PHOENIX, Ariz. — With the Energy Department’s nuclear cleanup office implementing its end-state contracting model, don’t expect many traditional management and operations contracts in the future.
“M&Os are probably going to be a thing of the past,” Assistant Energy Secretary for Environmental Management Anne Marie White said on the sidelines of the 2019 Waste Management Symposia this week.
The end-state model emphasizes awards of indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity (IDIQ) agreements. The Energy Department would still pick a bidder to handle a wide array of work task orders assigned under the contract.
The end-state/IDIQ approach will allow the federal government to create a more narrowly defined contract based more on specific tasks, White told Weapons Complex Morning Briefing. The contract structure should afford DOE more flexibility than traditional operations contract, she added.
In exchange, contractors stand to get paid very well for their work, White added. Vendors that nail virtually all of their milestones could pocket a 15 percent fee, well above the single-digit percentages now available. The end-state approach will come in two phases: DOE selecting a contractor team and subsequently entering into actual task orders.
“We don’t necessarily need to price the full 10 years [of an agreement] on day one,” Aaron Deckard, acquisition integration lead at the Environmental Management Consolidated Business Center, said during a Tuesday morning session at the conference.
By changing the agency’s procurement status quo, White hopes the Energy Department can speed remediation timelines at its 16 remaining cleanup sites and start to shrink environmental liability, currently set at $377 billion.
While the eventual elimination of management contracts could be done, some in the contractor community, however, are skeptical this would be effective in many situations.
