Three teams are believed to be vying for the 10-year, $13 billion Tank Closure Contract at the Energy Department’s Hanford Site in Washington state, according to an industry source.
Proposals by vendor teams hoping to succeed AECOM-led Washington River Protection Solutions were due March 21. The Energy Department is scheduled to hear oral presentations by mid-April from the bidders.
Oral presentations typically involve the project manager and other key personnel for the contractor team. Each session takes up much of a workday, as the bidders explains how they might respond to certain hypothetical problem scenarios at the site. The session also includes a DOE interview of the program manager for each team.
The bidders, the source said last week, are: an Atkins-AECOM partnership; a Fluor-BWX Technologies venture; and a Jacobs-Honeywell team, possibly featuring Perma-Fix Environmental Services.
These are all familiar players in the DOE weapons complex. Atkins currently leads the team providing conversion of depleted uranium hexafluoride at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio and the Paducah Site in Kentucky. In addition to leading the current Hanford tank management provider, AECOM heads the contractor that manages the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico. A Fluor-BWXT team is in charge of decontamination and decommissioning at Portsmouth. Jacobs subsidiary CH2M currently holds the Hanford Site Central Plateau Remediation business.
The new vendor will gradually move from concentrating on management to closure of 177 underground tanks holding 56 million gallons of radioactive and chemical waste at Hanford. The vendor will also oversee preparation of at-tank cesium removal facilities prior to delivery of pretreated low-activity waste to the Waste Treatment Plant. The WTP, being built by Bechtel, will convert waste into a glass form for disposal.
Washington River Protection Solutions, which started work on the $6.8 billion contract in October 2008, is operating under a one-year extension through September. Given that AECOM leads WRPS and Atkins is the minority partner, the companies might have decided to switch roles to offset any possible anti-incumbent sentiment in DOE procurement, the source said.
Reached this week, the companies declined to discuss the matter. “We don’t comment on business development opportunities or partnerships,” said AECOM spokesman Keith Wood.
Representatives for Atkins, Fluor, BWXT, and Jacobs offered similar statements.
“Due to the competitive nature of the contract bid process, we do not publicly discuss whether or not the company is pursuing or will pursue specific contract opportunities,” said Fluor spokeswoman Annika Toenniessen.
“We believe that our experience in nuclear environmental management and overall DOE contract leadership could contribute to success on contracts at Hanford, but we generally don’t discuss details about specific bid activity,” said BWXT spokesman Jud Simmons.
Atkins, a U.S. affiliate of Montreal-based SNC-Lavalin, is currently the junior partner in WRPS but this time around it appears to be the lead, the source said.
The procurement comes as SNC-Lavalin is under investigation in Canada for allegedly bribing Libyan government officials in an effort to win business in that country. If found culpable the parent could be suspended from Canadian government business, but observers have said the scandal should not hobble Atkins in the United States.
Perma-Fix is part of a joint venture that in January won a $4.8 DOE million contract for the second phase of the Test Bed Initiative for processing low-level radioactive tank waste from Hanford. It involves 2,000 gallons of low-level liquid waste from a double-shell tank, sending the waste to a Perma-Fix treatment facility for solidification into a possibly grout-like form before it is shipped to West Texas for disposal.
Perma-Fix President and CEO Mark Duff recently declined to provide any details on his company’s possible involvement in major procurements at Hanford. “We’re involved in procurement and therefore we can’t tell you anything about the procurement itself, who are we teamed with or anything,” Duff said April 1 during the company’s latest earnings call.
