In less than two months, the U.S. Department of Energy expects to issue a draft request for proposals for remediation at the 33,000-acre Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee.
The agency posted its plans for the solicitation July 2 on a federal procurement website. Vendors should expect a 100% full and open competition with a pre-solicitation conference, a site tour, and one-on-one meetings with prospective bidders, the Energy Department said in its synopsis.
No draft RFP was posted on the Environmental Management Consolidated Business Center website as of Friday morning.
AECOM-led URS-CH2M Oak Ridge (UCOR) holds the current $2.7 billion contract, which runs from August 2011 through July 2020. The centerpiece of the present work is decontamination and decommissioning of the East Tennessee Technology Park, the 2,200-acre complex that from the 1940s to through the 1980s enriched uranium for nuclear defense and commercial operations. The contractor is winding down demolition of ETTP buildings and turning toward remediation at Y-12 National Security Complex and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
The scope of the new contract will include decontamination and teardown of radioactively contaminated excess facilities at Y-12 and ORNL, addressing contaminated material across the site, treating or disposing of legacy low-level or mixed low-level wastes, and operating new and existing landfills at Oak Ridge. It will also cover reducing risk at DOE Office of Environmental Management operations at Oak Ridge, including the Transuranic Waste Processing Center.
An Energy Department procurement schedule released in May suggests the final RFP, valued at between $4 billion and $6 billion, could be published by the end of November. A contract award is envisioned by the end of May 2020.
“They are all going after it. Name a firm,” especially the big players, one industry subcontractor said of the Oak Ridge add-on contract. He assumes that AECOM, Bechtel. Fluor, and CH2M parent Jacobs “will all be in the mix.”
The incumbent contractor earned over $4.9 million of a potential $5.6 million performance fee for the six-month period from Oct. 1, 2018, to March 31, 2019.
