It appears unlikely that the Government Accountability Office will rule by Christmas on protests filed against the Energy Department’s award of a new $4.7 billion liquid waste management contract at the Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina.
The congressional auditor had not posted a decision as of early Dec. 21. Several lawyers connected with the case did not return phone calls this week seeking comment.
Savannah River EcoManagement, a joint venture comprised of BWXT Technical Services Group, Bechtel National, and Honeywell International, was awarded the contract on Oct. 12. However, the two losing teams – an AECOM-CH2M venture and a Fluor-Westinghouse partnership – separately filed formal bid protests on Oct. 31. They subsequently filed supplemental documents, mostly recently on Dec. 1 from Fluor Westinghouse Liquid Waste Services.
With those bid protests still active, DOE earlier this month extended the contract for incumbent SRS liquid waste prime Savannah River Remediation, a partnership of AECOM, BWXT, Bechtel, and CH2M. Expiration of the current contract has been pushed back from Dec. 31 to May 31.
Keeping the current team on the job another five months could provide enough time for the GAO to rule on the protests and allow for a 90-day transition to a new contractor.
The protest filings are not public. A couple sources have said DOE had asked GAO for extra time to file a report explaining its contract award decision. The Energy Department to date has declined to comment on that speculation.
The GAO is supposed to rule on bid protests within 100 calendar days of filing. But this deadline can change when supplemental protests are filed. For example, the deadline for a ruling on Fluor Westinghouse’s updated protest is now listed as March 12 on the GAO website. The due date for the GAO to act on the Nov. 27 updated protest from Savannah River Technology & Remediation, the AECOM-CH2M team, is March 7, according to the GAO website. A source has told Weapons Complex Monitor the agency will probably try to rule within 100 days of the original Oct. 31 protests, which would be by Feb. 8.
One potential complication in the timeline, however, would be a government shutdown, which might freeze the clock on GAO review. But as of Dec. 21, that seemed unlikely as most sources were expecting Congress to pass another continuing resolution to keep the government open beyond Dec. 22.
The contract involves overseeing facilities for storage, treatment, and disposal of about 35 million gallons of Cold War-era liquid waste at Savannah River.
