The Department of Energy will not reissue a 10-year, multibillion-dollar contract for liquid waste management at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina initially awarded in October 2017.
The department said Tuesday afternoon it was canceling the solicitation and that current contractor Savannah River Remediation will remain on the job. The AECOM-team is currently operating under a contract extension that runs through the end of March. The management and operations contractor for SRS, Fluor-led Savannah River Nuclear Services, also remains in place under an extension through September.
“Due to programmatic changes in the SRS liquid waste services requirements, including opportunities to integrate certain portions of the nuclear materials management missions at SRS with the liquid waste mission and the new End State Contracting Model, this solicitation is no longer beneficial to the SRS mission,” DOE said in a news release.
A letter sent to at least one of the bidding teams said DOE is exercising an option not to issue an award because the solicitation is no longer in the government’s best interest. The Energy Department is interested in having a single contractor focused on integrated completion of the interrelated L-Basin, H-Canyon, and liquid waste missions at SRS “in order to ensure maximum reductions in environmental risk and financial liability,” a source said, quoting from the letter.
The news comes days after DOE’s Office of Environmental Management issued an updated procurement schedule that listed no targeted period for the Savannah River award. Prior schedules have listed such timelines, which have been missed.
Savannah River Remediation, which also includes Bechtel, CH2M, and BWX Technologies, started work on its $5 billion contract in July 2009. The Energy Department issued a draft RFP for a new contract in March 2016.
In October 2017, the department issued a new $4.7 billion contract to Savannah River EcoManagement, led by BWXT and featuring Bechtel and Honeywell. But the victory was short-lived as the Government Accountability Office in February 2018 upheld a bid protest by an AECOM-CH2M team. A couple months later, DOE took refreshed last best offers from those two bidders and the third team, a Fluor-Westinghouse venture had the second lowest bid behind the BWXT-led group.
