A pair of Bechtel and Lockheed Martin executives defended the role the private companies play in managing the National Nuclear Security Administration’s three nuclear weapons laboratories, telling a lab effectiveness panel yesterday that the corporate reachback brought by the companies that run the labs has made a difference. “If you look at the corporate reachback that’s been brought into the physics labs, we’ve had an impressive cadre of skills,” Bechtel Nuclear Security and Operations General Manager John Howanitz said in a response to a question from T.J. Glauthier, the co-chairman of the Congressionally created Commission to Review the Effectiveness of the National Energy Laboratories.
Teams led by the University of California and Bechtel have run Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories since 2006 and 2007, respectively, and questions have been raised about the value the government has received for the higher fees paid to the contractors. Lockheed Martin’s Sandia Corp. has run Sandia National Laboratories since 1993 for significantly less fee than at Los Alamos and Livermore. Addressing the panel, Lockheed Martin Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer Ray Johnson said performance on mission-related work has proven the governance structure at Sandia is working. “On the mission side, cost schedule and performance, measuring the program, how it’s performing is the direct measure of how our corporate expertise is translating,” Johnson said. “You don’t have a before and after, you have an after, but as long as you maintain performance I think that’s value added.”
Jobs