At the Department of Energy’s request, bidders on a major nuclear cleanup contract at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio have agreed to keep their bids on the table for 60 days longer than planned, industry sources said this week.
Within the past week, DOE procurement officials asked teams to keep their contract offers for the Portsmouth Decontamination & Decommissioning Contract open up to 330 days, rather than the initial 270-day period, executives with separate companies told Exchange Monitor this week.
The extension basically means the offers remain good through June 1, rather than April 1, one of the two industry executives said Tuesday.
DOE Environmental Management Consolidated Business Center occasionally asks for extensions in big procurements. Stretching out the deadline involves revising one line within DOE’s standard form 33, the other industry source said Monday. The form says the stipulated price is good “if this offer is accepted within” a set number of days from the request for proposals deadline.
Bidders are vying for a new follow-on contract potentially worth $5.9 billion over 10 years to replace the one held by incumbent Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth. Fluor-BWXT has been in charge of nuclear cleanup at the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant site since March 2011 under a contract currently valued at $5 billion. DOE recently extended the incumbent contract through September. It was previously set to expire at the end of March.
Sources have indicated at least two teams are pursuing the new Portsmouth cleanup contract. One is said to be led by BWX Technologies with Jacobs and APTIM as partners. The other is Amentum-led with Fluor and Veolia as partners.
