Management and operations contracts administered by the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management escaped some of the criticism leveled in a new Government Accountability Office report at the more expansive M&O deals used in DOE’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA).
The report, “Department of Energy: Actions Needed to Strengthen Acquisition Planning for Management and Operating Contracts,” was published Aug. 9 and made public Thursday.
Broadly speaking, GAO wrote in the report, the NNSA at times did not consider alternatives to the high-value M&O contracts used to manage day-to-day operations at the agency’s active defense nuclear facilities.
Congressional auditors recommended DOE and NNSA “discuss alternatives beyond extending the M&O contract or competing a similar contract, and that DOE establish a process to analyze and apply its experience with contracting alternatives.”
The Environmental Management office, on the other hand, has already split some core work out of legacy management and operations contracts. The office, which over sees defense nuclear cleanup from the Cold War arms race, has only one site under a management and operations deal: the Waste Operation Pilot Plant (WIPP) transuranic waste-disposal facility near Carlsbad, N,M.
The congressional investigative agency cited the liquid waste management contract at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, which DOE in 2009 awarded to the now-AECOM-led Savannah River Remediation conglomerate under a performance-based eight-year, $4-billion deal. Previously, Savannah River cleanup work was managed by Washington Savannah River Co. under a management and operations deal that also included responsibility for the Savannah River National Laboratory and the site’s defense tritium operations.
The only management and operations contract in DOE’s legacy nuclear cleanup complex now is the potentially $1.6 billion agreement awarded to another AECOM affiliate, Nuclear Waste Partnership, for operation of WIPP. Including a five-year option, the deal runs to 2022.
For WIPP, “DOE considered using a non-M&O contract, though the M&O contract alternative was selected,” GAO wrote in its report. “Contracting officials indicated in the plan that a non-M&O performance-based contract would not provide for flexibility or integrated site management and operations.”
