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GAO-20-292R 1 (2020-01-30)

handle is hein.gao/gaobaeanv0001 and id is 1 raw text is: GAOU.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE 441 G St. N.W. Washington, DC 20548 January 30, 2020 Congressional Committees National Nuclear Security Administration Contracting: Review of the NNSA Report on the Los Alamos National Laboratory Contract Competition The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is responsible for the management and security of the nation's nuclear weapons programs, among other missions.1 To carry out this responsibility, NNSA relies heavily on contractors-primarily using management and operating (M&O) contracts-at its national laboratories and other nuclear-related sites.2 One of the sites managed under an M&O contract is the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in Los Alamos, New Mexico. According to NNSA, LANL's primary mission is national security, which includes the design, qualification, certification, and assessment of nuclear weapons. LANL is a federally funded research and development center (FFRDC)3 and is one of three NNSA laboratories charged with annually reporting on the safety, reliability, performance, and military effectiveness of the nuclear weapons stockpile to the President of the United States. LANL also conducts multidisciplinary research in fields such as space exploration, renewable energy, medicine, nanotechnology, and supercomputing. In addition, LANL performs work for the Department of Defense, Intelligence Community, Department of Homeland Security, and National Institutes of Health, among others. LANL was founded in 1943 as part of the Manhattan Project, a top secret effort to develop an atomic bomb during World War II. Since then, only three contractors have managed and operated LANL. From 1943 to 2005, the University of California managed LANL. From 2006 to 2018, Los Alamos National Security, LLC, managed LANL. 4 The contract could have continued until 2026, but expired in 2018 because the contractor failed to meet certain levels of performance, according to NNSA officials.5 As a result, NNSA officials said they decided to 1NNSA is a separately organized agency within the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) that is responsible for the management and security of DOE's nuclear weapons, nuclear nonproliferation, and naval reactor programs. 2M&O contracts are agreements under which the government contracts for the operation, maintenance, or support, on its behalf, of a government-owned or -controlled research, development, special production, or testing establishment wholly or principally devoted to one or more of the major programs of the contracting federal agency. Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 48 C.F.R. § 17.601. 3FFRDCs are government-funded entities that have long-term relationships with one or more federal agencies to perform research and development and related tasks. FFRDCs are typically entirely federally funded, or nearly so, but they are operated by contractors or other nongovernmental organizations. FFRDCs are operated, for example, by universities, other not-for-profit or nonprofit organizations, or industrial firms as autonomous organizations or separate operating units of their parent organizations. FAR, 48 C.F.R. §§ 2.101, 35.017. 4Los Alamos National Security, LLC, was made up of the Regents of the University of California, Bechtel National, BWXT Government Group, Inc., and URS, an AECOM company. 5The contract contained an award term provision, which allowed the contractor to earn additional years of contract performance between fiscal years 2013 and 2026, based on achieving certain levels of performance. According to NNSA officials, the contract expired on September 30, 2018, because the contractor failed to meet those levels of performance over a period of several years. NNSA extended the contract until October 31, 2018, to assist with the transition to a new contractor. GAO-20-292R NNSA Contracting Page 1

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