The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has awarded National Security Technologies (NSTec), the management and operations contractor for the Nevada National Security Site, 88 percent of its award fee for fiscal 2015, or $21.84 million of the available $24.72 million.
Like other NNSA site M&O contractors, NSTec was rated in six operational areas for the period from Oct. 1, 2014, to Sept. 30, 2015. The performance evaluation reports were completed by December but only made public late last week. The Nevada National Security Site performs high-hazard operations in support of the NNSA and other agencies.
The contractor received a “Very Good” rating in four areas: managing the nuclear weapons mission, reducing global nuclear security threats, operations and infrastructure, and leadership; and “Excellent” in the final two: DOE and Strategic Partnership Project objectives and science, technology, and engineering. The evaluation said some opportunities for improvement remain, including in nuclear safety basis development and configuration management, and that NSTec management’s responses to various issues throughout the year were “above and beyond what was anticipated.”
The evaluation highlighted work done by Nevada site teams for the NNSA’s Global Material Security program, including physical protection enhancements to secure radiological sources at medical sites in Belarus and the first orphan radiological source recovery in Armenia. It said the contractor’s major accomplishments included the development of a prototype situational awareness tool that monitors the location of vehicles and other objects for site access control; renegotiation of 30 union contracts, including those for construction workers, firefighters and paramedics, and maintenance engineers; and development of an integrated deferred maintenance reduction approach that would cut $75 million from the complex-wide growing backlog currently at $3.7 billion.
However, the evaluation said NSTec has “experienced difficulties in retaining valuable, fully trained scientists at off-site locations, which is leading to an increase in training and administrative costs as new scientists need to be hired.” It also said the contractor did not conduct timely reviews of the NNSA’s comprehensive emergency management plan, which resulted in the suspension of some operations until several facilities’ emergency planning hazard surveys were updated. This added about $60,000 in costs to the program, the evaluation said.
Including fixed and at-risk fees, NSTec’s fees for fiscal 2015 totaled $26.34 million of a total possible $29.22 million.
