The National Nuclear Security Administration still isn’t saying when it will release a final Request for Proposals for its combined Y-12/Pantex management and operating contract, but NNSA Principal Deputy Administrator Neile Miller told industry officials in Washington yesterday that work on the much-anticipated document was “not far behind.” When it released a preview of changes to the draft RFP in mid-November, the agency said that it anticipated releasing the final version by the end of November, but that deadline came and passed last week.
On the sidelines of the Energy Facility Contractors Group meeting yesterday, Miller suggested that there were no issues delaying the release of the document. Among the changes proposed in the final RFP is an increase in the maximum available fee—to 7 percent of the Fiscal Year 2011 budgets at Pantex and Y-12, up from 6.4 percent—and the elimination of protective forces from the consolidated contract. “There is no problem with this,” Miller told NW&M Monitor. “I am the acquisition executive and I’ve never done something this big before. I need to make sure it’s exactly what I can sign up to. That’s all.”
Meanwhile, the NNSA is on track to award its Enterprise Construction Management Services contract by the end of this year, Associate Administrator for Acquisition and Project Management Bob Raines told NW&M Monitor on the sidelines of the EFCOG meeting. The agency has moved quickly since announcing the contract in September, using the General Services Administration Professional Engineering Services schedule to help accelerate the procurement, which is designed to provide front-end project planning help for the agency. At least four teams submitted bids for the contract last month, including teams led by Project Time and Cost, Booz Allen Hamilton, Parsons, and Logistics Management Institute.