Communities around the complex should pay attention to DOE’s new cleanup contract at Idaho—it is likely to be used as a model for all cleanup contracts moving forward.

On February 11, DOE issued a draft request for proposals (RFP) for the Idaho Cleanup Project (ICP) procurement at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL). The new ICP contract is anticipated to be an Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract with a $6.4 billion estimated contract ceiling over a 10-year ordering period.

DOE also released a Special Notice and Draft Performance Work Statement (PWS) for the Savannah River Site (SRS) Integrated Mission Completion Contract (IMCC). Again, EM is seeking to streamline this procurement; however, EM is seeking to move directly to issuing a final RFP rather than first issuing a draft RFP.

EM is planning to use input from all interested industry and community parties on the Idaho Cleanup Project draft RFP for the final SRS RFP.

Streamlining the SRS RFP process potentially allows DOE to accomplish several things. For example, by having all comments focused in on the draft ICP RFP, the resulting document would ideally be strong enough to use for multiple cleanup sites, thus enabling EM to save money.

This shift creates several positive outcomes. First, it significantly reduces the scope and size of each proposal, thereby speeding up both the preparation and review processes.  Second, moving technical negotiations to post award, allows for an iterative process.

Idaho Falls Mayor Casper elaborated on the proposed technique change to focus site specific, technical evaluations to post-award partnering:

“The means the path forward will be mapped by those who are completely committed and much more familiar than the current method allows. The negotiations can focus on the actual task at hand—not a highly informed estimate based on a briefing. This strikes me as a pattern for success. Both reforms to the procurement process result in significant administrative cost savings that can be directed back into actual cleanup. And that’s a win for communities and taxpayers.”

Because the draft ICP RFP will be used for creating final RFP versions for other sites, ECA encourages communities to provide comments, questions, suggested changes, and feedback by the March 6, 2020 deadline. This impacts every cleanup site.

A dedicated webpage has been established for the ICP procurement: https://www.emcbc.doe.gov/SEB/icp/