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Environmental Remediation Contracting: Summary of a Symposium (1994)
Federal Facilities Council (FFC)

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29
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ENVIRONMENTAL REMEDIATION CONTRACTING: (Summary of a Symposium)

CONTRACTING FOR ENVIRONMENTAL RESTORATION —CORPS OF ENGINEERS' PERSPECTIVE

John J. Mahon

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

The administration of contracts for environmental restoration activities has become more and more challenging for the Army Corps of Engineers since 1982 when it first undertook such work in support of EPA's Superfund Program. Since that time, the Corps' environmental restoration contracting effort has grown to near $1.5 billion in 1993 program dollars with estimates increasing that total to near $2 billion through 1996. The Corps' current workload encompasses support for the DOD Environmental Restoration Program, EPA's Superfund Program, DOE's Environmental Restoration Program, and numerous other federal agencies who have facilities or properties which are contaminated with hazardous waste.

These contract efforts now encompass all phases of the remediation process including compliance audits, investigative efforts, remediation design, remedial action, and operation and maintenance. This area of work involves changing regulatory demands, and the need for increased flexibility and responsiveness within our contracting process.

We recognized that in many cases our traditional reliance on firm fixed price contracts awarded under the sealed bidding process did not meet these needs. To deal with this, we sought to use other available solicitation procedures and to develop new contracting vehicles which provide increased flexibility and responsiveness.

The use of these new vehicles and the specialized nature of the work has required efforts on our part to recruit new technical and engineering expertise in order to provide capabilities for effectively administering and overseeing our contractor's activities. We see this as especially important as we move into greater use of cost reimbursable and multi-process based contracting. These in-house capabilities also enable us to better deal with and anticipate demands made by regulators at the federal and state levels.

I will be providing details on several of these efforts, including comments on our use of larger indefinite delivery Architect/Engineer service contracts, Pre-placed Remedial Action contracts, Rapid Response contracts, and our newest development, the Total Environmental Response Contract (TERC).

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29

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ENVIRONMENTAL REMEDIATION CONTRACTING: (Summary of a Symposium) CONTRACTING FOR ENVIRONMENTAL RESTORATION —CORPS OF ENGINEERS' PERSPECTIVE John J. Mahon U.S. Army Corps of Engineers The administration of contracts for environmental restoration activities has become more and more challenging for the Army Corps of Engineers since 1982 when it first undertook such work in support of EPA's Superfund Program. Since that time, the Corps' environmental restoration contracting effort has grown to near $1.5 billion in 1993 program dollars with estimates increasing that total to near $2 billion through 1996. The Corps' current workload encompasses support for the DOD Environmental Restoration Program, EPA's Superfund Program, DOE's Environmental Restoration Program, and numerous other federal agencies who have facilities or properties which are contaminated with hazardous waste. These contract efforts now encompass all phases of the remediation process including compliance audits, investigative efforts, remediation design, remedial action, and operation and maintenance. This area of work involves changing regulatory demands, and the need for increased flexibility and responsiveness within our contracting process. We recognized that in many cases our traditional reliance on firm fixed price contracts awarded under the sealed bidding process did not meet these needs. To deal with this, we sought to use other available solicitation procedures and to develop new contracting vehicles which provide increased flexibility and responsiveness. The use of these new vehicles and the specialized nature of the work has required efforts on our part to recruit new technical and engineering expertise in order to provide capabilities for effectively administering and overseeing our contractor's activities. We see this as especially important as we move into greater use of cost reimbursable and multi-process based contracting. These in-house capabilities also enable us to better deal with and anticipate demands made by regulators at the federal and state levels. I will be providing details on several of these efforts, including comments on our use of larger indefinite delivery Architect/Engineer service contracts, Pre-placed Remedial Action contracts, Rapid Response contracts, and our newest development, the Total Environmental Response Contract (TERC).

Representative terms from entire chapter:

restoration program