The alleged conflicts of interest that prompted the National Nuclear Security Administration to cancel the award of a decade-long, $28-billion nuclear-weapon-sites management contract to a Fluor-led team center on current and former officials in the agency’s Information Management office — one of whom landed a job with the winning team months before the government finalized its award.
According to multiple people familiar with previously unreported details about the competition for the two-site, National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) management and operations contract, former NNSA official Wayne Jones was hired by information technology firm Criterion Systems, Bethesda, Md., shortly after retiring on Jan. 30, 2021 as the agency’s associate administrator for information management and chief information officer.
Criterion was a key subcontractor for winning bidder Nuclear Production One, which Fluor, Irving, Texas, leads with junior partner Amentum, Germantown, Md.
According to one source, one of the two losing bidders for the multi-site management and operations contract alleged that Jones, after leaving his senior executive service post at NNSA, contacted his successor at the agency, Goodman Bellamy, who at the time was still in a position to take actions helpful to the Fluor-led bid.
Sources said that after leaving the NNSA on Jan. 30, 2021 — by which time Nuclear Production One and two competing teams had put together their initial bids for agency feedback — Jones offered his services to each of the finalists for the big, joint management contract for the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas and the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn.
Teams led by Bechtel National, the lead partner on incumbent sites manager Consolidated Nuclear Security, and BWX Technologies, which managed the sites before the incumbent took over, rebuffed Jones’ offer and even alerted the NNSA to Jones’ sales pitch, sources said.
But Fluor bit and included Criterion and Jones with the final bid it submitted to the NNSA in August after receiving feedback from the agency about its first-draft bid, according to one source.
Bellamy was still employed at NNSA, as of Wednesday, as the agency’s associate chief information officer of mission integration, a spokesperson said in an email. He had been the acting chief information officer since Jones retired from government service in 2021.
Losing bidders protested NNSA’s award to Nuclear Production One in December.
“We cannot comment of on-going procurement actions. I would point out that NNSA did initiate voluntary corrective action earlier this year, including a reassessment of alleged organizational conflicts of and alleged appearances of impropriety,” NNSA spokesperson Gordon Trowbridge said in an email Thursday. “NNSA is committed to an open and fair procurement process and to investigating any allegations of wrongdoing.”
As of Thursday, Jones was still representing himself on LinkedIn as Criterion’s chief technology officer. According to other LinkedIn posts, another recently retired NNSA information technology executive, Phillip George, was still as of Thursday Jones’ deputy at Criterion. George left the NNSA in June after 12 years at the Department of Energy, including 10 at the NNSA, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Elizabeth Albrycht, a Criterion spokesperson and the company’s director of marketing and communications, did not reply to multiple phone and email messages requesting confirmation that Jones and George were still employed by Criterion as the company’s chief technology officer and deputy chief technology officer, respectively.
Annika Toenniessen, a Fluor spokesperson, did not immediately reply to a voicemail and an email requesting comment.
Meanwhile, the NNSA planned to extend the incumbent at Pantex and Y-12, Consolidated Nuclear Security, for at least six months and possibly as long as a year. The company’s contract was scheduled to expire after midnight on March 30, but the NNSA pulled the plug on the transition to Nuclear Production One after the losing bidders in December protested the award to the Fluor-led team with the Government Accountability Office.
By revoking the award to Nuclear Production One, if only temporarily, the NNSA kept the award protests out of the Government Accountability Office’s hands, exercising what the office, in a decision memorandum dated January, called the “broad discretion” that federal laws gives agencies to take corrective action to “ensure fair and impartial competition.”
The Bechtel-led bidder balked at that, complaining in official correspondence to the Government Accountability Office that the NNSA was not transparent about the corrective action it planned to take.
The NNSA did not immediately reply to questions about whether it planned to take any corrective action in the case.
The Bechtel-led bidder for the now-contested sites contract, Integrated Mission Delivery, and the BWX Technologies-led team, Strategic Nuclear Operations, protested the award to Nuclear Production One in December. NNSA awarded the production site contract on Nov. 29, about one year after the agency released its final request for proposals. Final bids for the contract were due Aug. 9, around a year after the agency released the draft request for proposals for the contract.
Rex Geveden, chief executive officer of BWX Technologies, told the company’s investors last week that he was still “optimistic” about Strategic Nuclear Operators’ proposal. Bechtel National in January said through a spokesperson it was “pleased” that NNSA was investigating the award.
The disputed contract to manage Pantex and Y-12 is worth about $28 billion over 10 years, including five years of firm money and five one-year options.
