Todd Jacobson
NS&D Monitor
3/21/2014
The Department of Energy’s Office of Science is adding award-term incentives to the Brookhaven National Laboratory management and operating contract but is also slightly decreasing the available fee for the contract, according to a Request for Proposals released this week. The RFP includes a five-year base contract and the opportunity for a contractor to earn up to 15 award-term extensions for meeting certain performance goals. However, DOE is lowering the maximum available fee under the contract to $7.3 million a year for “for-profit” companies and $6.9 million a year for non-profit entities. Incumbent Brookhaven Science Associates—a partnership between Battelle and Stony Brook University—currently can make up to $7.4 million a year at the lab. Proposals for the contract are due June 19, and oral presentations will be conducted three weeks later. A pre-proposal contract will be scheduled in the next 30 days, DOE said in the RFP.
DOE has stressed that the RFP would be similar, but not identical, to previous solicitations for the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory and the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, which utilized a standardized solicitation process. With the exception of the addition of award-term incentives, that appears to be largely the case. The deal is a cost-plus-performance fee contract with all of the fee that can be earned by the contract at-risk that also includes provisions requiring the winning contractor to retain the incumbent workforce and provide comparable compensation and benefits for the first year of the contract.
Eval. Categories Revealed
Contractors will be evaluated in seven categories, earning a total of 1,000 points: laboratory science vision and implementation of laboratory science vision (200 points), approach to implementing laboratory operations (200), organizational structure and governance (125), key personnel (175), relevant experience and past performance (175), transition plan (50) and offeror’s commitments (75). Cost proposals will also be evaluated for “reasonableness and realism,” according to the RFP, and will consider costs for the two-month transition period and the annual compensation for key personnel over the first two years of the contract. “A contract will be awarded to the responsive, responsible offeror whose proposal represents the best value to the Government,” the RFP said.
An Interest in Improvement
DOE has shied away from competing some contracts in recent years and recently announced that it would extend UT-Battelle’s contract to run Oak Ridge National Laboratory, but the Department is clearly looking for improvement at Brookhaven. BSA has performed relatively well in its annual reviews from the Office of Science, improving in Fiscal Year 2013with two “A-s” and six “B+s” after in FY 2012 it received its first “C-“ since FY 2006. Last summer, however, DOE finalized a $959,595 fee reduction for Brookhaven Science Associates because of an accident that occurred in 2011 during decommissioning activities at the lab’s Graphite Research Reactor. DOE hit BSA with one Severity Level I violation and one Severity Level II violation of Department worker safety and health requirements for the accident, which left a worker badly injured after falling from a lift while working at the reactor. It said it reduced the fee because of “unacceptable safety performance associated with a series of incidents and near misses,” including the 2011 accident.
The 3,000-employee lab had an annual budget of $700 million in Fiscal Year 2013, and DOE said anticipated funding in FY 2015 is expected to remain stable at approximately $700 million.
