While BWX Technologies lost out on a multibillion-dollar remediation contract at the Hanford Site in Washington state, President and CEO Rex Geveden said Tuesday he is optimistic about a “robust” pipeline of potential Energy Department projects.
“Unfortunately, we were not awarded the Hanford Central Plateau Cleanup contract,” Geveden said during the Lynchburg, Va.-based company’s quarterly earnings call with financial analysts.
The Energy Department in December awarded the potential 10-year, $10 billion remediation contract to a corporate team led by AECOM’s Management Services division, which subsequently became the separate company Amentum. The other members of the joint venture are Fluor and Atkins.
Geveden did not reveal any names of other members of BWXT’s unsuccessful Central Plateau bidding team, nor did a company spokesman after the call.
BWXT still hopes to land an upcoming contract to manage 56 million gallons of radioactive tank waste at Hanford, a former production complex for plutonium used in the U.S. nuclear arsenal. But Geveden said that award will likely be slowed by protests filed against both the Central Plateau award and the potential 10-year, $4 billion Hanford support services contract to a Leidos-led team. The general consensus across the weapons complex is the protests against the two major contracts will gum up the procurement pipeline at the agency.
The DOE Office of Environmental Management could issue the multibillion-dollar contract this spring, with work starting three months later, Geveden said.
The company received good news recently when the agency announced plans to keep the incumbent Fluor-BWXT team on for up to two years beyond March 2021 as the decommissioning vendor at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio.
BWXT is also likely to be in the hunt for potential 10-to-15-year, $21 billion Savannah River Integrated Mission contract in South Carolina, Geveden said. The agency is accepting comments on a contract that includes management and disposition of 35 million gallons of Cold War-era liquid radioactive and chemical waste at SRS, as well as some other nuclear materials at the site.
Geveden expects the contract will be awarded by the end of the year.
