Idaho-based North Wind Group is picking up about $30 million worth of additional business in California from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management.
Within the past week, the company received word of a $22 million award for services at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, as well as a two-year extension, worth between $7 million and $9 million, for continued decommissioning and related work on DOE-managed property at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory.
An Energy Department procurement notice issued on Sept. 26 says North Wind Site Services is being awarded a technical assistance contract at Lawrence Livermore. The contractor will provide technical and administrative support services in areas including program management and health, safety, and environmental efforts.
The notice does not provide details on the duration of the work.
On Monday, in a separate post, DOE said it will extend an existing five-year, $26 million task order at Santa Susana that would otherwise have expired on Monday.
North Wind is providing decontamination and demolition and environmental monitoring at the Energy Technology Engineering Center (ETEC) at the site in Ventura County. Along with its current tasks, the firm will review trends in groundwater flow and make recommendations for future groundwater sampling.
North Wind will also take water level measurements within DOE Area IV at Santa Susana, according to the procurement document. In addition, it will monitor levels of tritium, metals, and volatile organic compounds.
North Wind Group began its existing contract at SSFL in late July 2014. The Energy Department says extending the current task order makes more sense than bringing in a new vendor now.
Also, recompeting the contract could take two years “and would have a domino effect of schedule delays,” said DOE’s Environmental Management Consolidated Business Center. Delaying the demolition of unspecified buildings would in turn delay the subsequent large-scale soil remediation effort that will follow.
The contractor will receive a raise, DOE said, noting “the economy was sluggish” and vendors were eager for work when the initial deal was awarded. The economy is much stronger now, “and if this was competed again the price of the D&D work could raise substantially,” the agency said.
The Energy Department approved the sole-source extension for North Wind in March, according to documents accompanying the Monday notice. The agency also noted that all bidders received a fair shot during bidding for the original contract.
Most of the 2,850-acre SSFL is owned by Boeing, although about 470 acres were used by DOE for research into nuclear power-related projects.
