The U.S. Energy Department on Thursday released a draft request for proposals and announced plans for a pre-solicitation conference for the latest contract connected with mercury cleanup at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn.
The DOE Office of Environmental Management expects to issue a four-year, fixed-price contract for construction of the Outfall 200 Mercury Treatment Facility.
The department stressed in a news release that this is a draft document meant to glean input from the contractor community to help in crafting a final RFP. In a long list of questions that accompanied the draft document, DOE said it wants to know if the draft RFP presents any barriers to competition and if it provides sufficient detail for companies to draft proposals.
As part of the process, a site tour and pre-solicitation conference are scheduled for Jan. 3-4, 2018, at Oak Ridge.
Mercury contamination has long been a significant problem at Y-12, a byproduct of its use in decades of nuclear weapons operations dating to the mid-20th century. Over the years, 700,000 pounds of mercury are believed to have infiltrated structures, soils, sediments, and the air at Y-12.
The new facility is intended to treat mercury-contaminated water that already goes from the Y-12 storm sewer to East Fork Poplar Creek, and head off future water contamination as old mercury-contaminated buildings dating to the 1940s are taken down.
A water diversion system will be built downstream of Outfall 200, DOE said in the draft solicitation. Due to site constraints, the Mercury Treatment Facility (MTF) is planned to be comprised of two primary areas, the “headworks” and the primary mercury treatment plant area. They will be connected joined by a transfer pipeline. The size of the facility was not immediately apparent in the initial documents.
The Department of Energy issued a strategic plan to deal with mercury contamination at Y-12 in 2014. A spokesman said Nov. 22 the department could not yet release full cost figures for the facility until ongoing procurements are complete.
With site preparation about to begin, DOE anticipates awarding the construction contract and beginning work on the Mercury Treatment Facility in 2018, DOE spokesman Ben Williams said. “We estimate a peak of 45 workers for the early site preparation activities and 125 workers for construction,” the spokesman said. DOE has said it envisions the water treatment plant being completed in 2022.
Work on the treatment facility will not start prior to the site preparation being finished, according to the draft RFP documents.
GEM Technologies is handling the $1.4 million subcontract from Oak Ridge Reservation cleanup prime URS-CH2M Oak Ridge (UCOR). The GEM contract, which was awarded in September, includes utilities relocation and some other site preparation work. The field work was scheduled to begin Nov. 30, and the utility relocation was expected to conclude in August 2018.
In addition, UCOR is responsible for the construction of secant pile walls at the headworks site, Williams said. Procurement is ongoing, he added. Finally, DOE will contract with a small business for minor demolition and installation of pipeline road crossings. Procurement is ongoing for that work as well.
Slides from the January pre-solicitation conference will be subsequently posted on the OF200 Mercury Treatment Facility procurement website.
