PHOENIX — The Energy Department plans to release a draft solicitation for Savannah River Site liquid cleanup work worth between $1 billion and $3 billion by March 31, a senior DOE procurement official said here Wednesday.
It is the first, and one of the largest, of several weapons complex cleanup solicitations and awards set for release in the next year or so, Jack Surash, deputy assistant secretary for acquisition and project management at DOE’s Office of Environmental Management, noted during a 2016 Waste Management Conference panel discussion.
The cost-plus-award-fee contract follows up an eight-year, $4.1 billion deal held by incumbent site liquid cleanup contractor Savannah River Remediation. The deal, which was awarded in 2009 and included a pair of concurrent options DOE has exercised, expires on June 30, 2017.
DOE plans to release the final RFP for the Savannah River liquid-waste follow-up in May or June, with an award to follow by March 2017, Surash said.
Other looming Environmental Management (EM) procurements Surash highlighted at the conference include:
- The award in either May or June of a follow-on Depleted Uranium Hexafluoride Conversion Facilities Project operation contract, which will be in the $400 million to $600 million range. Proposals have been in since November. The current contract, held by BWXT Conversion Services, runs out March 31.
- The April release of a draft solicitation for legacy nuclear waste cleanup work at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). After a container of contaminated equipment that was improperly packaged at Los Alamos caused a radiation release at the underground Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., EM was tapped to take over LANL remediation operations from the National Nuclear Security Administration. The bridge cleanup contract awarded to lab contract operator Los Alamos National Security in September has options that could extend it through June 2017. The final RFP for the follow-up contract, worth between $600 million and $1 billion, should appear sometime from June to August, with an award to follow between April and June of 2017.
- The April release of a draft solicitation for a follow-on Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant Deactivation and Remediation contract. The contract held by incumbent Fluor Federal Services runs out in July 2017. The new contract will be worth between $600 million and $1 billion. The final solicitation should appear between June and August, with an award to follow in March or April 2017.
Meanwhile, big-money, follow-up cleanup contracts for the Hanford Site in Washington state are in much earlier, but still “active,” procurement phases, Surash said Wednesday.
Among those are $13 billion to $17 billion worth of work now covered by the three big Environmental Management contracts managed by DOE’s Office of River Protection. The three incumbents are Bechtel National, which is building the Waste Treatment Plant; Washington River Protection Solutions, which manages the Hanford tank farm and its 56 million gallons of chemical and radioactive waste; and Wastren Advantage, which runs the analytical lab that eventually will sample the liquid waste to be treated by the Bechtel facility, portions of which are tentatively scheduled to come online in 2022.
In a soft kick-off for this mammoth procurement, DOE on March 3 issued a request for information for post-2018 tank farm contract or contracts — a means of gauging requirements for a follow-up deal to Washington River Protection Services’ $5.6 billion tank farm operations contract.
DOE has yet to take even this preliminary step for procurement of 10 years’ worth of Hanford work overseen by the Richland Operations Office, and valued at $10 billion to $12 billion. This work includes CH2M Plateau Remediation’s 10-year, $7-billion contract, which expires Sept. 30, 2018, and Mission Support Alliance’s Hanford Site infrastructure services contract, which was awarded in 2009 and would be worth just over $3.5 billion if DOE exercises the deal’s final two-year option before 2017.
