Staff Reports
NS&D Monitor
2/27/2015
A top official at Consolidated Nuclear Security, the Bechtel-led partnership that manages the Y-12 and Pantex nuclear weapons plants under a combined contract, said last week that there’s “not much flexibility at this point” for moving funds back and forth between the Tennessee and Texas plants. Dave Beck, vice president and program integration manager for CNS, acknowledged there are possibilities down the road for moving funds from site to site to address problems or even the possible shifting of program activities if it makes sense and is in the best interest of the government.
But, he noted, there’s only limited flexibility to do that at this time. CNS reportedly operates with an aggregated budget for the two sites, and the setup was expected to give the contractor more room for cost savings and efficiencies. That was a primary focus of the National Nuclear Security Administration competition that combined the two management contracts. “Sure, there’s limited capabilities of doing that, of moving small amounts of work from one site to the other. And some of that may happen,” Beck said on the sidelines of the Seventh Annual Nuclear Deterrence Summit. “But it’s too early to tell. Just like we’re in the processing of doing make/buy decisions about whether we do it inside the sites or whether we contract it out to other vendors. And so we have some flexibility there.”
Beck noted that budgets are formulated a couple of years in advance for anticipated work in the future, and so that hasn’t played much of a factor for CNS, which took over management of the two plants July 1. “But, in the margins of things, if we have a specific problem at one site or the other and a particular account at the other sites has money available because they’re being more efficient, we may in some cases be able to do that in the government’s best interest,” he said. “Right now, the work at both sites is growing, and so one of the questions that’s underlying here is are we moving jobs,” he added.
‘You Can’t Just Move Large Amounts of Money’
Indeed, during the early proposal stages of the combined Y-12/Pantex contract offering, there were concerns from both the Oak Ridge, Tenn., and Amarillo, Texas, communities about possible loss of jobs through cost savings or mission relocation. But Beck indicated that the roles at the two plants are pretty well fixed, at least based on the budget plans developed a couple of years ago. “We have people at the two sites that are trained and skilled people to do the work that’s been budgeted for them for two years. Planned for in the budget. So that’s where we are,” he said.
While CNS has one budget for the two plants, Beck indicated it’s a lot more complicated than that. “There are 32 different control points from Congress, and we’re given one budget for each of those control points, with the exception of a category that’s called ‘ops of facilities,’ and that’s specific to the site,” he said. While some funds are potentially transferred from one plant to the other, there are budget plans in place—involving scopes, schedules and costs—at both plants that have to be executed, Beck said. “And you just can’t move large amounts of money from one site to the other,” he said. “Nor would we want to.”