The U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is mulling whether to establish an umbrella human-resources contract to help the entire nuclear security enterprise recruit and retain new personnel.
In a request for information last week, the semiautonomous Department of Energy nuclear weapons agency said it was considering a seven-year contract worth a maximum of $8 million annually, under which management and operations contractors of U.S. nuclear laboratories and other sites could order third-party help with recruiting, interviewing, hiring, and onboarding new personnel.
“Attracting and retaining a highly skilled workforce to NNSA sites is a challenging and expensive proposition, especially in a competitive labor market,” the agency stated in its notice. “A shared enterprise approach for recruiting provides an opportunity to leverage M&O [management and operations] contractors to attract the best and brightest jobseekers.”
These potential recruitment services would “augment” and “supplement” existing human resources departments at its site contractors, the NNSA said.
If the agency creates a recruitment services contract, it would be available to the management and operations contractors of:
- The Kansas City National Security Campus, Kansas City, Mo.
- The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, Calif.
- The Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, N.M.
- The Nevada National Security Site, Nye County, Nev.
- The Pantex Plant, Amarillo, Texas.
- The Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, N.M.
- The Savannah River National Laboratory, Aiken, S.C.
- The Y-12 National Security Complex, Oak Ridge, Tenn.
Among other things, the recruitment services vendor would be responsible for producing recruiting messaging that “shall highlight the opportunities that await for talented people to work with world-class scientist [cq] and engineers as well as with state-of-the-art technology to maintain national security and help solve challenging world issues such as climate change,” according to the request for information.
Those interested have until Nov. 1 to respond to the request, providing, among other things, a statement of their capabilities and a history of their work providing recruitment services. The information could be used to draft a strategic source agreement later, according to the request for information.
Honeywell Federal Technologies, management and operations contractor for the Kansas City National Security Campus, owns the request for information and could administer any eventual contract.
