Sellafield Launching £1.5 Billion Procurement for Cleanup Suppliers
Kenneth Fletcher
WC Monitor
7/3/2014
Sellafield Limited is looking to “broaden the base” for long-term cleanup suppliers at the U.K. site under a new 10-year agreement that could be worth up to £1.5 billion ($2.5 billion), Sellafield Chief Decommissioning Officer Jack DeVine told WC Monitor this week. The multiple-award procurement would work in a way similar to the indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity cleanup contracts in the United States, but would be managed by Sellafield Ltd. The effort will, in part, aim to attract new talent to Sellafield. “If you walk around the site here you see the same names all over the place. It’s not that they’re bad companies, but we know that there’s a lot of capability out there so we want to broaden the base a little bit,” DeVine said.
The work would come under the Decommissioning Delivery Partnership, which “is not a traditional contract but a commercial framework agreement that can be called upon when support is required,” according to a Sellafield release. “There is no guaranteed work or committed expenditure; however the rewards to the chosen suppliers could be great,” the release says. The acquisition process was launched this week and Sellafield Ltd. is currently prequalifying interested bidders. A “tendering process” will take place in late 2014 and awards to “preferred suppliers” will take place in mid-2015.
Similar Work Already Being Done in U.S.
Much of what would be covered under the agreement is similar to work currently being performed by U.S. cleanup companies. “The skill sets we are taking cover the waterfront in terms of the same kinds of things that we in the U.S. are doing at Savannah River, Oak Ridge, Hanford and everyplace else,” DeVine said. “We’re dealing with robotics, underwater technologies, remote operated vehicles, we are dealing with sampling capabilities, inspection capabilities. We will be doing an awful lot of removal and demolition, waste packaging, waste handling, waste transport. There’s not a whole lot that I can think of that’s fundamentally different. It’s the same sets of things that have been done successfully in the U.S.”
Given the nature of Sellafield, a multiple-award contract is well suited to the type of work that will be covered, DeVine said. “First of all, it would be vastly helpful to build continuity with our contractor base. Secondly, it would create real incentives for performance. … It’s the opportunity for continuing work in a big area, kind of like a meritocracy. Really strong contractors will continue to get more and more work and the ones who are underperforming will get less and less,” he said. “The third thing is that in the U.K. the regulations and requirements and practices that go into the bidding process are very demanding, and for good reason. We’d like to build maximum flexibility into our work. My ideal is that there’s never a minute of critical path taken up by contracting process.”
Work to Be Split Into Three Lots
The scope of the agreement would cover technical expertise, project management, design and execution services, an “innovator and developer” for technology development and a “change agent” for planning and delivery of transitions. The agreement is expected to be split into three “lots.” The first lot would be multiple awards covering the pile fuel storage pond, pile fuel cladding silo and site remediation and decommissioning projects. The second lot and third lots will go to individual teams, and include respectively the First Generation Magnox Storage Pond and the Magnox Swarf Storage Silo.
The multiple-award agreement will largely focus on the first lot, while there likely will be more big tasks offered under the two lots covering the storage pond and the silo. The ultimate goal of the contracting vehicle is safety and faster risk reduction, DeVine said. “Our mantra is safer sooner. We have very substantial risks at Sellafield. In a nutshell, large amounts of legacy materials of uncertain character and condition housed in elderly deteriorating facilities,” he said. DeVine added, “The idea instead is to have a group of competitively selected quality contractors so we can allocate tasks with a very quick turnaround and keep it off the critical path and build a meritocracy, and manage that internally.”
NDA Providing £50 Million More to Dounreay Site Due to Added Scope
Kenneth Fletcher
WC Monitor
7/3/2014
The U.K.’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority is providing an extra £50 million ($86 million) in the next two years to cleanup work at the Dounreay site due to scope that was added after the site cleanup contract was awarded in 2012, the NDA announced this week. While plans for spent fuel at Dounreay originally called for storing the fuel on site, it is now slated for transfer to Sellafield, meaning additional upfront costs that originally would not have been spent until later in the contract. The site will also need additional security upgrades not originally anticipated. “The total cost of this additional scope is not yet known but will be several hundred million pounds,” the NDA said in a release. The NDA added: “Significant additional contract scope, acknowledged at the time of the competition but insufficiently mature to be included in the bidding process, is now being developed to a level of detail such that it can progressively be introduced to the programme.”
Cleanup at Dounreay, a fast reactor site in northern Scotland, has been undertaken since 2011 by The Babcock Dounreay Partnership, a team including Babcock, URS and CH2M Hill. An extra £10 million ($17 million) was allocated to the effort this year, while the £50 million will be allocated in 2014/15 and 2015/16, according to the NDA. “The £50m is actually not related to the fuel shipments, but is to be used to de-risk the programme” as a result of the additional scope, Dounreay spokeswoman Sue Thompson said in a written response.
According to the NDA: “This additional funding will assist DSRL in the near term as it works through the longer term implications of accommodating this further scope within the planned assured funding arrangements that exist for the site. The details of this approach will now be worked on over the next few months as detailed cost and scheduling implications are worked through and implemented through a rigorous formal change control process.” More details on the outcome of the process should be available by the end of September, Thompson said.
