The U.S. Energy Department has yet to actually issue its announced six-month extension for the incumbent support services vendor at the Hanford Site in Washington state.
Last month, DOE’s Office of Environmental Management signaled it plans to keep Leidos-led Mission Support Alliance (MSA) on the job after its current extension expires Monday. That next extension has not yet been executed, a DOE spokesperson said by email Tuesday.
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 contracts. 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The notice was withdrawn as premature, but it prompted three Democrats on the Senate Appropriations Committee to question the wisdom of such an award while Mission Support Alliance is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.
