With Tuesday’s award from the Department of Energy, four major new contractors have been announced for the Hanford Site in Washington state since last December.
Two of the four joint ventures have already received a green light to start transition from DOE’s Office of Environmental Management, one contract award appears in doubt, and the latest could still be protested to the Government Accountability Office.
This week DOE said a team led by Oak Ridge, Tenn.-based Navarro Research and Engineering won a $389-million contract to run the 222-S Laboratory at the former plutonium production complex. Hanford Laboratory Management and Integration consists of Navarro and Advanced Technologies and Laboratories International. Amentum, a multibillion-dollar federal contractor, is a subcontractor for the team.
Any rival team has 10 days to file a bid protest after learning of any alleged Department of Energy error during the procurement. Such a move typically happens within a few days after losing teams are debriefed on the award. The debriefings are expected the week of Oct. 12, an industry source said.
The new lab pact replaces a pair of contracts: one held by Veolia, which does the testing and analysis on radioactive tank waste samples at 222-S, and another held by Amentum-led Washington River Protection Solutions, which runs the lab as part of its tank management prime contract.
Meanwhile, Hanford Mission Integration Solutions, started its 120-day transition Aug. 17 to become the new support services provider at the site. The new team is comprised of Leidos and Centerra (which make up the incumbent vendor) along with Parsons.
In addition, on Oct. 5, Amentum-led Central Plateau Cleanup Co., starts its 60-day transition toward replacing Jacobs subsidiary CH2M as chief remediation contractor at Hanford. Fluor and Atkins are the other two members of the new Central Plateau Cleanup team.
The future is more uncertain, however, for BWX Technologies-led Hanford Works Restoration, which won a multibillion-dollar contract in May to oversee about 56 million gallons of radioactive tank waste at the site. After a bid protest, DOE attorneys revealed in documents obtained by Weapons Complex Morning Briefing the award is being reconsidered. The current business is headed by Washington River Protection Solutions.
