Martin Schneider
WC Monitor
1/16/2015
SALT LAKE CITY—With comments on the draft Request for Proposals for the new Idaho Cleanup Project Core contract due this week, DOE Office of Environmental Management Deputy Assistant Secretary for Acquisition and Project Management Jack Surash pushed back in remarks here against continuing concern from bidders about the terms and conditions put forward by the Department of Energy. “With the changes, Idaho is a plain vanilla Cost-Plus Incentive Fee contract,” Surash said in Jan. 13 remarks at the EnergySolutions Customer Conference.
After DOE issued sections of the draft Request for Proposals for the ICP Core contract last fall, nearly all potential bidders made it clear that they could not bid on the contract as outlined because of concerns over provisions that would make the winning contractor liable for costs above the target cost combined with uncertainties in the work scope to be performed. In apparent response to industry concerns, last month DOE modified the draft RFP to remove a provision that would have made contractors responsible for all costs going forward once the target cost for the new contract had been exceeded by $150 million.
However, a number of provisions remain a concern for potential bidders, including the fact that all fee earned over the life of the contract is provisional. “It’s still difficult to imagine how we could bid this—we need to be able to book fee. If we can’t really book the fee from year one until the end of year five, it really doesn’t work for us. That’s not how things work,” one industry official told WC Monitor this week.
Little Competition Likely for New Contract
The new ICP contract is intended to replace the two current cleanup contracts at the Department of Energy’s Idaho site that are currently set to expire in September—one held by CH2M-WG Idaho, made up of CH2M Hill and AECOM (which has acquired URS) and responsible for the bulk of the cleanup work at the site; and one held by Idaho Treatment Group, made up of B&W, AECOM and EnergySolutions and responsible for managing the Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Project. The new contract is set to run for five years, and DOE has said it anticipates issuing a final Request for Proposals for the new contract in February.
With the concerns about the terms and conditions, it appears that—at most—two teams are set to compete for the job, WC Monitor has learned. Fluor has assembled a team and has been actively preparing to bid, and according to industry officials, Bechtel is also believed to be looking to lead and assemble a team to compete for the new contract, though a final decision hasn’t been made. Initially, as many as four teams were believed to have formed to pursue the contract.
