B&W Y-12, the management and operating contractor at the Y-12 National Security Complex, was marked down during its Fiscal Year 2012 Performance Evaluation Review for more than just security problems, a review of the company’s annual report card revealed. B&W Y-12 endured the worst year of its 12-year tenure at the site, receiving 58.9 percent of the total fee available for the year ($60.9 million), largely because of a $12.2 hit that was a direct result of the July 28 security breach at the site. But the National Nuclear Security Administration released the long-awaited PERs for each of its seven contractors yesterday (view all seven of the PERs here), and B&W Y-12’s report card revealed that it received “unsatisfactory” ratings for its performance managing both big projects like the Uranium Processing Facility as well as smaller projects like a microwave production project and the security improvements project.
UPF project officials revealed last year that the multi-billion-dollar facility would have to be redesigned because all the equipment and supporting utilities could not fit into the building as it was being designed. The miscalculation came as the facility was more than 75 percent designed and represented a major setback that cost $539 million, is estimated to delay the project 13 months and caused the NNSA to cut back on the scope of the facility. In its review, the NNSA said that “aggressive management actions were not taken to manage or mitigate the risk” of the space issues in the facility and it said project officials were “not clear or forthcoming” in communicating the problems to the agency. “The project has not been able to meet key project milestones and has been late in identifying that project schedule milestones would not be achieved,” the agency said. The agency also said there “were and continue to be serious concerns related to testing issues and deviation from associated procedures” on Y-12’s microwave production project, which it said was delayed because of errors committed while the technology was being tested.
At Sandia National Laboratorie, Lockheed Martin’s Sandia Corp. received a “very good” rating and 97.5 percent ($27.1 million of $27.8 million) of its available fee in the newly released PERs, including high marks for work described as “innovative cost saving design tradeoffs” in helping get a handle on the B61 life extension program. But the PER raised questions about the effectiveness of the self-evaluation model embedded in Sandia’s contract, noting the lack of “self-critical analysis of the pertinent issues and challenges affecting mission accomplishment.”