Los Alamos National Security earned 90 percent of all fees available in fiscal 2016 for its bridge contract for legacy cleanup operations at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, according to the latest performance scorecard from the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management.
The contractor’s fee totaled $9.1 million, of a total possible $10.1 million, for the period from Oct. 1, 2015, to Sept. 30, 2016. The amount was spread across three fee divisions: performance-based incentives, the subjective award fee, and the base fee.
The fee is separate from the $58.9 million the company earned from DOE’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration over the same time frame for management and operations of the nuclear arms laboratory.
The Department of Energy split off legacy cleanup at LANL from the M&O contract in the wake of the 2014 radiation release at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., which was determined to have been caused by an improperly sealed container of nitrate salts from the laboratory. Los Alamos National Security for now remains in charge of managing waste produced by decades of operations – including deactivation and decommissioning of defense nuclear facilities, solid waste processing, and soil and water remediation — under a two-year contract that expires no later than Sept. 30, 2017, and is worth nearly $310 million.
The DOE scorecard listed LANS’ strengths as: safe management and storage of nitrate salts, preparation for treatment of nitrate salts, execution of the Chromium Project and associated recovery schedule, environmental cleanup of Technical Area 21 and historical properties, and “partnering to establish effective relationships to efficiently complete work.” Areas for improvement were: project management, encompassing project controls, cost assessments, and contract management; emergency management; issues management; procedural compliance; and quality assurance.
Additional details were not immediately available.
Los Alamos National Security is a partnership of Bechtel, BWX Technologies, AECOM, and the University of California.
