A flub with its corporate registration should not void one of the largest awards in the history of nuclear-weapons cleanup, the joint venture that won the contract at the Hanford Site in Washington state said this week in a court filing.
BWX Technologies (BWXT)-led Hanford Tank Waste Operations & Closure filed a 120-page-plus brief, which includes about 60 pages of supporting materials, on Thursday with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. A rival bidder for the work sued in the Federal Claims Court in May and got the award blocked, at least temporarily.
The winning team, which also includes Amentum and Fluor, said DOE has the authority to waive the venture’s “lapse” in System for Award Management (SAM.gov) registration because the mistake is a “de minimis error,” according to Thursday’s filing. The team also claims its proposal beat its rival on cost and technical grounds.
While the BWXT-led group said it proved the lower-cost bid, the price of the proposals by the winner and rival, Hanford Tank Disposition Alliance, are redacted in public court filings.
The losing bidder is led by AtkinsRéalis Nuclear, formerly known as Atkins, with Jacobs and Westinghouse. The disputed contract is worth up to $45 billion over 15 years and covers solidification of liquid radioactive waste leftover from decades of plutonium protection at the Hanford Site in Washington State.
“Federal procurement law leaves room for common sense,” the BWXT team wrote in its filing this week. “The Federal Acquisition Regulation contains a host of mandatory requirements, but also a set of safety valve provisions that protect against needless waste by empowering agencies to waive or cure procedural mistakes or proposal defects that will not affect contract performance.”
The losing bidder, meanwhile, argued that the BWXT group failed to meet its obligation to stay registered in the federal online procurement tracking system throughout the solicitation. The judge in the trial court sent the bid protest dispute back to DOE for reconsideration and a DOE acquisition officer has since ruled that SAM registration issues can be considered a fixable error, according to a Department of Justice filing with the claims court.
DOE has said in court papers that it could invite updated bids from the parties.
But the winner of the Hanford Integrated Tank Contract, as it is called, said DOE and the courts don’t need to delve too far into the legal weeds here.
“A painstaking, multiyear procurement” found Hanford Tank Waste Operations & Closure team’s proposal both technically superior and lower priced, offering the public the best value for one of the nation’s very largest and most important federal contracts,” according to Thursday’s filing.
