The U.S. Department of Energy has awarded a new infrastructure support services contract for the Portsmouth Site near Piketon to AIS Technical Services LLC, a small business based in Tempe, Arizona, according to the Scioto Valley Guardian’s reporting on the department’s announcement.
The contract covers up to five years — a three-year base period that begins with a 60-day transition from the current contractor, plus an optional two-year extension — according to the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management, as reported by the Scioto Valley Guardian.
Infrastructure support is the unglamorous work that keeps a cleanup site running: surveillance and maintenance of facilities, repair and construction, custodial services, grounds maintenance and snow removal, pest control, roadway and parking lot upkeep, and fleet management, according to the department’s description of the agreement reported by the Scioto Valley Guardian.
The scope reported by the Scioto Valley Guardian also includes real property and records management, safeguards and security, engineering, training, mail services, telecommunications, and the environmental, safety, health and quality programs that govern work at a former uranium enrichment site.
The Office of Environmental Management selected AIS Technical Services through a competitive procurement, determining that the company’s proposal offered the best value to the government based on key personnel, organization and management approach, past performance and price, according to the release reported by the Scioto Valley Guardian.
The Portsmouth Site — the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Pike County — enriched uranium for decades before production ended, and the federal government has spent more than 35 years addressing the environmental consequences of that work, according to the Department of Energy. Cleanup and demolition remain the site’s main mission, alongside early reindustrialization planning for portions of the property.
What we know — and what we’re still waiting on
What we know: a new contractor has been chosen, the term can run up to five years, and a 60-day transition from the current contractor comes first, per the Scioto Valley Guardian’s reporting on the department’s release. What we are still waiting on: the contract’s dollar value, how many local jobs the award carries, and whether the transition changes any of the workers currently performing the work — none of which the announcement, as reported, detailed.
For Pike County, the stakes are practical. The Portsmouth Site is one of southern Ohio’s largest employers and its steadiest source of federal investment; even a support-services contract — the people who plow the roads, guard the gates, maintain the buildings and keep records — underpins hundreds of daily routines that the demolition and conversion crews depend on.
The award lands in a busy season at Piketon. NewsForce247 has also covered Centrus shipping its first new centrifuge to Piketon as a separate enrichment expansion advances on the reservation, and, elsewhere in Southeast Ohio, FEMA and SBA bringing in-person disaster help to Zanesville in November.
The cleanup context is active, not historical. Crews at the site have recently passed a milestone in converting legacy uranium byproduct cylinders, and demolition of the former X-333 Process Building continues, according to the Scioto Valley Guardian’s reporting — the kind of daily industrial work that depends on the roads, security, records and facility upkeep this contract covers.
A support contract of this kind also decides who answers the site’s ordinary emergencies: a failed roof, a snowed-in access road, a security post that must be staffed around the clock. Those functions rarely make headlines, but at a fenced federal cleanup reservation they are the difference between a workday that happens and one that does not — which is why the department competed the award on personnel and management approach as well as price, per the release reported by the Scioto Valley Guardian.
Local officials across the Piketon area have long argued that cleanup dollars should translate into durable local employment, and support-services work — maintenance, security, grounds, records — is among the most locally held work at the reservation. Whether AIS staffs those roles locally is one of the first questions the transition should answer.
What happens next is the transition clock: AIS Technical Services’ 60-day transition period begins under the award, after which the base period runs three years, with the department holding the option of a two-year extension. Any announced contract value or local hiring detail will be added to this story as the department releases it.