Losing Bidder Challenges Navy Cargo Ship Contract

Newport News Shipbuilding is challenging the Navy’s decision to award two competitors contracts to build 12 cargo ships worth $2.6 billion, a yard spokesman said Tuesday.

The shipyard filed a formal protest of the Navy’s choices with the General Accounting Office on Friday, only two days after the second of the contracts was awarded to a San Diego shipyard, yard spokesman Jack Garrow said.

The winning bidders, National Steel & Shipbuilding Co. in San Diego and Avondale Industries near New Orleans, each got $1.3-billion contracts to build six ships.

Garrow said his yard’s failure to win any of the work may cost it more jobs. The yard has announced three rounds of cuts in the last 18 months, which will eliminate more than 2,200 workers.

Garrow declined to elaborate on the basis for the company’s challenge, but said he is not claiming that Newport News submitted the lowest bid for the Navy’s roll-on, roll-off cargo vessels.

Ingalls Shipbuilding joined Newport News Shipbuilding in the protest, said James W. McIngvale, a spokesman for the yard in Pascagoula, Miss.

Newport News Shipbuilding and Ingalls cooperated in the bidding and submitted bids based on ships of their own design.