It will probably be late September before there is resolution of the dispute over the final liquid-waste management contract for the Energy Department’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina, a BWX Technologies official said Monday.
The situation has dragged on longer than expected, David Black, senior vice president and chief financial officer, said during the company’s latest quarterly earnings call with Wall Street analysts. Presuming the BWXT-led Savannah River EcoManagement retains control of the business it was awarded last fall — an award later overturned by a bid protest — the contract transition would not start before the fourth quarter, said Black.
BWXT and its partners, Bechtel and Honeywell, were awarded a 10-year, $4.7 billion contract by DOE for liquid-waste management at SRS in October. But the two losing groups — one team comprised of AECOM and CH2M, and another including Fluor and Westinghouse — protested the award to the Government Accountability Office (GAO). In February, GAO upheld the AECOM-CH2M protest, saying DOE hadn’t sufficiently vetted Savannah River EcoManagement’s technology. In April, DOE had all three teams submit updated proposals, sources have said.
A DOE spokesperson said Monday the agency does not comment on active procurements.
Meanwhile, Black declined Monday to reveal a purchase price for BWXT’s just-announced agreement to acquire Sotera Health’s Nordion medical isotope business. BWXT expects the deal to close by the end of this year.
In addition to the Nordion deal, much of the earnings call was devoted to BWXT’s Monday announcement of a “breakthrough” technology for making molybdenum-99 (Mo-99). BWXT has a patent pending for technology to provide a reliable North American supply of this important diagnostic imaging radionuclide, the company said.
Mo-99 is the parent radioisotope of Tc-99m, which is used around-the-world in over 30 million medical procedures annually, BWXT said in a news release Monday.
BWXT also reiterated its prior company-wide earnings-per-share guidance of between $2.45 and $2.55 for 2018.