This week, the Department of Energy will brief losing bidders about its rationale for awarding multi-billion-dollar nuclear-cleanup contracts to teams led by Amentum and BWX Technologies, a senior industry official said last week at the Radwaste Summit in Summerlin, Nev.
The executive made the comments on the sidelines of the annual summit, sponsored by ExchangeMonitor Publications, and expected any bid protests on the recent decade-spanning contracts at the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee and the Savannah River Site in South Carolina to be filed by Thanksgiving.
At deadline, no bidder had filed challenges to either competition or award.
On Oct. 27, the DOE Office of Environmental Management (EM) awarded the potentially $21-billion Integrated Mission Contract to BWX Technologies-led Savannah River Mission Completion. Parties typically must file protests to the Government Accountability Office within 10 days of learning of some apparent defect in the federal award decision. DOE debrief sessions are usually key to the losing bidders’ decision to protest and award, or not.
The other members of the new liquid-waste team at Savannah River are Fluor, Amentum and teaming subcontractors Wesworks and DBD. The group prevailed over three other rival teams. Amentum-led Savannah River Remediation is the incumbent doing the liquid management currently at the site.
The day before the Savannah River announcement, DOE awarded the potential $8.3-billion Oak Ridge Reservation Cleanup Contract to United Cleanup Oak Ridge (UCOR): a team consisting of Amentum, Jacobs and Honeywell with teaming subcontractors RSI EnTech, Strata-G, Longenecker & Associates and Environmental Alternatives. The team beat out four other bidders.
The senior members of the new UCOR team are the same ones leading the incumbent, also called UCOR: an Amentum-Jacobs partnership, which last year finished taking down structures at the old K-25 uranium enrichment complex, now known as the East Tennessee Technology Park.
