HENDERSON, Nev. — The Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management and the vendors that provide it with nuclear remediation services are reasonably satisfied with the “end state” approach to contracting — although some lingering issues remain.
That was the message shared Tuesday by the No. 2 official at the nuclear cleanup office, Todd Shrader, along with an agency procurement director and the executive vice president of a cleanup contractor, at the ExchangeMonitor’s annual RadWaste Summit.
The contracting philosophy, rolled out in 2018, is a move away from the more cost-based approach to contracting and toward greater reliance on single-award, indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (IDIQ) awards. Task orders and cost estimates won’t be drawn up by DOE far in advances of solicitations, and some work plans will be hashed out after a contractor partner is selected.
“End states is a bit of a misnomer,” said Shrader, DOE principal deputy assistant secretary for environmental management. It does not necessarily mean a job is complete, but rather, that significant defined progress is being made toward final remediation.
The Office of Environmental Management’s job is not “an enduring mission,” Shrader said. “EM’s job is to clean it up” and prepare land for other uses. Hopefully, the map of DOE cleanup projects 10 years from now won’t show the same 16 Cold War and Manhattan Project sites currently undergoing remediation, he added.
New indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity contracts are awarded based on experience, key personnel, and plans for very specific tasks during the early going, said Tamara Miles, procurement director for the department’s Cincinnati-based Environmental Management Consolidated Business Center.
After the initial award, under a fee/payment guarantee as low as $500,000, the Energy Department and its selected vendor use the 60-day transition period to agree upon work plans for up to 10 years of task orders, Miles said. This new approach is being pursued for new contracts at the Hanford Site in Washington state, and several others.
The “jury is still out” on step 2 of the process, said Cathy Hickey, executive vice president of Navarro Research and Engineering. Energy Department contractors tend to believe a 60-day window is insufficient to hammer out the bulk of a 10-year business agreement that could amount to billions of dollars, she added.
Look for the Energy Department to expand the transition phase from 60 days to 90 or 120 days in the future, Miles said.
