The Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) still hopes in coming months to award several major contracts, an agency procurement official said Wednesday.
The potential $6 billion Hanford Mission Essential Services contract for the Hanford Site in Washington state could be announced within the next couple months, according to Norbert Doyle, EM deputy assistant secretary for acquisition and project management. This “landlord services” business – covering infrastructure services, emergency response, and other operations — is currently held by Leidos-led Mission Support Alliance under a $4.3 billion deal.
In addition, new contracts for managing the 222-S Laboratory at Hanford and for paramilitary security at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina could be announced this fall, Doyle said during the Energy Technology & Environmental Business Association business opportunities forum in Aiken, S.C.
Currently, Veolia, by virtue of its 2018 acquisition of Wastren Advantage, provides analysis and testing of radioactive waste samples at the 222-S Laboratory. The operations work, including maintenance and support services, is done by AECOM-led Washington River Protection Solutions in its role as contractor for Hanford’s waste tank farms. The federal agency plans to issue a consolidated contract potentially worth $1 billion.
The new SRS paramilitary award could also be worth $1 billion, roughly the same as the incumbent contract held by Centerra. The contract covers protection of people, physical facilities, and data at the Savannah River Site.
In addition, Doyle said a final request for proposals for environmental remediation of the Nevada National Security Site could be issued within the next couple months. Navarro has the current contract valued at about $80 million. The new award could be worth up to $400 million. A draft solicitation was issued in July 2018.
The Nevada RFP is the only procurement among the four covered by DOE’s new end-state contracting method, which offers incentives for expedited environmental remediation operations, Doyle said. The other three contracts are not specifically for cleanup and involve work that does not have clear end points.
The Energy Department is also reviewing bid proposals received for two contracts worth billions of dollars at the Hanford Site – the Tank Closure Contract and the Central Plateau Cleanup Contract – now respectively held by Washington River Protection Solutions and Jacobs subsidiary CH2M. The agency hopes to make those awards this year, he said.
As he did last week in Washington, D.C., Doyle noted the departure of Anne Marie White as assistant secretary for environmental management, does not halt DOE’s implementation of the end-state procurement method. The initiative moves away from the more “cost-based” approach to contracting and toward greater reliance on single-award indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity agreements, he said.
White officially resigned today as “EM-1” after about 15 months on the job.
Doyle said EM expects to publish a draft request for proposals for cleanup of the Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee in the near future. The solicitation would be a successor to the $2.7 billion decontamination and decommissioning contract held by URS-CH2M (UCOR), which is due to expire in July 2020.
The Energy Department has temporarily placed on hold its procurement plans for a new remediation contract at the West Valley Demonstration Project in New York state, Doyle said. The agency is considering the merits of extending the contract of the current vendor, CH2M-BWXT, to include tearing down the Main Plant Process Building. The building, which has been deactivated, served as a commercial nuclear fuel reprocessing plant between 1966 and 1972.
The current vendor’s $544 million contract is set to expire in March 2020.
