Just as the clock was about to run out on its existing agreement, the Energy Department said Thursday it had awarded a contract extension to the current radioactive liquid waste manager at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.
The contract extension will keep Savannah River Remediation on the job for “up to” 10 months, DOE said in a news release. The total estimated cost for the 10-month extension would be $432 million, an agency spokesperson said.
Savannah River Remediation’s current five-month extension was set to expire Thursday. The new deal keeps the AECOM-led contractor in charge of waste management at the site from June 1 through March 31, 2019.
The open-ended wording of the DOE announcement holds out the possibility a new long-term contractor team could be in place before then.
Thursday’s announcement came as no surprise. The Energy Department announced in March it was considering a 10-month extension for SRR, and suggested the incumbent was the only practical option in the short term.
Savannah River Remediation’s original $4.6 billion contract expired in 2017. In addition to AECOM, other SRR members are Bechtel, CH2M, BWX Technologies. The SRR team splintered, however, when it was time to pursue a new long-term contract.
Savannah River EcoManagement won the 10-year, $4.7 billion contract in October, but the victory didn’t last for BWXT and partners Bechtel and Honeywell International. The losing Fluor-Westinghouse and AECOM-CH2M teams filed protests, one of which was upheld in February by the Government Accountability Office.
The congressional auditor agreed with the AECOM-CH2M case that DOE hadn’t properly vetted the winner’s technical approach for processing waste at a specific (and non-publicly disclosed) concentration to work properly with facilities at SRS.
The Energy Department reopened the procurement for the three ventures, directing them in April to submit their last, best contract proposals, according to sources. The department could name a winner in late summer or early fall. Barring another protest, the winner would typically have a 90-day transition period.
Under the contract, SRR’s duties include running the Defense Waste Processing Facility, the Saltstone Processing Facility, working on the Tank Closure Cesium Removal demonstration, and building Saltstone Disposal Unit 7, DOE said.
