Navarro Research & Engineering should take over Sept. 1 as the new Technical Assistance contractor at the Department of Energy’s Carlsbad Field Office in New Mexico, an agency spokesperson confirmed Tuesday.
The Oak Ridge, Tenn.,-based company, which beat out five other bidders for the potential five-year, $76-million small business set-aside, received its notice to proceed with transition from DOE on July 30, the spokesperson said in an email.
One of the unsuccessful bidders, Spectra Tech-led Pecos Technical Solutions, filed a bid protest with the Government Accountability Office after Navarro was awarded the contract on July 1. The Pecos challenge, dated July 26, evidently was not filed soon enough to be granted a stay of the contract by the Government Accountability Office, an industry source told Weapons Complex Monitor this week.
Transition will finish by Aug. 31 and Navarro is scheduled to assume full responsibility Sept. 1, according to DOE. Navarro is set to take over from incumbent North Wind Portage, which has a $57-million contract that began in November 2015.
The Government Accountability Office deadline for ruling on the Pecos protest is Nov. 3.
The DOE Carlsbad Field Office oversees the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, the nation’s only deep underground disposal facility for defense-related transuranic waste. The contract calls for Navarro to assist the office on a wide array of technical issues, including nuclear engineering, quality assurance and project management.
Two sources familiar with the protest said Pecos is a joint venture led by Oak Ridge, Tenn.,-based Spectra Tech. One of the sources said another partner is apparently Trinity Engineering Associates. Like Spectra Tech, Trinity was one of the firms listed among the participants in a November 2020 pre-proposal virtual conference on the contract.
The final request for proposals for the Carlsbad support contract was published by DOE in October 2020. In April, a Navarro-led team took over management of the 222-S Laboratory at the Hanford Site in Washington state.
