The Energy Department is preparing a procurement road map for replacing tens of billions of dollars’ worth of expiring cleanup contracts at the former Hanford Site plutonium production plant near Richland, Wash., and should release at least part of that plan later this year, a DOE official said Wednesday.
A summary of this “Joint Master Acquisition Plan” could appear in “late fall, early winter” of this year, Karen Flynn, program manager of the newly minted Office of Hanford Acquisition, said Wednesday in Richland during a webcast meeting of the Hanford Advisory Board’s Committee of the Full.
The office for which Flynn works coordinates procurement of cleanup services at Hanford’s two main DOE field offices: The Richland Operations Office, which includes Hanford’s solid-waste cleanup and groundwater remediation programs, and the Office of River Protection, which focuses on liquid waste cleanup.
The forthcoming master plan is an attempt by DOE to decide how many contracts, and of what kind — fixed price or cost-plus, for example — are needed for cleanup work that will begin late this decade and early next.
Besides a bevy of small support contracts, five major Hanford Site contracts worth a combined $19 billion are set to expire between September of this year and 2019. These are:
- HPM Corp.’s occupational health services contract.
- Mission Support Alliance’s infrastructure services contract.
- Washington Closure Hanford’s river corridor closure project, which is basically completed and awaiting closeout by September.
- CH2M Plateau Remediation’s central plateau remediation contract.
- Washington River Protection Solutions’ radioactive waste storage tank operations contract. The deal is set to expire in September, but Flynn said the company has sent DOE a proposal to pick up the pact’s last remaining option, which would extend performance through Sept. 30, 2018.
Among the first request for proposals to be issued in accordance with the master plan would be a solicitation for the follow-up tank operations contract. A draft solicitation for that work could appear as early as 2017, Flynn said Wednesday.
