With billions at stake, a Babcock & Wilcox-led consortium has filed yet another appeal of a decision to award management of the Y-12 and Pantex national security sites to another company.
B&W had overseen the National Nuclear Security Administration facilities in Tennessee and Texas for 11 years when the NNSA chose Bechtel-led Consolidated Nuclear Security to take over management of the sites early this year. The contract worth upward of $22 billion covers five years of site management, with an optional five-year extension, and encompasses construction project management at Y-12's Uranium Processing Facility and an option to manage tritium production at the Savannah River Site. B&W had already filed two appeals of the contract decision with the Government Accountability Office. One was dismissed as largely premature. In the other, the GAO required the NNSA to reevaluate some of the cost savings claimed in the bids, but ultimately stuck with its original decision.
Last week, B&W announced a third GAO protest centered on information received in an NNSA debriefing session on Nov. 15 that concerned the agency's 2013 revised request for proposals.
In a statement, Babcock & Wilcox Technical Services Group President George Dudich said, “The protest filed today results from a continuation of concerns from our previous protests and new issues identified in the evaluation of our final proposal revision. Our team values our relationships with NNSA and the overall mission of the Nuclear Security Enterprise, but we believe this protest has merit and reflects new issues regarding the limited corrective actions that failed to resolve issues previously raised.”