PHOENIX – DOE is still deciding the longer-term fate of a landlord services contract for the Paducah Site in Kentucky after a federal appeals court ruled in December that incumbent Swift & Staley exceeded the size limits for the small-business set aside award, an agency official said here.
“We are working through a decision-making process,” Aaron Deckard, procurement director with DOE’s Environmental Management Consolidated Business Center in Cincinnati, said in response to an Exchange Monitor question during a Waste Management Symposia panel session. “I can tell you this is a unique situation.”
Weeks earlier, DOE announced plans to keep Swift & Staley, the incumbent site services contractor at Paducah for up to 16 more months through July 31, 2024.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled in December that Swift & Staley exceeded Small Business Administration size limits for a $160-million, five-year contract awarded in December 2020 and which was supposed to succeed the contract Swift & Staley has now.
Swift & Staley lost the case after a protected legal battle with the government and a rival bidder, Akima.
Deckard could not recall another contract challenge taking more than two years over set-aside size standards. The DOE received multiple proposals on the contract about three years ago by businesses seeking to act as a city manager for DOE’s former gaseous diffusion plant complex in Kentucky, he said.
The contract will likely remain earmarked for small business, Deckard said.
Doing a follow-up Paducah procurement as something other than a small-business set-aside would require a wide range of approvals from both DOE’s top officials as well as the Small Business Administration, Deckard said. He was responding to a question about whether the Paducah landlord contract might be folded into a larger prime contract, such as the Portsmouth/Paducah Project Office Operations and Site Mission Support Contract.
“In general, …. [w]e’d have to have a strong basis if we were going to consider anything like that,” Deckard said. Once a contract is set aside for small business, It would call for “extensive engagement” with stakeholders to change that approach, he added.
