Change DOE’s Latest MoveTo Restructure Lab Fees
Mike Nartker
WC Monitor
4/04/2014
Battelle Energy Alliance is now set to earn less annual fee for managing the Idaho National Laboratory under a five-year contract extension announced late last week. While BEA was able to earn a maximum of $18.7 million in fee annually during its first five years at INL, for the next five years the contractor can only earn $16 million annually—a cut of approximately 15 percent, according to Tim Jackson, a spokesman for the Department of Energy’s Idaho Operations Office. “The fee pool was adjusted to better align INL with other comparable DOE national laboratories,” Jackson said in a written response this week. In a separate response this week, a lab spokeswoman said, “BEA agreed to manage and operate Idaho National Laboratory under a new fee structure for the next five years. Prior to the beginning of FY15, BEA and DOE will define performance goals and objectives as part this new fee structure.”
The reduction in BEA’s fee for managing the Idaho lab—DOE’s main nuclear energy research facility—appears to be the Department’s latest step in restructuring how contractors earn fee for managing the national laboratories. Last week, acting National Nuclear Security Administration chief Bruce Held confirmed that DOE has begun discussions with the teams of Bechtel and the University of California that operate the Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore national labs about reducing the fee they could receive. Currently, the teams earn about 3 percent of the labs’ budgets in fee, which for Fiscal Year 2013 meant up to $66.9 million could have been earned at Los Alamos and $47.4 million could have been earned at Livermore. DOE is also believed to be interested in changing the fee approach at the Sandia National Laboratories when a follow-on management contract is competed in the next few years.
