With the Energy Department temporarily doing only minimal physical work at the Hanford Site in Washington state due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it is apt to further delay award of a potential 10-year, $15 billion contract for tank waste management at the facility, a source said Wednesday.
Many in industry expected the contract for managing and ultimately closing underground liquid waste tanks would come in the opening weeks of 2020, after DOE’s Office of Environmental Management in December awarded two multibillion-dollar contracts at the former plutonium production complex.
But January brought bid protests against the 10-year, $4-billion site services contract award to a Leidos-led venture, as well as the Hanford Central Plateau cleanup business worth up to $10 billion over a decade for a joint venture headed by Amentum.
Those developments likely pushed back the Energy Department’s schedule for awarding the tank contract, Jacobs Chairman and CEO Steven Demetriou predicted during an earnings call in February. Bid protests tend to make the federal agency more deliberate in issuing subsequent procurement awards, he and other industry officials say. Jacobs is seeking the tank-waste business.
The Office of Environmental Management as a rule does not discuss pending procurements.
Probably no more than 20% of the 11,000-member Hanford workforce is currently on-site due to work reductions triggered by the public health emergency.
On Wednesday, an executive with a separate DOE contractor, which is also pursuing the tank management contract, said the minimal staffing levels at DOE will likely further delay the award. “How do you transition to a new contract” when it is virtually impossible for a new vendor to conduct training and large meetings, the industry source said.
It is far from clear how a new management team can even travel to the site to set up operations, given the current Energy Department and other government restrictions on in-person meetings and any nonessential business travel, a source with a third DOE contractor said.
Indeed, the Energy Department itself indicated March 14 that many procurements could be slowed by restrictions accompanying the pandemic.
Washington River Protection Solutions, a venture comprised of Amentum and Atkins, currently holds the contract for management of 56 million gallons of radioactive and chemical waste at Hanford. The award, valued at $7.8 billion, started in October 2008 and is slated to expire in September.
The next contract will focus more on eventual tank closure and deployment of direct-feed low-activity waste (DFLAW) starting by the end of 2023 at the Waste Treatment Plant being built by Bechtel.
Hanford Contract Protests Should be Decided Soon
The Government Accountability Office is expected by May 1 to rule on the protests of two major Hanford Site contracts, a source said Tuesday.
To date, the COVID-19 pandemic has not forced schedule slippage in adjudication of protests to federal contract awards, and the GAO anticipates deciding on the Hanford cases within its standard 100-day timeline, the source said via email.
In December, DOE’s Office of Environmental Management issued a potential 10-year, $4-billion site services contract to Hanford Mission Integration Solutions (HMIS), a venture made up of Leidos, Centerra, and Parsons. it also awarded the Hanford Central Plateau cleanup contract for up to 10 years and $10 billion to Central Plateau Cleanup Co., which is comprised of Amentum, Fluor, and Atkins.
In January, a team led by Huntington Ingalls Industries contested the landlord services contract, while a venture led by Bechtel National filed its protest over the Central Plateau remediation award.
The justifications for the protests have not been made public.
Although supplements to the original protests were filed to the original actions, the GAO still intends to act upon the landlord site services protest by April 22, and the Central Plateau case by April 30. The decisions might not be publicly available by those dates, as often certain confidential data must be withheld before a public decision can be made available the source said. But a public version is usually available on the GAO website within two weeks.
The current provider of site services – from grass mowing, to security, to electronic records management – is Mission Support Alliance, the partnership of Leidos and Centerra.
Jacobs subsidiary CH2M HILL Plateau Remediation holds the current Central Plateau cleanup contract, to remove high-hazard wastes streams and clean up contaminated groundwater plumes before they reach the Columbia River.
