The Energy Department will keep the current waste management vendor at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina on the job for an additional 18 months, a move that comes about two weeks after it canceled plans for a new decade-long contract.
In a post on a federal procurement website, DOE said Monday it plans to extend the contract with AECOM-led Savannah River Remediation from April 1, 2019, through Sept. 30, 2020. The current extension expires on March 31.
The proposed extension will allow the Savannah River Site to “continue critical requirements for treatment and disposal of liquid waste (LW) at SRS while the follow-on competitive procurement is completed,” according to the notice. The deal has not been yet been consummated so no financial details are available.
The extension is allowed via an exclusion to normal competitive bidding practices in the Federal Acquisition Regulation. Nevertheless, interested parties may submit a capability statement by 4 p.m. EST on March 26 via email to Charlene Smith, at [email protected].
A team led by Virginia-based BWX Technologies, Savannah River EcoManagement, was initially awarded a $4.7 billion follow-on waste contract in October 2017. However, both losing bidding teams protested, and the Government Accountability Office in February 2018 upheld the protest from an AECOM-CH2M partnership.
The Energy Department received updated offers from the original vendors in April 2018, but on Feb. 26 terminated the procurement worth up to $6 billion. The agency said much had changed at SRS since it issued the first draft request for proposals in March 2016, including a joint study between DOE’s Environmental Management office and National Nuclear Security Administration on the future of the site. The DOE also wants a single contractor in charge of both liquid waste and “inter-related” L-Basin, H-Canyon, and waste operations now managed by site prime Savannah River Nuclear Solutions.
