With new litigation brewing over the Department of Energy’s re-award of a $45-billion contract for liquid waste management at the Hanford Site in Washington state, a federal appeals court has given the BWX Technologies-led winning team until April 22 to respond to briefs filed by the losing bidder.
The original deadline was April 8. BWXT-led Hanford Tank Waste Operations & Closure must respond to motions filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in March by the Department of Justice and losing bidder AtkinsRéalis-led Hanford Tank Disposition Alliance (HTDA).
An immediate issue appears to be where litigation should go now: to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit or to a Federal Claims Court judge who ruled in favor of the challenge brought by the only other team to compete for the contract.
The appeal was part of a lawsuit related to DOE’s first award of the contract in April 2023. Last week HTDA filed a fresh protest in the claims court in response to DOE’s Feb. 29 re-award of the work to the BWX Technologies team, made up of BWXT, Amentum and Fluor.
HTDA includes AtkinsRéalis, Jacobs and Westinghouse. In its first lawsuit last year, the team successfully convinced the U.S. Court of Federal Claims to send the contract back to DOE because the winner should have been deemed ineligible for the award after failing to stay continuously registered in a federal procurement database.
