Todd Jacobson
NS&D Monitor
2/07/2014
Timothy Hallman, the Associate Director for Nuclear Physics in the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, will serve as the Source Selection Official for the Department’s Brookhaven National Laboratory procurement, DOE officials said at an informational meeting last week. DOE released documents from the industry day this week, revealing the role that will be played by Hallman, a former senior scientist at Brookhaven, but declining to disclose the identity of the Source Evaluation Board established for the procurement.
Officials also outlined a tentative schedule for the procurement, revealing that a Request for Proposals would be released late in the second quarter of Fiscal Year 2014 or early in the third quarter of the fiscal year. An award is expected during the first quarter of Fiscal Year 2015, which would allow transition to take place before Brookhaven Science Associates’ contract expires Jan. 4, 2015. DOE said it anticipates awarding a five-year base contract with up to 15 additional years that could be earned through award-term incentives. All of the fee earned by the contractor will be at-risk, officials said, and the fee cap is likely to be lower than the current $7.4 million a year due to the addition of the award terms and risk factors.
DOE Stresses ‘Sameness’ in Procurement Process
DOE said that the RFP would be similar, but not identical, to previous solicitations for the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory and the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. “One thing we would like to stress throughout this process is ‘sameness,’ “ DOE said in its presentation. The “Office of Science solicitation process is mature and deliberate and has become somewhat standardized for SC solicitations.” DOE added that the BNL RFP will “improve” but not “change” the procurement process. A pre-proposal conference is expected to be held two-to-three weeks after the release of the RFP, and proposals are expected to be due 90 days after the RFP is released. Officials have not decided whether or not to conduct oral presentations, but if they do, they will occur two-to-three weeks after the receipt of proposals.
Representatives from CB&I, Fluor, IBM, and URS attended the meeting, according to a published registration list, as did officials from Arcadis, Enercon Federal Services, Fortinet, MicroTech, Professional Services of America and Protection Strategies. Incumbent Brookhaven Science Associates is a partnership between Battelle and Stony Brook University.
DOE Interested in Improvement
DOE has shied away from competing some contracts in recent years and recently announced that it would extend UT-Battelle’s contract to run Oak Ridge National Laboratory, but the Department is clearly looking for improvement at Brookhaven. “DOE expects that this competition will result in improved contractor performance and cost efficiencies for BNL,” DOE said in a previous statement. “The successful offeror will be required to provide the intellectual leadership and management expertise necessary to manage, operate, and staff BNL and to accomplish missions assigned by DOE.”
BSA has performed relatively well in its annual reviews from the Office of Science, improving in Fiscal Year 2013 with two “A-s” and six “B+s” after in FY 2012 it received its first “C-“ since FY 2006. Last summer, however, DOE finalized a $959,595 fee reduction for Brookhaven Science Associates because of an accident that occurred in 2011 during decommissioning activities at the lab’s Graphite Research Reactor. DOE hit BSA with one Severity Level I violation and one Severity Level II violation of Department worker safety and health requirements for the accident, which left a worker badly injured after falling from a lift while working at the reactor. It said it reduced the fee because of “unacceptable safety performance associated with a series of incidents and near misses,” including the 2011 accident. The 3,000-employee lab had an annual budget of $700 million in Fiscal Year 2013, and DOE said anticipated funding in FY 2015 is expected to remain stable at approximately $700 million.
