ALEXANDRIA, Va. — While the U.S. Energy Department has moved slower than anticipated in awarding several multibillion-dollar nuclear cleanup contracts, it is important to get the process correct, DOE Undersecretary for Science Paul Dabbar said Wednesday.
“We want to make sure we are doing it the right way,” Dabbar said during his speech at the Energy Department’s Nuclear Cleanup Workshop. “We’d rather do the right thing than go fast.”
The undersecretary oversees DOE’s Office of Environmental Management and its roughly $7 billion annual budget. He affirmed the office’s belief that the new end-state contracting model should expedite remediation in the long run. In the short term, however, changing the procurement approach will take time to implement, according to Dabbar.
Dabbar was responding to a question from Seth Kirshenberg, executive director of the Energy Communities Alliance.
The ECA represents local governments adjacent to U.S. Department of Energy nuclear facilities. Kirshenberg asked what is being done to accelerate contract awards. “There have been some delays,” which concerns many in the local communities, he added.
Kirshenberg did not list specific examples of contract delays. The Office of Environmental Management in August said it would extend for up to one year the contracts for the incumbent tank-waste and Central Plateau cleanup vendors at the Hanford Site in Washington state. The contracts, both worth more than $5 billion, otherwise would have expired on Sept. 30, before new awards could be issued.
Unlike a cost-based solicitation in which DOE would draw up extensive details for the a 10-year contract a full two years prior to taking bids, the end-state approach will be based more on task orders that will be negotiated with the vendor after the contract. These IDIQ-type contracts are used extensively in the Department of Defense, said Norbert Doyle, DOE’s acting associate principal deputy assistant secretary for corporate services.
The new procurement approach, combined with contract awards being in various stages of the pipeline at most Environmental Management sites over the next two years, means “it takes a bit of time” to work the kinds out of a new system, Dabbar said.
