Todd Jacobson
NS&D Monitor
11/14/2014
The Department of Energy this week formally selected Brookhaven Science Associates for a new five-year, $3.2 billion contract to run Brookhaven National Laboratory, choosing the only team to submit a bid for the contract. BSA, a partnership of Battelle and Stony Brook University, submitted the only proposal for the contract in June after interest from university consortiums like Southeastern Universities Research Association and University Research Associates and companies like URS, AECOM, and Honeywell waned. “The National Labs are a key foundation of scientific research in the U.S. and are critical to advancing basic science, low-carbon energy, environmental protection and nuclear security,” Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said in a statement. “Brookhaven has long been an essential contributor to the National Laboratory system, performing world class research and hosting three major user facilities that serve more than 4,500 scientists each year.”
In a Nov. 12 statement, DOE said it acknowledged BSA’s “vision for advancing the DOE science mission, the strength of its executive leadership team, and its commitment to bring more than $118 million in external resources to the BNL.” The contract’s base term is for five years, but the contractor can earn up to 15 additional years of extensions based on performance. The new contract term will begin Jan. 5, 2015. In addition to Battelle and Stony Brook, six research universities are also partners on the contract: Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, Princeton, MIT, and Yale.
BSA Appeared Vulnerable
BSA has run the lab since 1998, but when DOE made the decision to compete the contract, it appeared vulnerable. In Fiscal Year 2012, it received its first “C-” on its annual evaluation from DOE, in environment, safety and health, and last summer DOE finalized a $959,595 fee reduction for Brookhaven Science Associates because of an accident that occurred in 2011 during decommissioning activities at the lab’s Graphite Research Reactor.
When it announced that it planned to compete the lab contract in 2012, DOE said that it hoped the competition would “result in improved contractor performance and cost efficiencies at BNL.” At the time, the decision to compete the contract stood in stark contrast to recent extensions handed out at Oak Ridge and Pacific Northwest national laboratories. BSA, however, took a proactive approach to addressing its management issues, bringing in Doon Gibbs as the lab’s director last year and shoring up operations by hiring former Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Fermilab official Jack Anderson as Deputy Director for Operations. In Fiscal Year 2013, it improved its performance, receiving two “A-s” and six “B+s” on its annual review.
Gibbs is staying on as BSA president and lab director. “We’ve put in place a consummate management team and developed an exceptionally strong proposal, so we are excited to have the opportunity to build on our past successes—from discovering the ‘perfect’ liquid to building the world’s most advanced synchrotron light source,” BSA Board Co-chair and Executive Vice President of Global Laboratory Operations for Battelle Ron Townsend said in a statement. “We are committed to the future of Brookhaven National Laboratory as both a world-leading scientific organization and as a source of technology innovation benefiting our region, our nation, and our world.”
