Todd Jacobson
NS&D Monitor
7/3/2014
The National Nuclear Security Administration will not punish new Y-12/Pantex contractor Consolidated Nuclear Security for several major changes involving key personnel, NNSA Production Office Manager Steve Erhart said this week. In an interview with NS&D Monitor, Erhart said two early departures of key personnel and a key transfer of another official had been evaluated by the NNSA and the agency had decided against financially penalizing the contractor due to the circumstances surrounding each official. CNS took over as the NNSA’s Y-12/Pantex contractor July 1. “They were evaluated and there was a reason for each of them,” Erhart said. “And they’ve all been evaluated and I think all have been accepted by the PCO, the purchasing contracting officer. So for the key persons, there is no penalty that I know of.”
Most recently, CNS Chief Operating Officer Jim Allen retired due to a “family medical situation,” but Uranium Processing Facility chief Carl Strock announced that he was retiring in May when the NNSA decided to scale back the project. CNS also replaced Pantex operations manager Dan Glenn with Michelle Reichert when Glenn became embroiled in a lawsuit in which former Y-12 and Pantex incumbent Babcock & Wilcox alleged that he stole trade secrets upon his departure from the company. Instead of heading up Pantex operations, Glenn is leading the contractor’s Facilities Management organization.
A clause in the company’s contract would have allowed the National Nuclear Security Administration to take action due to the changes. The company’s contract states that unless a change is approved in advance by the contracting officer, if any key personnel are “removed, replaced, or diverted by the Contractor for reasons under the Contractor’s control” in the first two years of the contract the company forfeits two years of the reimbursable annual salary, bonuses and relocation costs in fee for that position, which could amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars. NNSA Production Office spokesman Steven Wyatt said that each substitution had to be approved by NNSA or penalties could have been enforced. “The approval process took into account the reason for the change as well as the provision that the replacement needed to be as or more qualified than the original key personnel,” Wyatt said.
