Mike Nartker
WC Monitor
1/30/2015
Will the third time be the charm for the Department of Energy’s long-running effort to award a new support services contract for the Office of Legacy Management? That’s the question to be answered in the wake of DOE’s decision late this week to shift course and award the new contract to a team led by Navarro Research and Engineering. The contract, which was set-aside for small businesses, has been previously estimated at $250 million over five years. DOE has twice awarded the contract to Portage, but both awards were challenged by unsuccessful bidders, including Navarro, to the Government Accountability Office, leading to re-evaluations by the Department. Debriefs on DOE’s latest award decision are set to occur in mid-February, but industry officials are already expecting that a new protest is likely to be filed. DOE did not respond to a request for comment late this week.
In a written response, Navarro President Susana Navarro-Valenti said, “Navarro is very excited about being selected for the LM support contract and we look forward to the opportunity to provide them with our services.” Portage did not respond to a request for comment late this week.
Procurement Has Run for Years
DOE has worked for years to award the new support services contract for the Office of Legacy Management, a relatively small component of the Department responsible for post-cleanup-related responsibilities at DOE sites. The procurement for the new contract stretches back to the fall of 2010, when the Department began conducting market research to determine if the contract could continue to be set-aside for small businesses. The Department issued a Request for Proposals in November 2011, and bids were due by mid-February 2012, with reportedly eight companies submitting offers. DOE initially awarded the contract to Portage in April 2013, leading to challenges from Navarro and a team led by Wastren Advantage that includes incumbent S.M. Stoller (now known as Stoller Newport News Nuclear).
Navarro Scored Higher in Re-Evaluation After First Protest
In response to the first challenge, DOE chose in May 2013 to take corrective action by re-evaluating all eight bids, and then chose again in early 2014 to award the new contract to Portage. Both Navarro and the WAI-Stoller team again protested DOE’s decision, and in the spring of 2014, the GAO sustained Navarro’s protest but denied WAI-Stoller’s.
In its decision backing Navarro’s protest, the GAO said Navarro had scored higher than Portage after DOE re-evaluated proposals after the first protest. Navarro’s bid scored 940 out of 940 available points and received an “excellent” overall technical rating. Portage’s bid also received an “excellent” overall technical rating, but earned 920 out of 940 points, with the contractor having received 80 out of 100 available points in the area of past performance. Navarro’s bid was slightly more expensive than Portage’s—approximately $260 million versus $251 million, according to the GAO decision.
DOE Bid Evaluation ‘Flawed,’ GAO Found
While both Navarro and Portage received the same adjectival ratings for their bids, DOE decided that “Portage’s proposals contained certain discriminators that set it apart from Navarro’s proposal,” the GAO decision states. “Overall, the SSO determined that based on several discriminators, Portage’s proposal was superior to Navarro’s under the three most important technical factors, notwithstanding the same adjectival ratings, and therefore, represented the best value to the government,” the GAO said.
In its second protest, though, Navarro charged that the discriminators used to support the decision to award the contract to Portage were “unreasonable and not supported by the record”—an allegation the GAO ultimately supported. “Upon review, the record reflects that several of these discriminators do not withstand scrutiny, and were the result of unreasonable conclusions, unequal evaluations, or inaccurate judgments regarding the differences between the two proposals. As a result, we conclude that the best value decision was flawed,” the GAO said.
The GAO recommended that DOE re-evaluate the bids submitted by Portage and Navarro and come up with a new award decision. In June of last year, though, DOE informed the bidders on the new contract that it would re-evaluate all eight bids submitted and would determine a path forward once that re-evaluation was complete.
Numerous Extensions for Incumbent
One company that has benefited heavily from the drawn-out process to award the new Legacy Management support services contract has been incumbent Stoller Newport News Nuclear. The contract held by SN3 (as Stoller is now known) was initially set to expire in September 2012, and the company was unable to lead a bid of its own for the follow-on contract because it did not meet the size standard DOE used for the procurement, leading to SN3’s decision to team with WAI. Since September 2012, though, SN3 has received a number of extensions to its contract in various increments, with the latest extension running for three months to the end of March at a value of approximately $16.8 million.
