The Energy Department Thursday issued a “sources sought” notice seeking market input on a revamped liquid waste procurement at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.
The agency is seeking responses by 5 p.m. ET on June 13 to its market research inquiry on what it now calls the Integrated Mission Completion Contract.
The Energy Department wants vendors that are both interested and capable of carrying out a contract that could essentially replace the existing liquid waste management deal, held by AECOM-led Savannah River Remediation (SRR). In March, SRR received an 18-month contract extension worth $750 million to stay on the job through September 2020.
In February, DOE’s Office of Environmental Management canceled plans to reissue an award for a new 10-year contract potentially worth $6 billion for SRS liquid waste management – a blow to a trio of vendor teams that had pursued the business since the draft solicitation was issued in March 2016.
The work includes processing 36 million gallons of radioactive waste into a more stable form for disposal, along with closing underground storage tanks.
In October 2017, the department awarded a $4.7 billion contract for the waste work to Savannah River EcoManagement, led by BWXT and featuring Bechtel and Honeywell. The award came undone five months later when the Government Accountability Office upheld a bid protest by an AECOM-CH2M team, saying DOE had not shown the winner’s technical approach to treating the waste prior to disposal would work. A couple of months after the GAO ruling, the Energy Department sought updated bids from the three original teams, including a Fluor-Westinghouse partnership. Ten months later it terminated the solicitation.
The Energy Department said this week it seeks market research on potential vendors that can achieve the maximum amount of remediation and liability reduction.
The agency wants the L-Basin and H-Canyon facilities at Savannah River to be included in the follow-on award and the notice issued Thursday follows that model. The facilities are the only new source of liquid waste being added to the radioactive waste at the site’s tank farms.
The preliminary elements of scope also indicate a contractor should be able to accept nuclear materials from domestic or international sources to support U.S. nuclear nonproliferation efforts.
As it typically does, the Energy Department stressed this is not a request for proposal but rather market research to assist in preliminary planning.
Capability statements and questions about the notice should be sent to [email protected].
The contracting officer for the procurement is Jodi Gordon, at [email protected].
