Due to potential conflicts of interest, the U.S. Energy Department has determined potential bidders for the $4 billion Hanford Mission Essential Service Contract should not be part of five other key contracts at the Hanford Site in Washington state.
The Energy Department issued a draft request for proposals for the potential 10-year contract in November, but has not yet released its final RFP. The current contract is held by Mission Support Alliance and expires in May 2019.
Bidders for the support services prime contract “will be restricted to a company that is not currently part of a contractor team arrangement” for the Plateau Remediation Contract, the Tank Operations Contract, the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP) contract, the Occupational Medical Services Contract (OccMed) and the 222-S Laboratory Services Contract, according to a March 1 memo from Lori Sehlhorst, a contracting officer with DOE’s Environmental Management Consolidated Business Center.
CH2M has the Plateau Remediation contract; Washington River Protection Solutions has the tank contract; Bechtel National has the WTP contract; and the occupational medical business is held by HPM Corp. Washington River Protection Solutions operates the 222-S Laboratory and Wastren Advantage provides analytical services at the lab.
In the “organizational conflicts of interest” analysis, EMCBC said it wanted to avoid hobbling the Hanford Mission Essential Services prime hobbled with “impaired objectivity.” This can result when “a firm’s work under one government contract could entail its evaluating itself, either through an assessment of performance under another contract or an evaluation of proposals.”
The 11-page document says the contract will have a wide-ranging scope of work across the Hanford complex. This includes utilities, transportation, safeguards, cybersecurity, information technology, training, and other essential services.
The winning essential services bidder “will be required to evaluate the work of one or more other Hanford Site contractors in these areas,” the EMCBC said. This conflict – in the event one of those contractors also has a role in the support services provider – is not easily fixed “through the use of an internal corporate firewall,” according to Sehlhorst.
In February, Jacobs Engineering sold its remaining stake in Mission Support Alliance to eliminate a potential conflict of interest following its purchase of CH2M. The merger made Jacobs the new parent of Hanford cleanup contractor CH2M Plateau Remediation.
