§2787 Cost-benefit Analyses for Competition of Management and Operating Contracts

Summary

The Administrator must, within 7 days after issuing a request for proposals to run an Administration facility, give the congressional defense committees a short, preliminary cost‑benefit briefing that covers the items listed below. If the Administrator awards a new management‑and‑operations contract, they must send a full report with those same items to the congressional defense committees no later than 30 days after the transition to the new contract is finished. The report must explain expected cost savings over the life of the contract with the analyses, assumptions, and sources used; any key limits or uncertainties; the costs of running the competition (including transition costs and any higher long‑term costs); any disruptions or delays to the mission; expected mission or operational benefits; whether the competition followed the Federal Acquisition Regulation rules for federally funded research and development centers, if that applies; how the Administrator decided to compete or extend and what work the contract covers; a detailed description of the analyses and their assumptions and limits; and any other matters the Administrator finds appropriate. The briefings and reports must follow the Department of Energy’s information‑quality rules and Government Accountability Office (GAO) and industry best practices for cost estimates. The Comptroller General will decide, with the congressional defense committees, whether to do an initial review, a comprehensive review, or both. If GAO does an initial review, it must brief the committees within 180 days after the report is submitted. If GAO does a comprehensive review, it must send it within 3 years and must compare actual savings to the estimates, note unexpected extra costs, compare actual disruptions to the estimates, check whether expected benefits were achieved, and consider other relevant matters. These briefing and reporting rules apply to requests for proposals issued or contracts awarded from fiscal year 2019 through 2032, but they do not apply to management‑and‑operations contracts for Naval Reactor facilities.