Tennessee-based RSI EnTech said Monday it would not follow a competitor’s lead in protesting the Energy Department’s recent $137 million consolidated contract award for technical support services at the Portsmouth/Paducah Project Office complex.
“Yes, we received a debrief [on the contract award]; no, we did not/are not filing a protest,” RSI EnTech President Paul Clay said in a Monday email reply to a reporter’s inquiry.
The Energy Department on the week of July 16 debriefed bidders on the outcome of the procurement, Clay said. Companies generally have 10 days after their debriefing to file a bid protest with the Government Accountability Office.
The technical support contract – which covers DOE’s Portsmouth Site in Ohio, Paducah Site in Kentucky, and their shared cleanup operations office in Lexington, Ky., — was awarded on June 28 to a Professional Project Services (Pro2Serve) subsidiary, Enterprise Technical Assistance Services (E-TAS). The work includes technical and administrative support, information technology infrastructure, technical engineering, and other services. Like RSI, Pro2Serve is based in Oak Ridge, Tenn.
New Mexico-based Strategic Management Solutions filed a bid protest with the GAO on July 20, but its justification has not yet been made public. The company has declined to discuss the matter. The GAO expects to rule on the protest by Oct. 29.
The newly awarded contract replaces three separate deals, all due to expire on Sept. 30, held by RSI (worth $51 million), Pro2Serve ($45 million), and Strategic Management Solutions ($45 million). The Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management selected the winning bid from among seven proposals.
Strategic Management Solutions had filed the only protest to the contract with the GAO as of Thursday, which would be well beyond the deadline for such actions. Two of the other four bidders are believed to be GEM Technologies and Los Alamos Technical Associates.
In deciding cases, the GAO looks at whether statutes and regulations governing procurement were followed. It can order a variety of remedies, including having DOE re-evaluate submissions, offer a chance for revised proposals, or restart the bid process.
RSI EnTech, which provides technical support at the Portsmouth Site, garnered 97 percent of the available fee under its existing contract during the 2017 fiscal year.
