Environmental Remediation Contracting: Summary of a Symposium (1994)

Robert Webb¹

U.S. Department of Energy

We have convened this symposium through the auspices of the National Academy of Sciences and the Federal Construction Council to deal with a substantial issue confronting the federal government today: The contracting for environmental remediFation and restoration and related support studies.

Four years ago it was estimated that environmental remediation in the Department of Energy alone would cost approximately $200 billion and would take 30 years. The current estimates could be even higher. Each agency in the federal government will have to confront its own environmental problems in the near future, and, we believe, that few agencies will have no environmental problems to address.

The efficient use of the federal contracting process is required. Issues of strategies to attack the environmental problems, size of contracts, length of contracts, types of contracts, accurate descriptions of work, effective contract administration, effects of the Brooks Architect-Engineer Act, indemnification and allowability of cost, and personal liability of federal employees are among many of the issues that must be addressed.

This forum has been organized by the FCC Consulting Committee on Procurement Policy to present the thoughts and experiences of the three major agencies that have had to deal with environmental remediation up to recent years—the Corps of Engineers, the Naval Facilities Engineering Command, and the Environmental Protection Agency. We have included representatives of the firms supplying these types of services and a representative of the Department of Justice.

It is our hope that other agencies facing the necessity of remediating a site or sites will be able to anticipate and perhaps avoid some of the problems already experienced by these agencies and that they will be able to make use of some of the successes. We hope that in this complex and newly developing area of government contracting we will reinvent the wheel as little as humanly possible.