Los Alamos National Security LLC, the partnership that has operated and managed the Los Alamos National Laboratory since 2006, has failed to qualify for an additional year on its contract that expires at the end of fiscal 2017. After receiving the National Nuclear Security Administration’s performance assessment for fiscal 2015, LANL Director Charles McMillan informed the workforce that the lab’s ratings had not made the grade, which means the existing contract would end and a new procurement process would begin to select the best proposal for the next contract manager.
In an all-hands memo late last week, McMillan revealed the lab’s performance results in the six major categories of the assessment:
· Manage the Nuclear Weapons Mission—Very Good
· Reduce Global Nuclear Security Threats Mission—Very Good
· DOE and Strategic Partnership Project Mission—Excellent
· Science, Technology, and Engineering (ST&E)—Excellent
· Operations and Infrastructure—Satisfactory
· Leadership—Good
He said the laboratory needed to score higher than “Satisfactory” in all six categories. “We did not accomplish this,” McMillan said, and therefore the contract would not meet the requirements for renewal. “Nevertheless,” he added, the federal government in preliminary discussions has offered LANS “an extension to the contract to manage the Laboratory beyond FY17.” McMillan said he would have more details about these developments after the new year.
Los Alamos, which has an annual budget of about $2.2 billion, has suffered a number of difficulties in the recent years, culminating in its role in shipping a nuclear waste canister that erupted at the underground waste repository at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in southern New Mexico in early 2014. The site has yet to reopen. This performance assessment was LANS’ lowest rating to date, resulting in not only the loss of an extra year on the contract, but the loss of an award term from the previous year.
A major subcontractor for NNSA, who asked not to be identified, predicted the imminent probability of a low performance rating for LANL early last week. The source also predicted LANS might be given a one-year extension, to allow the new administration and newly formulated Congress to settle in after the national elections next year.
The LANS partnership consists of the University of California, Bechtel Corp., Babcock & Wilcox Co., URS Corp., and AECOM.
