Although the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) plans to replace Consolidated Nuclear Security as the manager of the Y-12 National Security Site in Tennessee and the Pantex Plant in Texas, the incumbent will stay on at Y-12 to continue building the new factory for nuclear-weapon secondary stages.
“The Uranium Processing Facility (UPF) project will continue to be completed by Consolidated Nuclear Security, LLC,” the NNSA stated in a draft request for proposals for the next Y-12 and Pantex site-management contract.
The NNSA expects to finish building the UPF by 2025, at a cost of no more than $6.5 billion. The bulk of construction on its three main buildings started in March 2018, under a Bechtel National subcontract to the prime.
The agency announced in June that it would part ways with Bechtel-led Consolidated Nuclear Security (CNS), seven years into the company’s 10-year contract. The deal now will expire Sept. 30, 2021. Besides Bechtel, CNS includes Leidos, Northrop Grumman, SOC for security, and Booz Allen Hamilton as a subcontractor.
“Under the terms and conditions of the current contract, the Uranium Processing Facility project is severable from all other parts of the CNS contract,” an NNSA spokesperson in Washington, D.C., said Thursday. “It is being severed in order to mitigate the complexities of transitioning a major construction project substantially underway. Thus, UPF will continue with the current constructor.”
Comments on the draft request for proposals to manage everything else at the site are due Sept. 8, the NNSA said. The agency has not said exactly when the final solicitation will drop, but the competition is supposed to wrap up in time for the transition period to the new prime to begin in June 2021.
Y-12 is the U.S. defense-uranium hub. There, the NNSA makes, modifies, and maintains the secondary stages of nuclear weapons. About 4,500 people work at the site. Pantex is the sole assembly and disassembly facility for finished nuclear weapons. About 3,000 people work there.
BWX Technologies, which ran the sites before CNS, has said it is interested in the follow-on work, as has Amentum — the former AECOM Management Services. One source said BWX Technologies and Huntington Ingalls Industries have explored a joint bid.
Consolidated Nuclear Security, meanwhile, will leave three years’ worth of options on the table. The company’s management contract is worth roughly $2 billion annually. The contractor fell well short of the 80% at-risk fee it needed to earn for fiscal 2019 to trigger the next two-year option on the pact, earning only about 70%, or some $28 million, according to its latest performance evaluation. Management and safety lapses figured into the decision, including time-card fraid that the contractor self-reported to the government.
