Could a $35.5 million mathematical error sink the National Nuclear Security Administration’s latest Y-12/Pantex award? That’s one of the issues highlighted in a wide-ranging protest of NNSA’s most recent Y-12/Pantex award by Babcock & Wilcox-led Nuclear Production Partners. NW&M Monitor obtained a redacted version of NP2’s latest protest, which was filed last month and details for the first time a host of issues the company had with the NNSA’s Nov. 1 reaffirmation of Bechtel-led Consolidated Nuclear Security as the winner of the procurement. In addition to the mathematical error, by which NP2 suggests it was “directly prejudiced,” the company also argued that NNSA didn’t adequately evaluate key personnel for CNS, should have had discussions with bidders when it sought additional information this summer about the cost savings proposed by the three bidders for the contract, and that the findings of new Source Selection Authority Bob Raines mirrored those of the previous SSA, unfairly favoring CNS.
The NNSA initially awarded the $22.8 billion contract to CNS in January, and after a successful protest by NP2 and a Jacobs/Fluor-led team, took corrective action and sought more information from bidders before naming CNS the winner a second time Nov. 1. NP2 has protested the contract three times. “The record is replete with many instances of NNSA’s disparate treatment of the offerors and failure to follow the RFP,” NP2 said in its latest protest, later adding: “NP2 understands NNSA’s desire to move on with the procurement, but that should not be done at the expense of violating the RFP and the very purpose of the corrective action.”
According to NP2, the analysis performed by Raines was “inherently flawed” because of the $35.5 million math error contained in a report by an Independent Project Team (IPT), which was convened in the wake of NP2’s successful protest to assess the feasibility of the cost savings proposed by each bidder. According to the protest, $35.5 million that had been labeled as “feasible cost savings” by the IPT in one part of its report was totaled as “non-feasible cost savings” proposed by the company elsewhere in the report. NP2 said it pointed out the error to NNSA after viewing a redacted version of the IPT Supplemental Evaluation Report (SER) and a detailed addendum labeled Exhibit E on Nov. 1, but during a Nov. 15 debriefing the NNSA noted that its totals on key pages of the IPT SER and Exhibit E were correct to not include the $35.5 million. However, when provided an unredacted version of the IPT SER and Exhibit E, the company noted that the redacted and unredacted versions of the document were different and the discrepancy it had found had been eliminated in the unredacted version, which it said called into question the entirety of agency’s cost feasibility analysis. “The competitive harm to NP2 is clear, $35 million at least, but the harm to the public perception of procurement integrity and fairness could be even more costly. … There is a fair question as to whether NNSA edited Exhibit E after the fact to reach a conclusion that it wanted. Such an alteration would call into question the entire cost savings feasibility analysis,” NP2 said.
NP2 also argued that the NNSA didn’t adequately evaluate former Pantex Site office Manager Dan Glenn, who was bid as CNS’ top Pantex official, when it analyzed the key personnel for each team. In its protest, NP2 said the NNSA knew Glenn—who worked for B&W before taking a job with CNS team member Lockheed Martin to be on the team’s bid—did not have an active security clearance and would not be able to get one because of his disclosure during a trade secrets case pitting him against his former employer that he withheld key information from his own lawyers and the court. NP2 said the NNSA should have reviewed the “close at hand information that it had” about Glenn when it revaluated proposals. The NNSA found that NP2 had a “slight advantage” over CNS in the area of key personnel, which the NP2 team suggested should have been greater given the issues involving Glenn and the potential that he may not be able to get a security clearance.
