The Honeywell-led National Technology and Engineering Solutions of Sandia (NTESS) was the lowest bidder and the most technically qualified of four teams that competed for a 10-year, $2.5-billion-plus contract to manage the Sandia National Laboratories last year, according to a newly released procurement document.
The details come from a National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) source selection decision dated Dec. 8, 2016. New Mexico’s Albuquerque Business First obtained the document through a Freedom of Information Act request and published it Wednesday.
The winning proposal from NTESS was “the most highly rated offeror for the technical and management criteria, with the lowest proposed and evaluated cost,” Joseph Waddell, the NNSA’s deputy associate administrator for acquisition and project management, wrote in the decision.
Honeywell’s track record in managing the NNSA’s Kansas City, Mo., National Security Complex — which assembles non-nuclear components of nuclear warheads — also gave NTESS a leg up on its competitors in the past performance criterion: one of three scoring categories for the bidders, along with technical and management and small business participation.
In the past performance department, “the real distinguishing factor between offerors is consistency over time in terms of operations and mission support activities like safety,” Waddell wrote.
Meanwhile, the source selection decision confirms for the first time that there were four bids on the current Sandia management and operations contract.
The identity of one of those bidders remains a mystery — the NNSA removed the names of NTESS’ competitors from the copy of the decision it released publicly — but three were already known: NTESS, plus teams led by Lockheed Martin and Battelle.
Lockheed was the previous Sandia prime. The company’s bid last year included Purdue, New Mexico State, and New Mexico Tech universities.
Battelle’s team included Boeing, the University of New Mexico, the Texas A&M University System, and the University of Texas System.
Each of the four teams “demonstrated at least some past performance which was considered to be similar in size, scope, and complexity to the SNL [Sandia National Laboratories] Statement of Work,” Waddell wrote in his source selection decision.
Sandia employees about 10,000 people at facilities in Albuquerque and Livermore, Calif., and satellite facilities in Hawaii and Nevada. The lab conducts non-nuclear engineering development for nuclear weapons, develops systems that ensure the nuclear potency of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, and supports the manufacturing and disassembly of nuclear weapons.
