Honeywell, a top contractor for the Department of Energy’s nuclear weapons sites, also sees opportunities on the environmental remediation side of the federal agency’s operations, one newly reassigned executive said recently.
Former Air Force colonel David “DJ” Johnson last month became vice president and general manager at Honeywell Federal Solutions, where he oversees the company’s four major contracts with DOE’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA).
“If you look at the landscape across the NNSA, there are no really immediate opportunities,” Johnson said in an exclusive interview with Weapons Complex Monitor. “So what we would like to do is see if we can take some of the commercial best practices and some of Honeywell’s product capabilities into other areas within the Department. For example, within the Environmental Management organization.”
Johnson specifically cited the Hanford Site in Washington state, home to a massive cleanup of facilities and contamination left by decades of plutonium for the nation’s nuclear arsenal. A number of major contracts are now open for bidding or soon expected to hit that milestone, including: a potential 10-year, $4 billion award for support services at the site; and the follow-on to the Hanford Central Plateau remediation contract how held by CH2M under a 10-year, $6 billion deal.
In the interview, Johnson — who has been with the company for more than 11 years and previously managed Honeywell Aerospace’s aircraft engine components business — discussed his credentials and his new duties.
“I think what qualifies me for this particular position is the ability to bring commercial best practices across a myriad of different industries, and using those best practices to the great benefit of the Department of Energy,” he said.
How long have you been on the job? Have you been to all four NNSA sites where Honeywell is working?
Johnson: I officially started on July 16. You know how transitions go: you don’t quite give up your old job and start your new job. You kind of do both at the same time. So it was about a couple of weeks transition to get me from Arizona back here to the D.C. area and get the office started up. I just returned from Savannah River as part of my indoctrination into the various sites we have responsibility for. I’m still in the run-up portion, but I have now visited all four of the locations and have had opportunities to meet with the DOE field offices managers in all of those locations.
As a relatively new guy in the weapons complex, what qualifies you to manage these four big NNSA contracts?
I think what qualifies me for this particular position is the ability of bringing commercial best practices across a myriad of different industries and using those best practices to the great benefit of the Department of Energy.
We believe it’s one of the differentiators for Honeywell, because of the diverse nature of the businesses that we support or are involved in, that we have a tremendous amount of commercial best practices — especially as it relates to things like connected buildings, connected workers, and our tremendous safety record.
You have a strong space background from your Air Force days, but do you have any prior experience working with the Department of Energy?
The only prior connection before assuming this role was really with the Nevada organization, Mission Support and Test Services. I was part of the team that helped with the transition. After that Honeywell team [with Jacobs and Huntington Ingalls-Stoller Newport News Nuclear] was selected [in 2017], I oversaw the transition from kind of a red-team perspective to make sure the transition readiness review was completed on time, and then I was named the chairman of the board of managers for the LLC. That’s where my principal concentration was, in the Nevada site.
Prior to Nevada, I was a part of Honeywell Technology Solutions Inc., which was a previous company, a wholly owned Honeywell subsidiary based in Columbia, Md., that was essentially the sister services organization to [Kansas City National Security Campus prime contractor] FM&T [Honeywell Federal Manufacturing & Technologies]. There, I was the space engineering and operations vice president, and we did work together with the FM&T organization on several opportunities, and also on several operations support things that we did together.
From the perspective of the customer, how did the internal reorganization that put you in charge of Honeywell’s NNSA work change things?
Before this change was made, the NNSA administrator would have had to go to all four sites, to the leaders of those LLCs, if she was concerned about the best opportunity for the cross-site infusion of commercial best practices. There was previously no single point of contact who was full-time at Honeywell for that. She essentially would have had to go to Kansas City to ask a question, to Sandia to ask a question, to Savannah River, to Nevada. Now, there is a single person full-time focused on just the Department of Energy and NNSA. I would be the first phone call for Honeywell’s reach-back capability to provide commercial best practices to those four locations, which is one of the reasons it was important for Honeywell to put me in the Washington, D.C., area.
What sort of regular interaction do you have from Washington with the four sites?
We have a management operating system, through which we have routine interactions across the LLCs, both on their individual site issues and across the sites in order to try to coordinate some of these commercial best practices. Those could be business execution, human capital, and HR things like finding the best talents across the sites, or it could be processes related to procurement on behalf of the government for supplies or subcontractors. We look at the best practices to really lean out those capabilities and those functions. It’s more than just the mission, which is the most critical part, but also the back-office functions that may not always get the attention that they deserve.
What DOE business opportunities does Honeywell see in the next year or two?
If you look at the landscape across the NNSA, there are no really immediate opportunities. So what we would like to do is see if we can take some of the commercial best practices and some of Honeywell’s product capabilities into other areas within the department. For example, within the Environmental Management organization.
Might Honeywell make a play for any of the upcoming tank-waste or central plateau cleanup contracts at the Hanford Site?
I’m starting to get up to speed on that. And based at least on what I have heard and read, as I look at Honeywell’s capabilities for creating a safe, smarter, and sustainable world, Hanford might be an opportunity where the power of Honeywell’s connected capabilities might be of help. I don’t know right now if that’s something we are specifically looking at, but that is something we certainly should consider.
