The Energy Department intends to temporarily extend the current contract for liquid waste management at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina while the Government Accountability Office reviews protests to the newly awarded successor deal.
The current contract held by Savannah River Remediation (SRR) – a partnership comprised of AECOM, Bechtel National, CH2M, and BWXT Technologies – was scheduled to expire on Dec. 31. The contract extension would keep SRR on the job at the DOE site through May 31, 2018, according to a notice posted on a federal contracts website.
In October, DOE awarded a liquid waste contract worth up to $4.7 billion over 10 years to Savannah River EcoManagement, a joint venture comprised of BWXT Technical Services Group, Bechtel National, and Honeywell International. The other two bidders – an AECOM-CH2M team and a Fluor-Westinghouse partnership – filed separate protests with the GAO. With no guarantee the agency will rule on the protests by Dec. 31, the Energy Department determined Savannah River Remediation was the only entity prepared to presently carry out the liquid waste work.
No final deal has been signed. “The operations and goals of the proposed extension of the liquid waste services contract have not been formalized at this point,” a DOE spokesperson said by email Thursday.
No financial figures were listed on the notice. One industry source with knowledge of the matter guessed it might be a pro-rata agreement based on SRR’s existing decade-long contract valued in the neighborhood of $6 billion.
The same source said Thursday the contract extension is not a surprise: “They always have to have somebody doing the work.”
If GAO wraps up the contract protests by late February, followed by a 90-day transition, the new team could take over liquid waste operations in June, the source suggested.
An exclusion under federal acquisition law enables departments such as DOE to award such a contract, absent the usual competition, for a limited time frame, according to the notice.
The extension would enable SRR to continue making “critical requirements for treatment and disposal of liquid waste at SRS” while the protest is being adjudicated, according to the Dec. 6 DOE notice. The department did not elaborate on the nature of the critical requirements.
The contract involves overseeing existing facilities for storage, treatment, and disposal of about 35 million gallons of Cold War-era liquid waste at Savannah River.
Along with their original protests at the end of October, the losing bidders have filed multiple supplements – most recently on Dec. 1 from the Fluor-Westinghouse group, according to the GAO website. That would push the GAO 100-day deadline for ruling to about March 12, although the agency likely will attempt to address the protests before then.
During the first 30 days after a protest is filed, DOE attorneys would be expected to file a detailed report on the disputed contract selection with the Government Accountability Office, according to procedures outlined on the GAO website. It is unknown if DOE has filed such a report yet. Sources have said DOE filed for a partial dismissal of the protests.
Should they be displeased with the outcome of the GAO review, the losing parties could pursue their case into the Court of Federal Claims.
Savannah River Remediation Takes $14.5M in Latest Fee Award
Savannah River Remediation won 96 percent, or $14.5 million of $15.1 million, of the fee available for its liquid waste management contract between Oct. 1, 2016, and June 30, 2017, according to a recently disclosed DOE scorecard.
“Overall, SRR’s performance during the evaluation period was excellent,” DOE said. “The contractor has taken positive steps to improve overall conduct of operations, noted as requiring attention in the last award period.”
The scorecard singled out SRR’s handling of an unexpected melter failure that halted waste processing at the Defense Waste Processing Facility in early 2017. The contractor is preparing to activate a replacement melter. “SRR demonstrated nimbleness in operational and outage planning by accelerating the planned major outage by a number of months,” DOE said.
In addition, the department praised SRR for completing Saltstone Disposal Unit 6, one of several planned 30-million-plus-gallon tanks that will store radioactive salt waste left over from processing the site’s liquid waste.
The department noted a higher count of technical safety requirement breaches, including four incidents at the Defense Waste Processing Facility, which as a result was placed into deliberation operations. But the scorecard praised SRR for its response to the issue.
“Savannah River Remediation is pleased to be recognized with a score that reflects the progress made in the Savannah River Site Liquid Waste Program and the hard work of our employees,” SRR President and Project Manager Tom Foster said in an emailed statement.
“We were faced with a number of unusual challenges this year – Liquid Waste System outage, new melter being installed, repairing the 3H Evaporator, etc. – and we were able to safely overcome those challenges with outstanding performance,” Foster added.
