Procurement officials at the U.S. Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management are trying to reduce the typical two-year process for awarding major contracts to one year.
Tamara Miles, federal procurement director for the DOE Environmental Management Consolidated Business Center, discussed efforts to expedite contract awards during a panel session last month at the Waste Management Symposia in Phoenix, Ariz.
Speeding up the contracting process was one target of last year’s 45-day review of EM operations triggered by Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Environmental Management James Owendoff, Miles said.
Major EM competitive bidding can take too long — almost two-and-half years from the definition of requirements to contract award, Miles said, adding DOE hopes to cut the lead time 50 percent or more.
To save time, EM wants to achieve more standardization in terms and conditions used in requests for proposals to reduce the degree of variation in how the documents are handled. “We’re trying to put together more or less a model RFP,” Miles said.
The cleanup office is also putting together a group of technical staff to provide expertise at the procurement level, Miles said.
The Energy Department also believes it can save time and effort by reducing the information sought during the process. For example, the agency might eliminate the “experience factor” because it largely duplicates issues reviewed under “past performance,” Miles said. Also, EM might look at only the past five years of performance, rather than 10.
This approach could be tried out in the upcoming RFP for the $4 billion Hanford Mission Essential Services Contract, which could hit the street in May, said Norbert Doyle, EM’s acting deputy assistant secretary for acquisition and project management. The department used much of the input it got from industry in drafting this RFP for “landlord” services at Hanford, he said.
“We heard your comments. We take them seriously,” Doyle said.