The potential $21-billion Department of Energy solicitation for liquid waste management and related environmental work at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina is on the street.
In a notice posted Thursday on a procurement website, the DOE Office of Environmental Management issued the final request for proposals (RFP) for what it calls the Savannah River Site Integrated Mission Completion Contract.
The department expects to issue an indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract with a 10-year ordering period. Any work ordered under the contract must be finished within 15 years of taking over the environmental contract, DOE said in its press release.
Among other things the contractor will oversee the storage, treatment and disposal of millions of gallons of radioactive tank waste left over from Cold War nuclear weapons work at the Savannah River Site. It will also ultimately become operator of the Salt Waste Processing Facility after Parsons, which constructed it, runs it for the first year. The changeover of that property could occur in September 2021, according to the document.
The Savannah River tanks should be emptied sometime in the mid-to-late 2030s, DOE says.
“The purpose of the SRS Integrated Mission Completion Contract (IMCC) is to achieve significant risk and financial liability reduction that provides the best overall optimal solution to Site accelerated completion and closure,” the DOE said in its statement of work.
The Department of Energy is making another go at an RFP for the Savannah River liquid waste work more than 18 months after it pulled the plug on a previous solicitation.
The award will be evaluated under the department’s end state contracting model.
An environmental critic of DOE and the site, Tom Clements, director of the citizen group Savannah River Site Watch, said after giving some RFP documents a quick once over he was struck by the amount of additional waste still being generated.
“While the ‘statement of work’ acknowledges 35 million gallons of high-level waste remain in the SRS tanks, it was disturbing to see that approximately 3 million gallons will be added to the tanks from H-Canyon reprocessing operations through FY 2030,” Clements said in an email. With H-Canyon producing a significant volume of additional high-level waste that will slow important tank closure operations, “the new contractor must make sure that H-Canyon liquid waste generation is greatly reduced,” he added.
Amentum-led Savannah River Remediation is the incumbent contractor, working under a series of extensions to an agreement that started in July 2009 and is currently expected to run through September 2021. The DOE has the right to exercise three additional four-month extensions that could keep the incumbent around until September 2022 in necessary. The current value of its business is $6 billion. Other members of that team are Bechtel, Jacobs and BWX Technologies.
A BWXT-led group, Savannah River EcoManagement, initially won what was then called the Savannah River Liquid Waste Program contract in October 2017. Two rival groups promptly protested the $4.7-billion award. The Government Accountability Office would months later sustain the bid protest brought by a team led by Amentum, then AECOM Management Services. After having the three original bidders, including a Fluor-led team, refresh their offers, the Department of Energy eventually called off the procurement in late February 2019.
A BWXT spokesman declined Thursday to say if his company would be an active bidder in the upcoming procurement.
The informal buzz around industry types in recent months, however, is that the lure of such a mega-contract is again likely to draw the biggest weapons complex players into the mix.
Grab Your Face Mask and Get Ready for Site Tour at Savannah River
In addition, the DOE is planning an actual in-person site tour for interested bidders on Oct. 21. Such in-person gatherings have been a rarity for the DOE nuclear cleanup office since the COVID-19 pandemic took root in the United States early this year. A couple such sessions were held recently, however, at the Pantex Plant in Texas and the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn.
The deadline to register for the site tour is 12 noon ET on Oct. 13. Participants should email the required information to [email protected].
Site tour attendance will be restricted to no more than two people per contractor team. Participants must abide by SRS COVID-19 protocols, which include mandatory face coverings, health screenings, and temperature checks. Foreign nationals are not allowed on the tour.
Questions on the final RFP should be emailed by 11:59 p.m. on Oct. 14 to [email protected].
Contract proposals are due by 3 p.m. ET on Dec. 1. The primary point of contact is DOE contracting officer, Jodi Gordon, who can be reached at [email protected].
