ALEXANDRIA VA. — The head of the National Nuclear Security Administration on Wednesday would shed no light on the timeline for transitioning the agency’s two main weapons production sites to new management, though the transition was supposed to be halfway over by now.
Meanwhile, Consolidated Nuclear Security, the Bechtel-led incumbent managing the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas, and the Y-12 National Security Site in Oak Ridge, Tenn., had not as of Wednesday informed personnel at the site that the scheduled transition had started, a source said.
In December, when the roughly four-month transition was supposed to start, two losing bidders for the next National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) Production Office contract, potentially worth $28 billion over 10 years, protested the agency’s decision to give the deal to the Fluor-led team of Nuclear Production One, which includes junior partner Amentum.
In January NNSA, as first reported by the Exchange Monitor, offered to take “corrective action” to address alleged improprieties with the competition, including concerns about a conflict of interest raised by losing bidder Integrated Mission Delivery, a team led by Bechtel National, which leads the production office incumbent.
On Wednesday, though, the agency considered itself still “in the middle of a competition,” Jill Hruby, administrator of the NNSA, told a roomful of nuclear-weapons contractors after a keynote address at the Exchange Monitor’s Nuclear Deterrence Summit. “I really can’t talk about that because of the state of play of that particular competition.”
The incumbent’s contract runs through March 31. NNSA had not extended the pact as of Wednesday.
