March 17, 2014

IN SUPPLEMENTAL Y-12/PX PROTEST, B&W SAYS NNSA ALLOWED CNS TO ALTER ITS BID

By ExchangeMonitor

A Babcock & Wilcox-led team protesting the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Y-12/Pantex award is alleging that Consolidated Nuclear Security, the Bechtel-led group that was awarded the contract, was allowed to alter its proposal earlier this year after the agency sought additional cost information from the three teams bidding for the contract. B&W’s Nuclear Production Partners made the allegations in a supplemental protest filed Nov. 25, five days after it filed its first protest of the NNSA’s latest award. In the supplemental protest, NP2 argued that the agency was guilty of “unequal treatment of the offerors” because it unfairly allowed CNS to make changes to its proposal. It’s unclear from the heavily redacted protest exactly what CNS changed, but it appeared to be related to the baseline figures used to calculate its cost savings.

In a previous protest, NP2 argued that it should have been able to amend its proposal after the agency took corrective action by amending its initial Request for Proposals (known as Amendment 5), which NNSA and the Government Accountability Office rejected. “Had NP2 been permitted to revise its proposal, it would have been able to make additional improvements to what NNSA already has found to be an Excellent proposal,” NP2 said. “Because CNS did not comply with Amendment 5, it should be disqualified from the competition and award should be made to NP2, whose proposal NNSA found was higher rated than the third offeror.” NP2 said it was moot how much CNS benefited through the change. “The mere fact that CNS was given the opportunity to revise its proposal and NP2 was not, prejudiced NP2 because NP2 did not have the same opportunity to improve its proposal as was given to CNS." Bechtel and NNSA declined to comment.

In the supplemental protest, NP2 also said that NNSA “misevaluated” the cost savings initiatives proposed by CNS and NP2 and “treated the two offerors disparately” and used different starting points to calculate the teams’ cost savings initiatives and reductions in full-time equivalent employees. In its first proposal, NP2 said the NNSA incorrectly excluded $35.5 million in proposed cost savings, and it said in the supplemental protest that the NNSA “erroneously downgraded” another $6.4 million in cost savings linked to five different initiatives.

Comments are closed.