Ruling puts BIW back on track in $12B Coast Guard competition
Bath Iron Works’ bid to land a contract to build up to 25 ships in the U.S. Coast Guard’s Offshore Patrol Cutter program worth an estimated $12 billion can now proceed, following the U.S. Government Accountability Office’s denial this week of protests from two shipyards that had failed to make it into the finalist round of bidding earlier this year.
The protests by Huntington Ingalls and V.T. Halter Marine Inc., both based in Pascagoula, Miss., had put a halt on the bidding process pending the GAO review. Both protests were denied on June 2, according to the GAO’s bid protest docket.
“We’re pleased with the GAO’s decision,” BIW spokesman Matt Wickenheiser told Mainebiz today. “We’re looking forward to moving ahead with our development work on the offshore patrol cutter design.”
Wickenheiser said design work would commence on July 1 and is expected to take up to 18 months to be completed.
BIW would be competing against the Lockport, Louisiana-based Bollinger Shipyards Inc. and the Panama City, Florida-based Eastern Shipbuilding Group Inc. in the design phase competition for the next-generation cutters that are intended to complement the Coast Guard’s current and future fleet to extend the service’s operational capabilities. In February, each shipyard had received contracts worth more than $21 million from the Coast Guard to complete the preliminary and contract design services that will determine a final contract winner.
An April 9 Congressional Research Service report by Ronald O’Rourke, a specialist in naval affairs, underscores the high stakes involved in the Coast Guard’s offshore patrol cutter program, which is part of an overall $21.1 billion plan to replace 90 aging Coast Guard cutters and patrol craft. O’Rourke reported that under the Coast Guard’s current five-year capital investment plan for 2014-18, the first offshore patrol cutter is to be procured in FY 2017.
“The Coast Guard estimates the OPC program’s total acquisition cost at $12.101 billion, or an average of about $484 million per ship,” O’Rourke wrote, noting that those figures represent a 49% increase over the previous figures of $8.098 billion and $324 million, respectively, for the program.
O’Rourke also told National Defense this month the planned procurement of 25 offshore patrol cutters might well be a conservative estimate, pegging the Coast Guard’s actual need at 57 new cutters. The monthly publication reported that the offshore patrol cutters carry out seven of the Coast Guard’s 11 statutory missions: Search and rescue; drug interdiction; migrant interdiction; ports, waterways and coastal security; protection of living marine resources; general law enforcement; and defense readiness operations.
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