Saturday, June 23, 2018
Protests
Y-12 security breach could impact LANL bid protests A protest is likely to be lodged against any decision that picked a winner that had Battelle on the team. The RFP scoring on prior performance had to be very low for Battelle, considering that the Y-12 guard force was a Battelle operation under ORNL. Not only the nun getting through the fences, but the cheating scandals on tests and other public failures. These were reported as some of the greatest failures in the US nuclear weapons program, and they happened in the time window of the RFP scoring. It is really hard to see how NNSA can avoid a protest of any decision that had Battelle on the winning team.
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7 comments:
This is incorrect. Security was a Wackenhut contact covering all Oak Ridge sites, separate from the M&O’s. In fact the Augustine commission that studied the breach noted that the disconnected M&O and security contracts was a major factor contributing to the event. Y12 M&O was BWXT and Bechtel at the time but the event occured outside the 5 year window for past performance so will not have affected their scores.
fact check: During the summer of 2012, when the break-in occurred at Y-12, Wackenhut Services, Inc., was responsible for the security officers at the site. The company had been founded in the early nineteen-fifties by George Wackenhut, a former F.B.I. agent who pioneered the private security industry, gaining contracts from corporations and federal agencies, establishing close ties with the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. But in 2012 Wackenhut Services was no longer an American company. It had been acquired by Group 4 Falck, once a Danish company, now a British one, known as G4S.
from New Yorker https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/03/09/break-in-at-y-12
I doubt that there will be a protest. Again I heard that NNSA was very careful about this. The Y-12 incident was some time ago and Battelle in charge of a large number of other organizations and has done fairly well. It is triad get over it, it is the only one that makes sense. Bechtel has been an absolute disaster U-Texas has little experience, so you are just left with UC-Battelle. It is done go on with your life.
Nice theory, but Battelle had nothing to do with the Y-12 fiasco. At the time, Babcock & Wilcox and Bechtel had the Y-12 contract, and WSI Oak Ridge (formerly Wackenhut) the security contract for both Y-12 and ORNL. Battelle's only role in this has been managing ORNL (with the University of Tennessee), for which DOE has routinely given high grades.
Refs:
http://knoxblogs.com/atomiccity/2009/04/30/contractor_fees_ornl_vs_y12_sc/
https://oakridgetoday.com/2013/03/25/y-12-security-breach-wsi-leaves-oak-ridge/
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3-2u2lhGO4w
The original poster is flat wrong. Y-12 security forces were a separate contractor from the M&O, and Battelle is not and never has been involved in the Y-12 M&O operations or the proforce contract. See the official report at https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/IG-0868_0.pdf.
LANL has plenty to worry about with Battelle as it is -- notably a near-zero tolerance for dissent from the corporate line and a strong "job-shop" culture where firings with funding fluctuations are common -- but making crap up doesn't help the conversation about LANL.
The protest period must be coming to a close is already closed, do does this mean no one protested?
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