POJOAQUE — Los Alamos National Laboratory flexed its economic muscles Thursday, holding out expectations for spending $1.7 billion dollars between now and the end of 2015 to finish its comprehensive environmental cleanup project. Approximately $900 million of that would be issued through four master contracts scheduled to be awarded next spring.

"We're getting together a stable of contractors we can use to complete our work by 2015," said Gordon Dover, deputy director for stimulus projects at the lab, who introduced the mega-procurement process at a business networking forum Friday at the Cities of Gold Convention Center.

The master contract idea resembles the setup for the current $212 million recovery project.

Dover said that effort has saved money and is delivering more work than expected, so it was a good model to build on. He said the lab and its contractors had demolished 15 of the 24 buildings at the old plutonium processing site, and the remediation of one of the oldest landfills is on schedule. Thirteen of 16 water wells for testing and monitoring have been completed, with two more drilled but not yet finished. That contract has another year years to go, and those contracts will be expiring.

With the new contracts coming into effect, lab officials believe they will be up to the task of meeting the cleanup chores and fulfilling their 2005 consent order with the state of New Mexico before the 2015 deadline.

After winning one of the four contract awards, selected partnerships become eligible for work under multiple task orders that are written in chunks from $500,000 to $10 million at a time. Normally 2-4 companies bid for the contracts together, to cover the variable work dimensions.

The four main areas covered by the new contracts will be waste management, waste characterization, processing and nuclear operations, environmental services and technical services.

Interspersed with presentations on each of those requirements, nearly 50 company officials practiced their "elevator pitches," as if selling their expertise to a potential customer during a brief elevator ride.

During these segments that were called "speed dating," company officials tried to catch the interest of LANL technical staffers and connect with potential partners for joint bids.

"I really didn't know what speed dating was," Dan Kwiecinski, a senior program manager with Earth and Environment Inc., a large English consultancy and project services company. "I feel a little more comfortable now that I can go home and tell my wife what I was doing."

About 100 companies participated. The contracts are specially targeted at small businesses, defined as under 500 employees. The procurement process awards proposals based on technically acceptable qualifications and low price. The lab gives an extra 5 percent for Northern New Mexico businesses.

Contact Roger Snodgrass at roger.sno@gmail.com.