Todd Jacobson
NS&D Monitor
1/31/2014
A Government Accountability Office hearing on a protest of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Y-12/Pantex award by Babcock & Wilcox-led Nuclear Production Partners (NP2) has been pushed back until next week. The hearing was supposed to take place Jan. 29, but Ralph White, the GAO’s managing associate general counsel, confirmed that it had been delayed until Feb. 3. White did not say why the hearing had been moved to Feb. 3. Hearings can sometimes be delayed due to schedule conflicts with lawyers involved, or weather-related factors, and major portions of the Southeast were gridlocked because of ice and snowy weather this week.
Nuclear Production Partners and the NNSA have traded legal filings since NP2 filed the protest in November, with NP2 filing comments to the NNSA’s Dec. 23 response on Jan. 8. The GAO convened a hearing during NP2’s first protest of the contract, which it sustained, and heavily mentioned the hearing in its decision document, but it did not hold a hearing in NP2’s second protest, which was rejected. In its protest, NP2 argued that the NNSA allowed Consolidated Nuclear Security to unfairly alter its proposal, made mathematical errors in calculating the cost savings contained in its bid, and improperly evaluated CNS’ key personnel. The GAO has until Feb. 28 to rule on the protest.
