The Department of Energy could lengthen contract transition periods under the new procurement model, possibly to 120 days, federal officials said Wednesday during the online Waste Management Symposia.
Transition to the Amentum-led Central Plateau Cleanup Co. venture at the Hanford Site in Washington state, which ended in January, showed 60 days is insufficient to sort out upcoming task orders under the end state contracting model, representatives from DOE and Amentum said during a panel discussion.
The transition to DOE’s new subcontractor policy at Hanford also proved problematic, one agency official acknowledged. “We didn’t get the word out clearly enough” on the new policy, said Andy Wirkkala, director of the procurement division at Hanford’s Richland Operations Office.
The DOE officials challenged prime contractors to “take a critical look at the work scope” and whether certain tasks should be subcontracted out or not, Wirkkala said. He and other federal panelists said there were a number of subcontractors embedded in prime contractor work.
Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) last week brought small business subcontractor concerns to the attention of David Turk, the Joe Biden administration’s nominee for deputy energy secretary, who promised to look into the issue if confirmed.
The cost-plus prototype DOE has used for years for most major contracts at the Office of Environmental Management (EM) often had a 10-year scope of work drawn up years in advance, said Aaron Deckard, an acquisition lead with DOE’s Cincinnati-based Environmental Management Consolidated Business Center.
The end state model features indefinite-delivery, indefinite quantity task orders and incremental short-term work scopes that are largely addressed during transition.
“We underestimated the effort and the time it was taking” to set up the subsequent task orders, said Wirkkala.
Nevertheless, the new task order approach for cleanup contracts is popular with industry representatives such as Jeff Leita, a vice president of business development for Amentum. A lot of things change in 10 years, and providing a more “discreet” work scope makes it easier to revise work plans as necessary, he said.
In addition to being the first transition during the end state model, the Central Plateau Cleanup also marked the first time a non-incumbent took over a multibillion-dollar contract during the COVID-19 pandemic, said Jennie Stults, a director of business development at Amentum.
