Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC, the Bechtel and University of California-led contractor that runs Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, earned a one-year contract extension as part of its recently released Fiscal Year 2012 Performance Evaluation Review, but only after the intervention of a top National Nuclear Security Administration official. Acting NNSA Administrator Neile Miller, who at the time was the agency’s Principal Deputy Administrator and Fee Determining Official, increased the at-risk fee assessment of LLNS on its FY 2012 PER by $541,527 to help the lab meet the 80 percent threshold for achieving an award term extension to its contract. Without the intervention of Miller, the lab would have narrowly missed meeting all of the requirements for the lucrative award-term extension. Before Miller’s intervention, the lab had earned 78 percent of its at-risk fee ($23.3 million). Overall, the lab earned 88 percent of the total available fee, which included $20.7 million in fixed fee and $23.8 million in at-risk fee out of $50.5 million that was available under the terms of the contract.
In a Dec. 13 letter to LLNL Director Parney Albright, Livermore Site Office Manager Kimberly Davis said that Miller “exercised her authority to make adjustments to the PER fee and award term recommendations,” but fee information released by the NNSA contained no rationale for the decision. In similar fashion, Miller also gave Los Alamos National Laboratory contractor Los Alamos National Security, LLC, an award-term extension for its FY 2012 performance even though the lab also did not reach the 80 percent at-risk fee threshold. The NNSA did not respond to a request for comment yesterday.
Livermore did meet all five of the specific award term incentives needed to trigger the extension, which included performance of its stockpile stewardship mission, the completion of site transformation activities, meeting sustainable management goals, achieving several milestones associated with accredited management systems, and meeting goals for managing interagency work. However, the lab was downgraded for not meeting two key milestones within the National Ignition Campaign (alpha heating and ignition), which resulted in a fee reduction of $1.3 million, and was hit hard for deficiencies in institutional management. It was only rated “good” in institutional management, the third highest adjectival rating, and received $2.8 million out of $5.9 million available. “LLNS is to be commended for its many key accomplishments, including those made by the National Ignition Facility,” Davis wrote in her letter to Albright. “Despite these accomplishments, LLNS did not achieve the ignition milestone under the National Ignition Campaign (NIC). Additionally, there were several critical institutional management issues involving how NIC technical and budget issues were managed by LLNS that strongly influenced our recommendations.”
