At industry’s recommendation, the Department of Energy now says a bidder’s technical and management approach will count more than past performance in a competition for the next depleted uranium hexafluoride and site support contract at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio and the Paducah Site in Kentucky.
But the bidder’s key personnel remain the most important factor in DOE’s evaluation of proposed bids for the $1.89-billion Portsmouth Paducah Project Office (PPPO) Operations and Site Mission Support Contract, the agency said in a Wednesday notice on the federal procurement website, SAM.gov.
Technical and management approach follows on the podium, then past performance, now ranked third.
The DOE issued a draft request for proposals (RFP) on Jan. 4 for running depleted uranium hexafluoride (DUF6) plants and performing certain other work at the two former gaseous diffusion plants. The new contractor will also make depleted uranium tetrafluoride for weapons work for the DOE’s semi-autonomous National Nuclear Security Administration.
Following virtual one-on-sessions with prospective bidders Jan. 19-20, the agency’s Cincinnati-based Environmental Management Consolidated Business Center decided to tweak the selection criteria and make other changes before rolling out the final RFP, according to the notice.
In addition, the DOE is updating a chart in the draft RFP documents to show the anticipated annual funding levels will start at $276 million and the subsequent years will be escalated by 1.15% for each year.
The federal agency is accepting written comments on the changes through Monday Jan. 31, according to DOE’s contracting officer Kimberly Tate.
