Honeywell Federal Manufacturing & Technologies got praise for its contribution to nuclear warhead life-extension programs in fiscal 2017, along with hand-wringing over the departure of key personnel, in an annual performance report card from the government.
That is according to a performance evaluation report published Thursday by the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). The document is dated Nov. 15.
Honeywell Federal Manufacturing & Technologies manages the Kansas City National Security Campus for the NNSA under a contract awarded in 2015 and worth roughly $9 billion over 10 years, including options. The Kansas City, Mo., plant manufactures non-nuclear components of nuclear warheads. These new components are swapped into existing weapons at other NNSA sites as part five ongoing life extension programs aimed at extending the service life of deployed nuclear warheads and bombs.
Notably, the NNSA said it was concerned by certain departures from the wholly owned Honeywell subsidiary, leading to “concerns around operational continuity” at a time when the plant “is experiencing its highest volume of work in many years.”
In March 2017, Rick Lavelock left his position as the company’s vice president of integrated supply chain. There was no announcement, but Lavelock now lists himself as the “Former Vice President of Integrated Supply Chain at Honeywell FM&T” on his LinkedIn profile. He had been with the company in various roles since August 2001.
Overall, the contractor received about $42 million in fiscal 2017: 93 percent of the available $45 million award. A third of the total was a fixed fee, however. Of the larger incentive fee portion, which is awarded based on the customer’s judgemnt, the contractor earned about 90 percent of the available amount, or just shy of $27 million.
Besides the uncertainty related to departed personnel, the NNSA docked award dollars because of “multiple challenges caused by design release delays, design iterations, internal site receiving and inspection backlog, late supplier procurements, and delayed security clearances,” according to the performance evaluation report.
