CNS will offer more details on proposed cost savings at Y-12, Pantex

The team that won the $22.8 billion contract in January to manage two nuclear weapons facilities in Tennessee and Texas will provide more details on how it proposes to save $3.27 billion during the next decade, a company spokesman said Monday.

Consolidated Nuclear Security LLC, or CNS, won the contract to manage and operate the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge and the Pantex Plant near Amarillo, Texas.

But the two losing teams filed protests, and in a decision announced Monday, the U.S. Government Accountability Office upheld parts of the protests. The GAO raised questions about whether the National Nuclear Security Administration, which announced the contract award to CNS on Jan. 8, had properly evaluated the costs savings proposed by bidders.

“Specifically, GAO concluded that NNSA failed to meaningfully assess the majority of each offeror’s proposed cost savings, and based its source selection decision on the unsupported assumption that all cost savings proposed by every offeror would be achieved,” said the statement from Ralph O. White, GAO managing associate general counsel for procurement law. “The protesters raised various other protest allegations, which were denied.”

Jason Bohne, a spokesman for Bechtel National, which is part of the CNS team, said the company will provide more details on how it can save the $3.27 billion. It was a credible number, Bohne said.

“Based on the information we have, we’re encouraged,” Bohne said. “We feel that the opportunity to provide additional information will confirm that the NNSA made the right decision when it picked Consolidated Nuclear Security.”

The NNSA will determine the next move, he said, and CNS is prepared to follow any directive they might give.

In January, federal officials said CNS had promised to help the federal government save $3.27 billion during the next decade, but many of the details would have to be announced later.

“We feel we submitted a very credible and innovative solution for managing and operating both sites,” Bohne said Monday evening. “We think additional information will only go to reinforce that.”

The cost savings proposed by the other two bidding teams, Nuclear Production Partners LLC and Integrated Nuclear Production Solutions LLC, have not been publicly released. Those two teams lost the contract competition and filed protests later in January.