Mike Nartker
WC Monitor
2/14/2014
The long-running search for a new support services contractor for the Department of Energy’s Office of Legacy Management is now set to continue to stretch on, with the team of Wastren Advantage and S.M. Stoller filing a new challenge this week to DOE’s decision to award the contract to Portage. WAI-Stoller Services, LLC, filed a new protest with the Government Accountability Office Feb. 12 over DOE’s decision to award the contract to Portage for a second time after taking corrective action in response to earlier protests (WC Monitor, Vol. 25 No. 4). The GAO currently has until May 23 to make a decision. Both WAI and Portage declined to comment on the protest this week. DOE did not respond to requests for comment.
The new protest marks the latest turn in a procurement that has ran for more than three years, with DOE having issued a sources sought notice in October 2010 to help determine if the contract could continue to be set-aside for small businesses. DOE first awarded the new contract to Portage last April, prompting protests by the WAI-Stoller team and Navarro Research and Engineering. Last May, DOE chose to take corrective action in response to the protests by re-evaluating the eight bids submitted for the contract, and in late January the Department once again awarded the new contract to Portage.
The new Legacy Management contract is set to run for five years, consisting of a two-year base period and a three-year option period, according to DOE. Work to be performed under the new contract includes long-term surveillance and maintenance; information technology and records management; asset management; business; and program-wide support services. The incumbent contractor is Stoller (now a wholly owned subsidiary of Huntingon Ingalls Industries), whose contract was initially set to expire in September 2012. Stoller had been unable to lead a bid of its own for the follow-on contract because it no longer met the size standard for the small business procurement, leading it to join the team led by WAI. The Department’s most recent contract extension with Stoller is set to expire March 31, though DOE has another option that could keep in Stoller in place until the end of June (WC Monitor, Vol. 24 No. 33).
