Companies that want to run the Department of Energy’s National Training Center will wait until November to hear the Government Accountability Office’s decision about a summer protest by the incumbent, which has now gotten another extension at the Albuquerque, N.M. site.
In 2023, three small businesses protested the DOE’s 2022 award to Eagle Harbor to manage the National Training Center (NTC). That kicked off a new competition and, on April 30, an extension until Aug. 5 for incumbent Kupono Government Services.
But instead of announcing a new award on Aug. 5, DOE that day announced it was extending Kupono for up to a year at a potential cost of more than $30 million. It was less than a week after Kupono again protested the 2023 award to Eagle Harbor. Another Kupono protest appeared on Aug. 16.
DOE solicited bids for the new National Training Center Contract in 2020. If Kupono’s extension lasts for another year, it will have taken five years to turn the contract over. The successor pact is supposed to run for 10 years.
DOE did not immediately reply to a request for comment on Monday.
