The week came and went without any announcement from the National Nuclear Security Administration about who would manage the Los Alamos National Laboratory for the next decade — but the identity of one more bidder was revealed to Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor.
Engineering giant Jacobs, of Dallas, is part of a team that also includes Lynchburg, Va.-based BWX Technologies: one of the partners on incumbent lab manager Los Alamos National Security (LANS), according to a source familiar with the teaming arrangement. It was not clear which other entities, if any, are part of this bid.
That adds some industry heft to a basket of competitors headlined by big public universities, including longtime Los Alamos manager the University of California.
Other known bidders are:
- The University of Texas and an unidentified industry partner or partners.
- Texas A&M University, which is part of University of California’s team, according to the Austin American-Statesman newspaper.
- Bechtel National and Purdue University.
Jacobs and BWX Technologies did not immediately reply to requests for comment Friday.
The next contract to manage Los Alamos, the oldest U.S. nuclear weapons lab, is a 10-year deal with a five-year base and five one-year options. The lab management portion of the contract will cost more than $21 billion over a decade, including a little over $10 billion in the base period, according to the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). That excludes some $2 billion worth of work funded by agencies other than the Department of Energy over the life of the contract.
According to the final solicitation for the pact, released in October, bidders could earn up to $50 million per year in lab-management fees: an increase from the $30 million in the draft solicitation the agency floated last summer, and which garnered backlash from industry.
Los Alamos National Security came on the job in 2006, prior to which the University of California had managed the lab solo for about 70 years. The consortium is led by the University of California and Bechtel, with industry teammates BWX Technolgies and AECOM. AECOM is not bidding on the follow-on work.
The current team is losing its contract years before the final option would have expired in 2026. The NNSA put the contract back on the street last year after a series of nuclear safety lapses and management faux pas that led the agency to push for cultural change at the lab.
During the performance period of the next management contract, Los Alamos will produce plutonium pits, fissile weapon cores, for the ongoing U.S. nuclear arms modernization program, and perform research that allows scientists to gauge the explosive power of the aging nuclear stockpile without performing nuclear explosive tests.
The NNSA has said it would award the next lab management pact by the end of May.
Meanwhile, the University of Texas said this week that if it wins the contract, it will need as much as $7 million more than it initially budgeted to pay for the deal’s transition period.
The university needs the money “to provide bridge financing to support the successful transition of management for the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico,” according to the agenda for a Friday Board of Regents meeting. The funding would come from the UT System Internal Lending Program.
The incumbent lab manager and whoever wins the next Los Alamos management contract will overlap during the transition period: a brief period of time when both contractors are on-site, and during which the departing team essentially turns the keys over to the new contractor.