BWXT team’s Hanford proposal ‘clearly superior,’ had ‘significant’ personnel advantage over Atkins team, judge’s opinion shows

The Department of Energy believes the winner of a fiercely litigated, $45-billion Hanford Site liquid waste contract trumped its rival’s technical approach to a decade-spanning cleanup program and picked better people to do the job, a legal opinion unsealed this week shows.

The opinion by Judge Marian Horn in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims is part of a bid-protest lawsuit that was all but over by Aug. 28, when Horn orally issued a ruling upholding DOE’s February re-award of the Hanford work to the BWX Technologies-led group, Hanford Tank Waste Operations and Closure (H2C).

The suit is the second filed over the Hanford Integrated Tank Disposition Contract since May 2023 by AtkinsRéalis-led Hanford Tank Disposition Alliance (HTDA) and it was still on life support this week.

But Horn’s 98-page written opinion, published Monday about a month after it was shared with the parties, shows the judge is hesitant to drag things out further after 16 months of litigation.

It “is in the public’s interest to have the agency avoid the delays associated with another competition towards a new award decision,” Horn wrote in her opinion. “[D]elays could also put at risk the agency’s ability to meet compliance agreement milestones, and slow down the progress of treating the waste.”

Though partially redacted itself, Horn’s opinion consolidates in mostly unredacted form a record of behind-the-scenes DOE decision-making that H2C and HTDA provided to the court in the two bid-protest lawsuits filed since May 2023 by the Atkins team.

That includes writing by the DOE source selection authority that chose H2C for what could amount to 15 years worth of cleanup work under the Hanford Integrated Tank Disposition Contract, first awarded to H2C in 2023.

Among other things, the source selection authority wrote that the H2C’s proposal was “clearly superior,” with a better technical approach to Hanford liquid waste cleanup and a team of key personnel that gave the team a “significant advantage” over HTDA.

Among the redactions to the DOE writings Horn’s published were the names of two key personnel in H2C’s proposal, the operations manager and a colleague. Each of these people “clearly provide more depth and breadth in qualifications” than personnel proposed by HTDA, the agency’s source selection authority wrote.

Meanwhile, Horn was scheduled Thursday to hear arguments about HTDA’s latest attempt to capture the contract, or at least get the award to H2C thrown out.

H2C also includes Amentum and Fluor. HTDA has Jacobs, part of Amentum since Sept. 27, and Westinghouse.