Regents Advance UC’s Chance at Lab Contracts

The University of California Board of Regents took steps Thursday to allow the university to compete for the contracts to continue managing three national energy laboratories, including nuclear weapons facilities.

For many years, the university has managed Los Alamos National Laboratory and its sister nuclear weapons design facility, Lawrence Livermore, on a no-bid contract for the U.S. Energy Department. UC also runs the Lawrence Berkeley lab, an energy research center near the Berkeley campus, for the Energy Department.

But in April, after months of allegations of fraud, lax oversight and security lapses at Los Alamos, the Energy Department said it would require UC, for the first time, to compete for the right to run the renowned lab in New Mexico, when its current contract expires in September 2005.

Congress has since ordered that UC’s Livermore and Berkeley lab contracts be put up for bid as well.

UC officials say they have not decided whether to compete for any of the contracts, but Thursday’s actions help clear the way for such a competition.

The regents voted to allow UC President Robert C. Dynes to hire outside companies to help the university improve its business practices -- the subject of much of the recent criticism -- and help it prepare for any eventual bid.

They also empowered Dynes to extend any of the three lab contracts for up to two years, if requested by the Energy Department, while a competition is being conducted.

The Berkeley lab contract, for example, is due to expire at the end of this month and UC officials said they expected a contract extension.

Robert Foley, UC’s vice president for laboratory management, said the university was in final negotiations with two outside firms, one specializing in business practices, the other in “high-hazard operations,” and said both could have staff members in place at Los Alamos by early February.

“What we do here cannot be seen as business as usual,” Foley said, noting that the university had been publicly chastised by the Energy Department and Congress for its running of the labs.

Dynes said the university needed outside partners to help raise its performance in the areas of security and business practices.

“In other areas, we have the expertise and we’ve done a good job, but we need the security and we need audit help. We need to bring in national standards in these areas and that’s what we’re doing,” he said.

UC officials said money for bid preparation would come from the university’s lab management fees from the federal government and would not involve any of the system’s badly stretched state funding.