Energy Dept. Pushes Small Business Agenda The Energy Department will release two major set-aside solicitations for IT services within the next few weeks as it begins the biggest round of competitive bidding in its history. Steven Mournighan, deputy director for procurement and assistance management, said a contract for IT services at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, now held by SAIC, has been restructured as a small business set-aside. He said it will likely require a team of small firms. It is due to be released in August. Also in August, Energy will drop an 8(a) set-aside RFP for management of communications and computer services at the proposed Yucca Mountain radioactive waste repository in Nevada. Mournighan said the set-asides are part of Secretary Spencer Abraham’s drive to improve the department’s small business performance. Energy has always lagged behind all other cabinet-level departments in small business prime contracting because it spends more than 80% of its procurement dollars on large management contracts at its national laboratories and other facilities. Just over 4% of its prime dollars went to small firms in 2003, according to the Federal Procurement Data Center. In a statement released at the department’s annual small business conference in Philadelphia July 7, Secretary Abraham said, “Small businesses have my personal commitment to increase the level of prime contracts and expand the type of subcontracts awarded to small business by the department’s facility management contractors.” Congress has directed the department to open its management contracts for competition; some of them have not been competed in 60 years. Mournighan said the department is looking to break up some of the management contracts, which typically run into the hundreds of millions or billions of dollars. “If they are broken out, the first thought in our brain is going to be small business,” he added. He said the first of those RFPs, for management of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, will be released in August and will serve as the template for others to follow. The Berkeley lab has been operated by the University of California since its founding as a private facility in 1931; the management contract has never been competed. Mournighan spoke July 20 at the Contract Services Association’s mid-year conference in Washington. The department’s large primes – including several major universities and giants such as Lockheed Martin — are fighting the proposed breakup of their contracts. At a May 18 hearing before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, a representative of the primes said it would be unfair to hold them accountable for management of the sites if some work was being done by contractors that are not under their control. The primes currently subcontract many management and operating tasks, but those subcontracts are not counted toward the department’s small business goal achievements. The committee chairman, Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM), questioned whether the department could manage numerous small contracts. (SAA, 5/28) To see the schedule for re-competing the national laboratory contracts, go to www.energy.gov, click on “Press Room” and find a press release from January 30, 2004.