Having been skipped the first time around, the Government Accountability Office was asked to consider a challenge by an Atkins-led team over a $45-billion Department of Energy contract for liquid waste management.
The bid protest, dated Friday, arrived after DOE called upon losing bidder Hanford Tank Disposition Alliance and the winning bidder, BWX-Technologies-led Hanford Tank Waste Operations & Closure, to submit by Oct. 23 updated proposals for the agency’s Integrated Tank contract at the Hanford Site in Washington state.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) expects to rule on the latest protest by Feb. 5. In May, Hanford Tank Disposition Alliance elected to skip the usual GAO stage and take its case straight to Federal Claims Court. DOE reconsidered the award to the BWX Technologies-led team at the court’s behest.
Hanford Tank Waste Operations & Closure, which also included Amentum and Fluor, won the decade-long Hanford Integrated Tank management contract in April. In June, however, U.S. Court of Federal Claims Judge Marian Blank Horn blocked execution of the contract calling it “improper.” Horn agreed with the losing bidder that the winning group made a major error by letting its registration in a federal procurement tracking system lapse during the bid competition.
After Horn sent the procurement back to DOE for reconsideration, an agency contracting official concluded that the lapse in registration is a correctable error. Both parties filed revised proposals with the agency in October. The Hanford Tank Waste Operations and Closure also appealed the lawsuit in the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit formally agreed Friday to give the Atkins-led Hanford Tank Disposition Alliance until Jan. 16 to file a response brief in the continuing legal fight over the $45-billion DOE contract.
The Hanford Tank Disposition Alliance, a team of AtkinsRéalis Nuclear Secured, Jacobs and Westinghouse, filed a brief with the appeals court last week seeking a 60-day extension beyond the prior Nov. 14 deadline. The U.S. Department of Justice told the court it has no objection to the extension.
With all the legal and administrative proceedings, the CEO of BWXT, Rex Geveden said during a quarterly earnings call Wednesday, he does not expect final resolution before mid-2024.
“So there’s a lot of legal churn here, and that’s all I’ll say about that,” Geveden said. “And from a standpoint of how it might impact us financially, I don’t think we’re expecting any transition on that contract until about— at least throughout the middle of next year.”