Martin Schneider
CEO
ExchangeMonitor Publications
3/21/2014
The National Nuclear Security Administration this week announced plans to extend the management contract for Sandia National Laboratories for another two years, with an option for a third year. Makes sense, right? After just finishing the seven-year odyssey that became the Y-12/Pantex contract competition, a two-year extension will give the NNSA time to regroup and take into account two major Congressionally mandated reports—one on the governance structure of NNSA and the other on the future of the national laboratories themselves—in their acquisition planning.
Unfortunately, the plan overlooks what is quite possibly the most important fact of all—a two-year extension puts the decisions on the Sandia contract smack dab in the middle of the 2016 presidential election. And if the NNSA and its contractors should have learned anything over the last seven years, it’s that when major contract competitions extend between Presidential administrations, no one wins. Not the feds developing—and then redeveloping—the acquisition strategy. Not the contractors spending millions of dollars to get ready for a contract competition that never seems to get started. And certainly not the sites, where the vital national security work is clouded by uncertainty over future employment.
Anyone skeptical of such assertions need look no further than the recently completed Y-12/Pantex contract competition. NNSA issued a Request for Information on what would become the Y-12/Pantex contract in September 2007, roughly 18 months before the end of the second Bush Administration. NNSA was unable to get the procurement rolling before the 2008 Presidential election, leaving it to the new Obama Administration to take up work on the acquisition. It wasn’t until more than three years later, in December 2011 that the Obama Administration issued a final Request for Proposals, with proposals due—you guessed it—smack dab in the middle of the 2012 Presidential election. A decision wasn’t made until after the election, in January 2013 to be exact, and has now finally been awarded for good after several lengthy protests.
NNSA and the Department of Energy are not traditionally quick on the acquisition trigger by any means, but seven years is downright glacial. And with the move to put decisions on the vitally important Sandia National Laboratories contract in the middle of yet another Presidential election, NNSA is setting themselves up to repeat the same mistakes that made the Y-12/Pantex procurement unnecessarily long and drawn out.
Yes, it’s important to have an acquisition strategy that takes into account those very important reports on the future of the national labs and the governance of NNSA. But if NNSA waits until 2016 to act, all of those considerations could be rendered meaningless. After all, it won’t be the Obama Administration crafting a Request for Proposals and implementing an acquisition strategy based on its reading of those reports, or the NNSA leadership’s current thinking on a fee model based on ‘public good.’ It will be new officials, with new perspectives and very likely different ideas of how valuable those reports—which they had no hand in contributing to—will be going forward.
NNSA needs to recognize the impact of pushing such contracting decisions beyond the election and the next Administration. Action now is important. Otherwise, we can all settle in for a Sandia National Laboratories contract award sometime in 2021. What’s another seven years, right?
