Lab bidders are getting cold feet - Lockheed drops out; others weighing risks in face of intense scrutiny
by Ian Hoffman, August 7, 2004
Lockheed Martin Corp. bowed out of the competition to run Los Alamos National Laboratory on Friday, suggesting the troubled nuclear-weapons lab would require more time and energy to fix than the defense giant was willing to invest.
The withdrawal of the nation's largest defense contractor jolted other potential bidders eyeing the New Mexico lab.
Los Alamos' loss of two disks of classified data last month prompted a furor in Congress and calls for immediate removal of the University of California as the lab operator, underscoring the risks for other would-be operators.
"What a lot of folks are worried about at Los Alamos is, can you go in there under today's conditions and be successful?" said Bill Madia, executive vice president of the nonprofit Battelle Memorial Institute, operator of four U.S. Department of Energy labs.
"For Lockheed to walk away is a serious signal to the marketplace that this is a serious challenge and contractors need to be cautious in making this decision," Madia said.
Lockheed's decision was a blow to the University of California and the University of Texas, both of whom were talking to the Bethesda, Md.-based firm about teaming up on a Los Alamos bid.
Lockheed executives called counterparts at the two universities Friday and ended those negotiations.
"It was a question of resources," said Lockheed spokeswoman Wendy Owen. Lockheed Martin already runs Sandia National Laboratories, a nuclear-weapons lab in New Mexico and California, as well as Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory for the U.S. Department of Energy and is part of a three-way team running Aldermaston Atomic Weapons Establishment, the sole British weapons lab.
Lockheed executives chose to focus on those labs, Owen said.
She acknowledged that recent security and safety incidents factored into Lockheed's "look at the resources it would take to manage the contract."
Officials at the University of Texas and the University of California said they were talking to other defense, engineering and security contractors to round out bidding teams. Boards of the two universities haven't made the final decision on whether to bid, and probably won't until they see the bid specifications, due next month.
Randa Safady, spokeswoman for the University of Texas, said, "If we do indeed decide to move forward, we would still want to consider partnering with an industry in safety, security, environment and operations and all the other important areas that Lockheed Martin would have been involved in."
UC spokesman Chris Harrington declined to elaborate on the school's talks with San Francisco-based Bechtel National and others.
"There's just some different players on the field today than there were yesterday," he said.
But Lockheed was hardly one of many equals. The universities were courting the firm because the Energy Department recently had re-awarded its Sandia contractor to Lockheed, and it was the only firm experienced in running a nuclear weapons laboratory.
Originally published in the Oakland Tribune.
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