Senior executives from the teams that have formed to compete for the new Idaho cleanup contract indicated yesterday that their companies won’t bid on the contract as currently planned. During a panel session at this year’s Weapons Complex Monitor Decisionmakers’ Forum, executives from most major DOE cleanup contractors expressed concern with language in the draft Request for Proposals for the new contract that would make the contractor liable for costs above the target cost combined with uncertainties in the work scope to be performed. “If you have projects with significant unknowns [and] what I’ll consider … severe terms and conditions—marginal upside, unlimited downside—it’s going to be extremely difficult for my company to bid a job like that,” said EnergySolutions Government Group President Billy Morrison.
The panel included representatives from AREVA, B&W, Bechtel, CB&I, CH2M Hill, EnergySolutions, Fluor, Newport News Shipbuilding, and URS. AREVA Federal Services President Tara Neider said, “Most of the companies up here are willing to take on risk and share risk with DOE, but the risk that we take should be risk that our companies are responsible for. And the risk of the unknown, of what you find doing this type of work, is really something that none of our companies can really afford to take. Unlimited liability is really a showstopper for us.”
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