HENDERSON, Nev. – Nuclear cleanup vendors hope the U.S. Energy Department’s new approach to procurement succeeds in quickening the pace of contract awards, one executive said here last week.
That was the assessment of the end-state contracting model offered Sept. 3 at the ExchangeMonitor’s RadWaste Summit by Cathy Hickey, executive vice president for Navarro Research and Engineering. Hickey spoke during a panel discussion alongside Tamara Miles, procurement director for the department’s Environmental Management Consolidated Business Center.
The agency hopes to shrink the time it takes to evaluate bids and award contracts from the current range of eight to 13 months to a range of four to six months, the speakers said. “Should DOE award on time this would represent a major improvement,” Hickey said. Vendors often lament the amount of time spent in limbo awaiting procurement decisions.
For example: Companies had until mid-March to submit separate bids for two multibillion-dollar contracts at the Energy Department’s Hanford Site in Washington state – the Tank Closure Contract and the Central Plateau Cleanup Contract. Neither has been awarded, and DOE recently announced potential one-year extensions for the two incumbents. The agency hopes to award new contracts well before September 2020, Miles said, without offering a specific timetable.
The end-state approach reduces information filed up front during procurement by requiring submission of shorter reports and less extensive background information. Contractors say this tweak could reduce the time and money needed to prepare proposals.
By reducing the information requirements, the Energy Department hopes end-state will provide “lower cost of entry” to the marketplace along with reduced procurement lead time, Miles said.
Rolled out in 2018 under then-DOE Assistant Secretary for Environmental Management Anne Marie White, the end state method moves away from the more cost-based approach to contracting and toward greater use of single-award, indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (IDIQ) awards. The former approach featured a more elaborate scope of work description beforehand, while the new approach focuses more on task orders negotiated after the contract is awarded.
No major contracts have yet been issued under this new approach, although eight are in various stages of the procurement pipeline, including the two at Hanford and an environmental remediation deal for the Nevada National Security Site.
