Questions Persist Over DOE’s New Plans to Award Follow-On Contract
Mike Nartker
WC Monitor
7/3/2014
S.M. Stoller (now a wholly owned subsidiary of Huntington Ingalls Industries) has received yet another extension to its contract to provide support services for the Department of Energy’s Office of Legacy Management as the Department continues to work to award a follow-on contract. Stoller’s latest extension runs from July 1 to Sept. 30, and is worth approximately $26.6 million, a DOE spokesperson said this week. While Stoller’s contract was initially set to expire in September 2012, it has received a number of extensions while DOE has sought to compete and award the follow-on contract. Stoller was unable to lead a bid of its own for the new contract because it no longer met the size standard for the small business procurement, and instead had joined a team led by Wastren Advantage.
Last week, DOE informed all eight bidders on the follow-on contract that it would evaluate bids for a third time in response to the Government Accountability Office sustaining a protest filed by Navarro Research and Engineering over the Department’s decision to award, for a second time, the follow-on contract to Portage. DOE initially awarded the contract to Portage last April, leading to challenges from Navarro and the team of WAI-Stoller. In response, DOE chose last May to take corrective action by re-evaluating all eight bids, and then chose again early this year to award the new contract to Portage. Both Navarro and the WAI-Stoller team again protested DOE’s decision, and last month the GAO sustained Navarro’s protest but denied WAI-Stoller’s.
DOE declined to comment this week on why it has chosen to evaluate all of the bids submitted, rather than just Navarro’s and Portage’s as the GAO recommended. DOE also declined to comment when asked if it planned to change the Source Selection Official for the procurement, reportedly David Geiser, Director of the Office of Legacy Management; as well as when asked about an estimated time frame for making a new award decision.
