Kenneth Fletcher
WC Monitor
6/12/2015
The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management is on track to release in the coming weeks its plans for new cleanup procurements at Los Alamos National Laboratory, EM Deputy Assistant Secretary for Acquisition and Project Management Jack Surash said at a Business Opportunity Forum EM held this week. DOE is in the process of breaking out cleanup work from the Lab’s M&O contract into one or more procurements over the next one-to-two years, and is planning to complete its acquisition plan in early summer with draft Request for Proposals following soon after. “Very shortly, in a matter of weeks, not months, we’ll publicly release what we’re doing here quickly followed up with statements of work,” Surash said, adding later: “We might make June, we might slip into July, but it’s coming soon.”
Surash declined to provide details on the number or type of procurements anticipated at this stage. “Until I have an acquisition plan I don’t have a lot to tell you,” he said, adding later: “They will be EM-style procurements. I don’t know if we are going to have one, two, three, four, five, six, procurements. But whatever we do we have look for well-defined performance-based scope.” DOE will look to issue fixed-price contracts as much as possible, though Surash noted that EM will have a “hard time” issuing a fixed price contract for transuranic waste work.
Cleanup activities at Los Alamos are currently transitioning from National Nuclear Security Administration oversight to a new EM field office. DOE’s approach for managing the Los Alamos cleanup fell under new scrutiny after issues with transuranic waste processing at Los Alamos were linked to the radiological release that occurred in February 2014 at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. DOE subsequently decided to break out legacy cleanup work from current Lab M&O contractor Los Alamos National Security, LLC, and shift management of the cleanup work at the lab to EM.
