The Department of Energy Wednesday published the highly-anticipated draft solicitation for a potential 10-year, $21.5-billion management and operations contract for the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.
The draft request for proposals (RFP) was published on a federal procurement website to solicit questions and comments from prospective bidders by 4 p.m. Eastern time on May 28.
The incumbent contractor is Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS), a joint venture of Fluor, Newport News Nuclear and Honeywell International. The incumbent team has been on the job since August 2008 and will stay at least through September of this year. DOE holds the rights to one 12-month option that could keep SRNS around through September 2022. The current value of the SRNS deal is $15.8 billion.
The Savannah River Operations Acquisition Draft RFP contemplates a contract that could last 10 years, not counting a 90-day transition period. There would be a five-year year period as well as five one-year option periods. Feedback on the draft RFP should be emailed to [email protected].
The DOE Office of Environmental Management has set up a procurement website here.
DOE plans to forgo a formal pre-solicitation conference and instead will go with a virtual site tour and other online briefing materials in a practice that has become routine during the COVID-19 pandemic. One-on-one meetings with interested parties will commence May 11 via Webex and could run for up to three days given the level of interest, DOE said.
Completed registration forms for the one-on-one meetings should be sent to the DOE contracting officer, Paul Smith, by 2 p.m. E.T. on May 5, according to the procurement material.
The DOE is hoping to secure bidder input on issues including the proposed “Organizational Conflict of Interest” language in the draft as well as potential barriers to entry. The DOE is envisioning a 30-business day proposal preparation period once the final RFP comes out.
The Savannah River Site occupies about 310 square miles adjacent to the Georgia border and more than 11,000 people are employed by the DOE complex. Currently about 60% of the work at the site involves Office of Environmental Management missions and 32% by the National Nuclear Security Administration. The other 8% is split among other DOE and non-DOE entities.
