The Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Manage on Thursday issued procurement-related documents for the planned “integrated mission” contract at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.
To speed the award, the nuclear cleanup office said it will not issue the standard draft version of the request for proposals for the potential 10-to-15-year, $21 billion award that would replace the current liquid waste management contract and include various other chores at the site.
The 68-page draft performance work statement outlines some expectations for the planned indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contract. The winning vendor will perform “a full range of support” for liquid waste stabilization/disposition and nuclear materials management, DOE said in a press release.
The Energy Department announced it would skip the draft RFP phase in a two-page special notice. Comments on the performance work scheduled should be emailed by March 6 to [email protected].
While the press release alludes to a 10-year “ordering period,” the work statement seems to point toward a contract commitment of up to 15 years.
“The goal of the U.S. Department of Energy is to complete the LW [Liquid Waste] cleanup mission at SRS in 15 years,” according to the work statement. “The Contractor shall plan the work scope in this contract period of performance conducive to the achievement of this goal.”
The work includes management of liquid radioactive waste in underground storage tanks; removing, treating, and converting the low-activity waste portion into a saltstone waste form that will be placed in concrete disposal units; vitrifying higher-activity waste into a glass form at the Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF); and closure of underground storage tanks and ancillary equipment.
The winning vendor will eventually run the Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF) after a year of operation by the builder, Parsons Government Services.
The Savannah River Site is home to about 35 million gallons of Cold War-era liquid waste held in more than 40 underground tanks. Roughly 90% of the material is salt waste, with sludge waste accounting for the other 10%.
Savannah River Remediation, a group led by AECOM’s former Management Services business, now the separate company Amentum, has performed liquid waste management at SRS since July 2019 under a $6 billion-plus contract extended multiple times since the initial contract would have ended in June 2017. The latest extension runs through September of this year.
The other members of SRR are Bechtel, Jacobs, and BWX Technologies.
After a procurement process, the Energy Department in October 2017 awarded a new $10-year, $4.7 billion waste management contract at SRS to a team comprised of BWXT, Bechtel, and Honeywell. A losing team comprised of AECOM and CH2M, now a Jacobs subsidiary, successfully protested the award.
The Energy Department, after receiving refreshed bids from those teams and a bidding Fluor-Westinghouse venture, ultimately canceled the procurement in February 2019. The agency evidently decided the next contract should employ the end-state model and also wanted to have a single contractor focused on integrated completion of the interrelated L-Basin, H-Canyon, and liquid waste missions at Savannah.
For the 2020s, the office is shifting gears, combining some elements of the liquid-waste and site-management contracts while splitting off the Savannah River National Laboratory into a separate contract.
Like the recently announced draft RFP for the Idaho Cleanup Contract, the SRS Integrated Mission procurement employs DOE’s much-discussed end state model. This offers higher potential fee, ranging into double-digits, for rapid progress toward remediation of a site. Under end-state contracts the agency need not draw up a detailed scope of work for the entire term prior to picking a vendor, which the government says provides it with flexibility to address changing funding or environmental issues.
The agency will evaluate bidders to determine the best value for the government based on personnel, management approach, track record, and cost, according to the DOE material.
The Energy Department plans to hold a preproposal conference and site tour sometime in April. No timeline for a final RFP and ultimate award has been published.
