The second round of bidding for the Nevada National Security Site management and operations contract appears to be in its final stages, executives with one of the competing companies said Tuesday.
Leidos resubmitted a proposal after the previous contract award to a newly acquired business segment was rescinded last year, according to Elizabeth Porter, senior vice president for the company’s Federal Energy & Environment branch. Bidders’ final proposal revisions were due this week, Porter and Gerard Fasano, Leidos executive vice president and chief of business development and strategy, said on the sidelines of the ExchangeMonitor’s Nuclear Deterrence Summit in Washington, D.C.
While the National Nuclear Security Administration has not publicly stated the number of bidding companies, Fasano said there are likely multiple other contractors in consideration.
The 1,360-square-mile Nevada National Security Site supports the NNSA’s nuclear stockpile stewardship, nonproliferation, and counterterrorism operations, among others. Present operations by more than 2,000 personnel encompass subcritical nuclear experiments, gas gun shots using special nuclear material, high-explosive test detonations, and nuclear safety criticality experiments.
The NNSA, a semiautonomous branch of the Department of Energy, in August awarded the site contract worth up to $5 billion over 10 years to Nevada Site Science Support and Technologies Corp. (NVS3T), only to revoke the deal within days after learning the company had changed hands from parent Lockheed Martin when it transferred its Information Systems & Global Solutions branch to Leidos.
At the time, the NNSA faulted NVS3T for failing to notify the agency contracting officer regarding the change in ownership, which it said “raises substantial questions about the information in the NVS3T proposal, which could significantly impact the evaluation of the proposal and award decision.” The agency said it would reconsider all offers submitted to the original request for proposals.
The Leidos executives said this week that the NNSA in late 2016 indicated it anticipated awarding the new contract by March 1 of this year. Fasano said he now expects a decision in the second quarter.
Asked about the status of the bid selection, NNSA spokesman Darwin Morgan said last week there was no new development to report.
Court documents from late 2016 give some signal regarding the companies that competed in the first bidding round. In September, NVS3T filed a complaint in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims against the withdrawal of the contract award, only to submit a joint motion with the Department of Justice in October to dismiss the case. But before that occurred, two companies unsuccessfully petitioned to intervene: Nuclear Security & Technology LLC, a partnership of Northrop Grumman Technical Services, AECOM subsidiary URS Federal Services, and CH2M Hill Constructors Inc.; and Mission Support & Test Services LLC, a partnership of Honeywell International, Jacobs Engineering Group, and Stoller Newport News Nuclear, a branch of Huntington Ingalls Industries.
Nuclear Security & Technology is almost identical to the partnership that forms the Nevada site’s current prime, National Security Technologies (NSTec), which features Northrop Grumman, AECOM, CH2M, and BWX Technologies. NSTec has remained on the job for months longer than anticipated during the second M&O selection process.
Bechtel National has also confirmed it was among the original bidders.
While Fasano said he could not discuss the details of the company’s latest bid, he touted Leidos’ bona fides to manage the site. The company has decades of government contracting experience, dating to its formation in 1969 as SAIC. Leidos split from SAIC in 2013 to become a stand-alone business solutions provider covering everything from environmental management to cybersecurity.
“This is a core part of our history,” Fasano said.
