Sandia Labs celebrates ‘very positive’ year
Director cites 6.3% increase in subcontracts with NM firms
Sandia National Laboratories continues to be an enormous boon to the state’s economy, spending more than $400 million on subcontracts with New Mexico businesses in 2017.
That’s up around $24 million, or 6.3 percent, from last year, according to the labs’ annual economic impact report released Tuesday.
“Overall, just a very positive year for Sandia in contributing to the national economy,” Sandia director Stephen Younger, who took the lab’s helm in May 2017, said in an interview with Journal reporters and editors Tuesday.
Of the money spent with New Mexico small businesses, 17 percent was with small disadvantaged businesses, 16 percent with femaleowned small businesses and 8 percent with veteran-owned small businesses.
Younger touted the labs’ use of small businesses.
“In terms of economic impact, there are few things you can do with a bigger impact than creating small businesses and stimulating small businesses,” he said.
In 2016, 48 percent of Sandia’s subcontracting dollars were awarded to small businesses. Today, Younger said it’s about 53 percent.
The goal is to reach 60 percent in five years, which was part of the Honeywell subsidiary’s winning proposal for the lab contract.
“This is going to require some serious effort, not just in waiting for small businesses to come to us, but to go out and look for small businesses,” Younger said.
The lab began holding monthly open house events for small businesses in 2016 to communicate services the labs need and assist small-business owners with the complicated federal procurement process.
Another tactic Sandia has used to increase numbers of small businesses is to shift expired long-term contracts with large companies to small businesses when possible, sometimes parceling the scope of work into smaller subcontracts more accessible to small businesses.
“We’ve increased the number of procurements below $150,000,” Younger said.
Sandia employees also spent $15.5 million in New Mexico using procurement cards, and the lab paid $83.6 million in gross receipts taxes.
The lab’s expenditures for fiscal year 2017, which spanned Oct. 1, 2016, to Sept. 30, 2017, totaled $3.1 billion, continuing an upward trend over the past several years.
That number is expected to grow for yet another year, Younger said, as business continues to build.
He estimated an additional $100 million to $200 million in spending in 2018.
“We’re in a very interesting time right now in that the government is about to release the nuclear posture review,” Younger said. “Anything in the nuclear posture review that is different from today will result in increased work at Sandia.”
Nuclear posture reviews are congressionally mandated, and examine the country’s nuclear policy, strategy and capabilities.
National security, including nuclear deterrence and nonproliferation, is Sandia’s main mission.
The workforce of the labs, which includes a smaller branch in Livermore, Calif., also has continued to swell, growing by 1,400 since 2014 to 12,258 employees.
Adding diversity to the labs’ workforce has also been a goal of Younger and his team, though only two women and one Native American are on the lab’s 12-person leadership team.
Younger called those numbers “disappointing,” but he said Sandia remains committed to increasing diversity among management.
“We’re entering a world of unprecedented complexity. … We need a more diverse set of views in understanding how the world works,” he said.