The Energy Department has apparently decided having two contractors running the 222-S Laboratory at the Hanford Site in Washington state is like having too many cooks in the kitchen.
The department hopes to improve productivity by not having two contractors “competing for priorities because they are working on the same equipment,” Dawn MacDonald, DOE Office of River Protection deputy federal project director for tank farms, said Thursday during a Hanford panel at the Energy, Technology, and Environmental Business Association (ETEBA) conference in Knoxville, Tenn.
The former Wastren Advantage, now part of Veolia Nuclear Solutions, has a five-year, $50 million contract for laboratory analysis and testing work that is set to expire in September 2020. Support services, maintenance, and other work for the 70,000-square-foot facility is managed by AECOM-led Washington River Protection Solutions, (WRPS), under its $7.1 billion radioactive waste tank farm management contract at Hanford, which was just extended by a year to September 2019.
The Energy Department in late July issued a draft request for proposals for a contract potentially worth more than $900 million over seven years. The small business solicitation would result in a single vendor assuming responsibility for operating and maintaining the 222-S complex, while also testing highly radioactive samples from tank waste. The testing supports tank closure requirements and waste transfers between tanks.
The consolidated contract should streamline DOE planning by only having one contractor to deal with, MacDonald said. Also, it should eliminate contractor competition for some of the same personnel, she added. The Energy Department began exploring the idea a couple of years ago.
In addition to AECOM, Atkins, Veolia, other companies represented during industry meetings in August for the follow-on contract included Enercon, Fluor, North Wind, and Westinghouse.
The final RFP could be issued next month and DOE could make a contract award by February 2020, according to a summary issued Oct. 1 by the department’s Office of Environmental Management.
