The Los Alamos National Laboratory contracted out just shy of 60 percent of its total procurement dollars to small businesses in fiscal 2017, handily exceeding the Department of Energy’s goal for the nation’s oldest nuclear-weapon lab.
In the penultimate year of Los Alamos National Security’s (LANS) management and operations contract, the northern New Mexico weapons lab spent about $720 million procuring goods and services from outside contractors, of which $430 million went to small businesses.
That is according to a table the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) posted online Tuesday. LANS is led by the University of California and Bechtel National, with industry teammates AECOM and BWX Technologies.
The NNSA had aimed to spend 52 percent of Los Alamos National Laboratory’s procurement dollars with small businesses in 2017: more or less the level the agency has eyed for the past five years. In all but one of those years — 2015 barely missed at 48.7 percent — the lab beat its mark.
Meanwhile, the NNSA is in the final stages of picking a new Los Alamos management contractor. The agency hosted prospective bidders for one-on-one meetings the week of March 19, which keeps the NNSA more or less on time to award the 10-year, $20-billion-plus deal in April or May.
The eventual winner would be eligible for up to $50 million in annual lab-management fees. The NNSA decided to pull LANS off the job after a series of nuclear safety lapses at the lab, including the improper packaging of a barrel of waste that later burst open and leaked radiation into the Department of Energy’s deep-underground Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M.
The University of California and the University of Texas have confirmed they are separately bidding for the follow-on lab management pact. Sources say Bechtel National has teamed with Purdue on another bid. BWX Technologies says it wants a role on the next contract, but won’t say who it teamed with. A source says AECOM is not bidding.
