There were no protests against the contract award for management and operations of the Sandia National Laboratories, the National Nuclear Security Administration said this week.
The semiautonomous branch of the U.S. Energy Department announced on Dec. 16 that it had awarded the contract to National Technology and Engineering Solutions of Sandia (NTESS), a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International [HON]. The deal is worth $2.6 billion per year over a decade, including all options.
While the NNSA has not released a count of the total number of bidders, NTESS beat at least two other teams: a partnership comprised of Lockheed Martin [LMT] (Sandia’s current operations prime) and Purdue, New Mexico State, and New Mexico Tech Universities; and a grouping of Battelle, Boeing [BA], the University of New Mexico, the Texas A&M University System, and the University of Texas System. Honeywell spokesman Nathan Drevna said Thursday he was not aware of any other bidders.
All of the losing contract seekers had 10 days after being formally briefed on the award decision to file a protest with the Government Accountability Office (GAO); that period has passed, NNSA spokesman Greg Wolf said Wednesday.
The GAO said it had not received any protests. Meanwhile, NTESS as of last week received NNSA authorization to begin transition activities to take over management of the lab on May 1. That could not have happened if there were protests on file, Wolf noted.
“Lockheed Martin will not protest the Sandia M&O contract award,” company spokesman Matt Kramer said by email Wednesday. “Sandia’s mission is critical to national security, and we’ll work with the incoming contractor to ensure a smooth transition. We are proud of our 23 years of service to Sandia and the NNSA, and we thank Sandia’s employees for their dedication and innovation.”
Boeing referred questions on the contract to Battelle, which did not respond to a call for comment.
Sandia National Laboratories, with locations in New Mexico, California, Hawaii, and Nevada, conducts non-nuclear engineering development for nuclear weapons, develops systems that ensure the reliability of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, and supports the manufacturing and disassembly of nuclear weapons, among other technical nonproliferation and treaty verification support activities. The sites in total have about 10,000 employees.
NTESS is working with the National Nuclear Security Administration and Lockheed subsidiary Sandia Corp. to ensure a smooth changeover of management and operations on May 1, Drevna said: “We want to make sure that all the I’s are dotted and the T’s are crossed.”
The new contractor has already established a 10-person leadership team for the lab, headed by veteran DOE and Pentagon hand Stephen Younger as director and NNSA Kansas City Plant veteran David Douglass as deputy director. The new managers are in contact with their departing counterparts, which include Sandia Corp. President and lab Director Jill Hruby, for details on Sandia’s operations, structures, and daily work flow, Drevna said.
Beyond the upper management level, NTESS does not anticipate significant turnover when the lab changes hands. “Roughly speaking, there are 10,000 Sandians and we fully expect to have 10,000 Sandians on May 1,” according to Drevna.
The request for proposals for the Sandia contract laid out a number of deliverables required of the winning bidder during the transition. These include submitting a transition plan and cost estimate within 10 days of the contract award, which specifically must “describe the process, details, and schedule for providing an orderly transition”; filing a conflict of interest compliance and management plan within 60 days of the effective date of the contract; and completing a staffing plan within 30 calendar days of the effective date.