Next Paducah solicitation could be released in March

With mega dollar contract awards in the rear view mirror, procurement bosses at the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management could roll out the next solicitation in March, according to a DOE notice dated Monday.

A draft request for proposals (RFP) for the next Infrastructure Support Services for DOE’s Paducah Site in Kentucky could be out as early as March, the Environmental Management Consolidated Business Center in Cincinnati said in a quarterly update. That’s the only new RFP expected between now and June according to the procurement office notice.

Earlier this year, DOE’s nuclear cleanup office finalized a potential $45-billion-dollar award at the Hanford Site in Washington state and announced a new operations and dupleted uranium hexafluoride contract for gaseous diffusion plants in Ohio and Kentucky. There is nothing approaching that scale on the short-term horizon for Environmental Management. 

In May, amid a protest about a follow-on contract, DOE extended Paducah’s current landlord contractor, Swift & Staley, potentially through November 2025.

That’s about how long Swift & Staley would have gotten under the follow-on DOE awarded the company in December 2020 and then cancelled in May 2023 following a December 2022 federal appeals court decision. A rival bidder, Akima, successfully pressed its legal case that the incumbent failed to meet the Small Business Administration size criteria for that particular set-aside contract.  

Swift & Staley has overseen roads, grounds and other infrastructure needs at Paducah since October 2015 and the business is valued at $396 million, according to DOE.