Two Protests Now Filed Over DOE’s Decision to Again Award to Portage
Mike Nartker
WC Monitor
2/28/2014
Navarro Research and Engineering this week filed a new challenge over the Department of Energy’s decision to once again award Portage the new support services contract for DOE’s Office of Legacy Management. Navarro filed its protest with the Government Accountability Office on Feb. 24, and the agency currently has until early June to make a decision. Navarro is the second contractor to file a protest with the GAO over the Department’s decision to award the contract to Portage for a second time after taking corrective action in response to earlier protests; with WAI-Stoller Services, LLC having filed a protest earlier this month (WC Monitor, Vol. 25 No. 6). DOE did not respond to requests for comment on the latest challenge to its award decision this week.
Both Navarro and the WAI-Stoller team had been the original challengers of DOE’s decision to award the new Legacy Management support services contract to Portage. DOE initially awarded the contract to Portage last April, and in response to the initial protests filed, the Department chose last May to take corrective action by re-evaluating the eight bids submitted for the contract. In late January, DOE announced that Portage had once again been selected as the winner of the contract, which is set to run for five years, consisting of a two-year base period and a three-year option period. Work to be performed under the new contract includes long-term surveillance and maintenance; information technology and records management; asset management; business; and program-wide support services.
The incumbent Legacy Management support services contractor is Stoller (now a wholly owned subsidiary of Huntington Ingalls Industries), whose contract was initially set to expire in September 2012. Stoller had been unable to lead a bid of its own for the follow-on contract because it no longer met the size standard for the small business procurement, leading it to join the team led by WAI. The Department’s most recent contract extension with Stoller is set to expire March 31, though DOE has another option that could keep in Stoller in place until the end of June.
