DOE Awards High Marks to LANL, Sandia Contractors in FY 2025 Reviews

The contractors running Los Alamos and Sandia national laboratories both earned high marks from the Department of Energy in fiscal year 2025 performance reviews, with National Technology and Engineering Solutions of Sandia LLC scoring 92% and Triad National Security LLC, which operates LANL, scoring 89%.

The scores place both New Mexico contractors among the top tier of the eight nuclear weapons sites evaluated by the agency. The majority of those eight contractors received either "excellent" or "very good" ratings, the two highest rankings DOE awards. The reviews assess lab leadership, oversight of construction projects, and delivery on national security and weapons development commitments.

Sandia's performance report awarded excellent ratings for Goals 2, 3, and 4, covering global nuclear security and DOE strategic partnership objectives, and very good ratings for Goals 1, 5, and 6, which include nuclear weapons mission execution. At the goal level, Sandia scored 87% on nuclear weapons mission execution and 95% on global nuclear security, with Goal 3 receiving a perfect 100%.

Among the report's notable highlights for Sandia, the lab's contractor achieved a total strategic cost saving rate of 8.22%, more than double the Supply Chain Management Center's target of 4%. Sandia also hit a small business contracting rate of 66%, exceeding its annual goal by six percentage points and surpassing targets in all five socio-economic categories. DOE recognized the contractor with the Mentor of the Year, Protégé of the Year, and Small Business Program Manager of the Year awards.

On the infrastructure side, Sandia completed the Final Design Review of the Scorpius Injector ahead of schedule, enabling CD-2/3 approval and procurement of long-lead items. The lab also helped broker an interagency agreement with the Western Area Power Administration to supply electricity to NNSA's New Mexico facilities, including both Sandia and LANL sites, Los Alamos County itself, and Kirtland Air Force Base. DOE credited that deal with an anticipated cost avoidance of approximately $450 million for Sandia over 30 years.

The performance evaluations arrive as Sandia and Los Alamos have deepened collaboration on facilities management. Over the past three to four years, the two labs have aligned on a shared Building Information Modeling standard, with Los Alamos deploying software templates originally developed at Sandia. Bruce Gunderson, manager of the Virtual Build Environment Office at Los Alamos, said the partnership delivered immediate results: "Sandia already built something thoughtful and well-tested. We worked with their team to adapt it to LANL's needs, and it's already made a difference."

Matt Pacheco, Sandia's Facilities BIM team lead, framed the collaboration in terms of long-term efficiency: "The goal is to improve how project data is created, structured and used for both labs and across the life cycle of every facility." Michael Richardson, Engineering Services division leader at Los Alamos, pointed to the practical logic given the region's contractor landscape. Because New Mexico has a relatively small pool of engineering and construction firms that work with both labs, a unified BIM standard reduces friction for those contractors across simultaneous projects. "It's inspiring to see DOE laboratories increasingly solving problems as a united team rather than as individual sites," Richardson said. "The joint BIM standards from SNL and LANL exemplify this collaborative spirit."

Sandia computer-aided drafting and design technologist Jude Garcia described the operational payoff: "The 3D environment gives everyone from designers, contractors and facilities teams immediate access to a shared source of truth. That translates to faster decisions, fewer errors and ultimately cost savings."

The favorable reviews come despite longstanding oversight scrutiny of DOE's weapons complex. The Government Accountability Office has kept the Department of Energy and NNSA on its High Risk List for project mismanagement and waste since 1992. Nuclear watchdog Jay Coghlan of Nukewatch has noted that NNSA's eight contractor evaluations serve both as performance grades and as the basis for awarding performance fees to a complex that employs approximately 57,000 people, 95% of them contractor personnel.