The Energy Department expects to soon issue a request for proposals for paramilitary security services at the Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina.
The notice of the upcoming solicitation was posted Tuesday on the Federal Business Opportunities website. The RFP is due to go out within 15 to 60 days, which translates to the last week of January 2019.
The new award will replace the contract held by incumbent Centerra-SRS, which expires early in October 2019. The vendor is winding down a 10-year, $1 billion deal to protect SRS’s special nuclear material and facilities for DOE’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) and semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA).
In addition to protecting federal employees, contractors, and the general public, the winning vendor would also safeguard government property and sensitive information at Savannah River. Centerra-SRS employs about 700 people at the site. In mid-2017, the company dealt with a strike by unionized guards that lasted nearly two months.
The point of contact and contracting officer for the upcoming procurement is Matthew Carpenter, at [email protected].
A presolicitation briefing and industry meetings were held in August 2017 at SRS. A recent DOE procurement schedule suggests a new contract will be awarded by January 2020, indicating Centerra-SRS could receive an extension to its current deal.
A spokeswoman for the Centerra Group subsidiary, Suzanne Piner, said earlier this year the company plans to compete for the next contract.
In other procurement news, an industry source said Thursday DOE is poised to issue short-term extensions to one or more of the three subcontractors now providing technical support services to the Portsmouth Site in Ohio, the Paducah Site in Kentucky, and the Lexington, Ky., DOE office overseeing both former gaseous diffusion sites.
In August, the Energy Department extended the existing agreements for RSI EnTech and Professional Project Services (Pro2Serve), both based in Tennessee, and New Mexico-based Strategic Management Solutions. The DOE issued the extensions after the Government Accountability Office dismissed a bid protest from Strategic Management over a $137 million consolidated technical support contract awarded to a Pro2Serve subsidiary for the entire Portsmouth/Paducah Project Office because the award is being reconsidered.
The RSI EnTech extension is scheduled to expire at the end of December. The extension issued to Pro2Serve ran through March 2019, as does the one for SMSI.
