Online data suggests the Portsmouth Site in Pike County, Ohio appears to be the only Department of Energy nuclear cleanup site which still has a high local transmission rate of COVID-19.
An Exchange Monitor search of county-by-county data posted on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention CDC website listed Pike County, Ohio as about the only county adjacent to a DOE Office of Environmental Management cleanup site with a high local COVID rate.
While not an actual cleanup site, Fayette County, Ky., where the Portsmouth-Paducah Project Office is located, was also listed as high on Friday morning. The CDC county-by-county data is based upon weekly submissions from state health departments across the country.
For the seven days ended Thursday, the Office of Environmental Management recorded 113 active onsite cases of COVID-19, a spokesperson said by via email. That is 29 more than the prior week’s total of 84.
The DOE said last month it will stop collecting vaccination status data from employees, contractors and visitors. The Food and Drug Administration announced this week it has authorized booster shots geared toward major COVID sub-variants, according to numerous media reports.
The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management Thursday announced the selection of Laurel, Md.,-based Digital Strategy LLC as the winner of a potential five-year, $4 million technical services contract.
In an Aug. 25 press release, the Cincinnati-based Environmental Management Consolidated Business Office said Digital Strategy will provide information technology-related services to the DOE cleanup division’s workforce management office.
On its website, Digital Strategy said it also signed a contract in March with DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable that could be worth up to $3.9 million over four years.
In January 2021, the company won a subcontract from DOE contractor BTP Services, according to the Digital Strategy website.
CEO Puja Bisht, who worked with U.S. government clients for years in the information technology and management consulting sector, started the firm in 2018, according to the website.
The Civilian Board of Contract Appeals says the Department of Energy is justified in rejecting about $334,000 in reimbursement for the former landlord services contractor at the Hanford Site in Washington state.
In an Aug. 17 ruling, a three-judge panel for the contract appeals board said DOE is justified in rejecting $334,000 in reimbursement to Leidos-led Mission Support Alliance for work done by subcontractors between 2009 and 2011.
The Civilian Board of Contract Appeals said Mission Support Alliance (MSA) failed to provide time cards or other documents to establish the subcontractor fees were reasonable. “The Board, unlike DOE, would not necessarily insist on time cards to support the reasonableness of the challenged costs, and we understand why records might be unavailable—but we would need something to satisfy MSA’s burden of proof.”
The litigation between Mission Support Alliance and DOE started out as a much bigger dispute over $15.4-million in fees the federal agency sought to disallow. Mission Support Alliance provided landlord services, such as security, road upkeep and information management at Hanford under a roughly $5 billion contract that started in May 2009. In December 2019, DOE awarded the follow-on landlord contract to another Leidos-led joint venture, Hanford Mission Integration Solutions under a potential 10-year, $4-billion contract.
Web-savvy observers might notice the Department of Energy’s Cincinnati-based Environmental Management Consolidated Business Center on Aug. 26 overhauled the look and feel of its current procurements website.
The redesigned website appears to provide the same previously-available documents and videos on planned requests for proposals (RFP) and market research in an easier-to-follow format.
The website appears to offer at least one significant new feature: A “bulk-download” button that allows users to tap a single ZIP file where all documents pertaining to a particular RFP can be downloaded.
The DOE Office of Environmental Management has billions of dollars-worth of contracts with private companies and joint ventures.
