BWXT cleanup contract — utilities, emergency management, security and uranium transfers— will transfer over to another pending contract called the Operations and Site Mission Support. That contract will replace the current Depleted Uranium Hexafluoride [DUF6] contract held by Atkins-led Mid-America Conversion Services. That contract is also now set to expire Sept. 30.
Earlier this spring, DOE asked Portsmouth teams to extend their bid offers while the agency worked on its selection.
