All eyes will be on the new manager of Sandia Labs

As of June 1, Sandia National Laboratories — a huge driver of the local and state economies — comes under new management.

National Technology & Engineering Solutions of Sandia, a subsidiary of Honeywell International, won a $2.6 billion contract to take over management of Sandia, one of the nation’s three nuclear weapons labs.

For the past 23 years, Sandia has been operated by Sandia Corporation, a Lockheed Martin company, for the U.S. Department of Energy.

Sandia Corp. has been an important community partner, working closely with the University of New Mexico, New Mexico State University and others, as well as Technology Ventures Corp., a nonprofit foundation set up by Lockheed Martin to accelerate efforts to take new lab technologies to market.

The vision is that NTESS, which includes major defense contractor Northrop Grumman and the Universities Research Association, will continue and expand these important relationships.

Joe Cecchi, dean of UNM’s School of Engineering and associate provost for national laboratory relations, said the university has partnered with Honeywell and Northrop Grumman in the past and expects that cooperation to continue.

Both UNM and NMSU are members of the Universities Research Association, a group of 89 universities in the United States and other countries that collaborate on efforts to build and operate laboratory facilities to promote research and education.

Sandia’s importance to the economy and national security is hard to overstate.

Though Sandia’s main campus is here in Albuquerque, it also operates Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. It primarily designs and maintains nuclear weapons, but it also works on defense systems, energy efficiency, security technology, atomic physics, computational sciences, biological sciences, nanoscience and other areas of national interest.

Sandia has an annual budget of $2.9 billion and employs more than 10,500 employees working in 700 buildings across 13,740 acres on Kirtland Air Force Base. Sandia also employs about 1,160 other employees and contractors.

New Mexico businesses received $382 million from SNL contracts in 2015 — 39 percent of the labs’ contract payments.

It’s likely NTESS will replace Sandia’s leadership team — including lab President and Director Jill Hruby, Deputy Director and Executive Vice President Kim Sawyer and a dozen other vice presidents who head different lab programs and divisions. Albuquerque will wait with great anticipation to see who will succeed these capable leaders.

Frank G. Klotz, undersecretary for nuclear security and NNSA administrator, praised the tough competition that led to the contract award. “The Sandia bid generated unprecedented interest from across industry, demonstrating that our improved acquisitions process is attracting high-quality competition and the best talent to serve NNSA’s mission.”

Congratulations to NTESS on winning the five-year (renewable for another five years) contract and welcome to the new team.