The Department of Energy this week published the highly-anticipated draft solicitation for a potential 10-year, $21.5-billion management and operations contract for the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.
The draft request for proposals (RFP) was published Wednesday on a federal procurement website to solicit questions and comments from prospective bidders by 4 p.m. Eastern time on May 28.
Like the potential $26.5-billion Hanford Integrated Tank Disposition Contract in Washington state, which attracted about 90 people to a virtual online briefing a month ago, the potential payout of Savannah River operations is sure to draw a big crowd, sources said.
The incumbent contractor is Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS), a joint venture of Fluor, Newport News Nuclear and Honeywell International. The incumbent team has been on the job since August 2008 and will stay at least through September of this year. DOE holds the rights to one 12-month option that could keep SRNS around through September 2022. The current value of the SRNS deal is $15.8 billion.
Some of the other major players in the DOE weapons complex space that could be in the mix include Amentum, Atkins, Bechtel National, BWX Technologies and Jacobs. The DOE kicked off its market research on a new Savannah River operations contract last August.
No matter what team emerges with the prize, the new operations contract will be different from the last one in that it will not include management of Savannah River National Laboratory. A stand-alone lab contract has been awarded to the Battelle Savannah River Alliance.
The Savannah River Operations Acquisition Draft RFP contemplates a contract that could last 10 years, not counting a 90-day transition period. There would be a five-year year period as well as five one-year option periods. Feedback on the draft RFP should be emailed to SRSOperations@emcbc.doe.gov.
The DOE Office of Environmental Management has set up a procurement website here.
DOE plans to forgo a formal pre-solicitation conference and instead will go with a virtual site tour and other online briefing materials in a practice that has become routine during the COVID-19 pandemic. One-on-one meetings with interested parties will commence May 11 via Webex and could run for up to three days given the level of interest, DOE said.
Completed registration forms for the one-on-one meetings should be sent to the DOE contracting officer, Paul Smith, by 2 p.m. E.T. on May 5, according to the procurement material.
The DOE is hoping to secure bidder input on issues including the proposed “Organizational Conflict of Interest” language in the draft as well as potential barriers to entry. The DOE is envisioning a 30-business day proposal preparation period once the final RFP comes out.
The Savannah River Site occupies about 310 square miles adjacent to the Georgia border and more than 11,000 people are employed by the DOE complex. About 6,900 full-time staff are employed by Savannah River Nuclear Solutions, according to procurement documents. Currently about 60% of the work at the site involves Office of Environmental Management missions and 32% by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). The other 8% is split among other DOE and non-DOE entities.
The DOE has said that eventually, as the nuclear cleanup role at Savannah River is reduced, NNSA at some point could take over as the primary fed at the site.
An example of the NNSA expansion at the site includes the proposed Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility which DOE hopes will start producing 50 plutonium pits per year by 2030.
Also under the Surplus Plutonium Disposition Project, Savannah River will downblend the excess material into a transuranic waste form that can eventually be shipped to the DOE Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico.