A New Mexico company on July 20 filed a formal protest against the Department of Energy’s recent award of a contract worth up to $137 million over five years for technical support services at the office that oversees cleanup of the Paducah Site in Kentucky and Portsmouth Site in Ohio.
In its docket notice for the protest from Strategic Management Solutions, the Government Accountability Office said only that it would issue a decision by Oct. 29.
There were seven proposals for the contract for the DOE Office of Environmental Management Portsmouth/Paducah Project Office, covering technical engineering, information technology infrastructure, and other operations. In June, the department awarded the contract to Enterprise Technical Assistance Services (E-TAS), a subsidiary of Oak Ridge, Tenn.-based Professional Project Services (Pro2Serve). It will work at the Portsmouth and Paducah sites, along with the PPPO office in Lexington, Ky.
The new contract replaces services carried out under three separate contracts that are scheduled to expire on Sept. 30. Strategic Management Solutions holds one of those awards, valued at $45 million. The Albuquerque, N.M.-based project management specialist does work at a number of DOE sites around the country.
Further information about the protest was not immediately available. Strategic Management Solutions this week declined to comment, while the Office of Environmental Management said it does not comment on active procurements.
The GAO has up to 30 days to issue its report outlining the arguments made in the protest and up to 100 days to release its decision. If it finds the federal agency “violated a procurement law or regulation in a prejudicial manner, the congressional auditor would sustain the protest and urge a corrective to the error. That could include redoing the procurement to some degree.
For example, the procurement for liquid waste services at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina was reopened to the three bidding teams after the GAO upheld one protest to the $4.7 billion, 10-year deal awarded last October to a joint venture of BWXT Technical Services Group, Bechtel National, and Honeywell International. The Energy Department has not announced the winner of this contract round.
RSI EnTech is another one of the current contract holders for PPPO technical support services and bid on the new contract. President Paul Clay said earlier this month the company had not yet been debriefed on the award and had not decided whether to file a protest. The Oak Ridge company did not respond to a request for comment this week.
There was also no immediate word from Pro2Serve on the challenge to its new contract.
