The Energy Department Office of Environmental Management plans to beef up its procurement staff to evaluate contract proposals.
The nuclear cleanup office said in a July 16 press release it is launching an “acquisition corps” to increase its talent pool of procurement specialists at field sites and the Cincinnati-based Environmental Management Consolidated Business Center (EMCBC).
Environmental Management did not indicate how many new hires are expected, but said they would serve on acquisition integrated project teams and source evaluation boards (SEBs), which vet contract proposals submitted for work at the 16 Cold War and Manhattan Project sites.
“Given how integral acquisition and contracting is to how we conduct our work, successful execution of major procurements is essential to the EM mission,” Senior Adviser for Environmental Management William (Ike) White said in the release.
In the past year, the Environmental Management office has issued four major contracts — two of them at the Hanford Site in Washington state, along with keeping Navarro Research and Engineering as the cleanup provider for the Nevada National Security Site and picking a number of companies for a nationwide deactivation, decommissioning, and removal (DD&R) contract providing for services throughout the weapons complex.
There are also multiple solicitations in the pipeline.
“They don’t have enough of them, I tell you that much,” an industry source said Tuesday by phone of the office’s plan to hire more procurement experts. More expertise is needed to offset brain drain, stemming from retirements and departures, along with managing EM’s shift toward the so-called “end state” contracting.
The end-state model’s relies on indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity (IDIQ) deals, where the value is calculated by task, the source said. The traditional DOE approach involved drafting long-term work plans far in advance. The new approach, while more flexible, is also more “piecemeal,” with contracts awarded initially based on a limited set of tasks under the IDIQ, and more tasks negotiated as the contract continues.
It is a structural change for vendors and can be labor-intensive for the procurement staff at DOE, the industry source said, because new task specifics are deliberated throughout the life of the contract.
The application deadline ends today for some of the positions, including GS-14 program managers, which make between $112,000 and $145,000 annually, as well as program manager positions that pay between $131,000 and $170,000 annually.
