The U.S. Energy Department has formally signed a six-month extension for the incumbent support services vendor at the Hanford Site in Washington state.
“We have received notice this morning that extends our period of performance six month, through May 25, 2020,” Rae Moss, a spokeswoman for Leidos-led Mission Support Alliance (MSA), said in a Thursday evening email.
The Energy Department had said last month it planned to issue an extension before the current contract term expires Monday. Moss did not have any specifics on the dollar value of the new term.
The MSA team, currently comprised of Leidos and Centerra, has held the contract since May 2009 and the business has been worth about $4.3 billion. Mission Support Alliance received its current six-month extension in May.
The Energy Department hopes to award a new $6 billion support services contract before May 2020. Leidos and Centerra are part of a new venture, Hanford Mission Integration Solutions, which bid on the new potential 10-year contract in November 2018.
The Leidos-Centerra team is not the only one bidding on the new deal. Two other groups are said to be headed, respectively, by PAE, an infrastructure and logistics specialist, and Huntington Ingalls Industries, which is best known as a shipbuilder for the Navy but has moved into the DOE space as well.
The contract covers landlord services including managing a training center for emergency response, maintaining roads, providing security, and technical support.
Some industry sources expect the new Leidos-Centerra venture, which might feature other parties, to win the next Hanford services deal.
That belief is fueled in part by the fact that Energy Department apparently informed Congress in September it was on the verge of issuing the new contract, apparently to the same companies that comprise Mission Support Alliance.
The notice was withdrawn as premature, but it prompted three Democrats on the Senate Appropriations Committee to question the wisdom of such an award while Mission Support Alliance is being sued by the U.S. Justice Department under the False Claims Act.
The suit stems from alleged bribery and management kickbacks between January 2010 and 2015. The Justice Department the defendants used false statements and omitted key financial information in order for Lockheed Martin Services to obtain a $232 million subcontract while parent company Lockheed Martin Corp. was a partner in Mission Support Alliance. The Justice Department also alleges Armijo and other managers received bonuses that were basically kickbacks.
The litigation names MSA, Lockheed Martin Corp., Lockheed Martin Services, and former Lockheed and MSA executive Jorge Francisco Armijo as defendants. During that time period covered by the civil case, MSA was owned by Lockheed Martin, Jacobs, and Centerra Group – the latter now the sole holdover owner.
Mission Support Alliance has asked a federal judge to dismiss the case, but no ruling has been issued yet. The contractor argued, among other things, that the government is puffing up a contract payment dispute into a fraud case.
DOE Facing Contract Deadlines at Portsmouth/Paducah, Nevada Site
The Energy Department must make decisions on two other contracts in the next few months.
Contracts are due to expire on Dec. 31 for three vendors now providing technical support services for the Portsmouth/Paducah Project Office (PPPO).
The companies are: Oak Ridge, Tenn.-based RSI EnTech, which provides technical support at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio; Albuquerque, N.M.-based Strategic Management Solutions Inc. (SMSI) ,the provider of similar services for PPPO headquarters in Lexington, Ky., as well as depleted uranium hexafluoride (DUF6) conversion operations; and Pro2Serve, which provides tech support for the Paducah Site in Kentucky.
The Energy Department, however, is said to be pursuing six-month extension for RSI and SMSI.
The DOE Office of Environmental Management has already publicly stated its intent to renew the contract of Oak Ridge, Tenn.-based Pro2Serve to continue through June 2020.
A Pro2Serve subsidiary has twice in the past two years won a potential $137 million DOE contract to serve the entire PPPO complex – only for rival Strategic Management Services to protest both awards. The Government Accountability Office could rule on the latest bid protest by the end of January.
When Pro2Serve was first awarded the PPPO contract two years ago, DOE withdrew the award following the SMSI bid protest.
The PPPO contract involves technical and administrative services including engineering functions, and information technology infrastructure.
In addition, Navarro’s nearly $85 million contract for environmental remediation services at the Nevada National Security Site is scheduled to end Jan. 31. Navarro started the contract period in March 2005,
Bids for a new contract, which could be worth up to $350 million over 10 years, were due to DOE on Aug. 21. In May, the agency targeted an October contract award, a goal that it missed. The agency has not issued an updated procurement timeline since May.
