Lockheed official optimistic on contracts
 By Frank Munger, News-Sentinel Oak Ridge bureau
 OAK RIDGE -- Robert J. Stevens, the Lockheed Martin executive in
 charge of work for the U.S. Department of Energy, said Thursday he
 believes there's still a chance the corporation's Oak Ridge
 contracts will be extended without competition.
 Stevens said he formed that impression based on talks with officials
 at DOE headquarters in Washington, although he declined to say who
 he talked to or give details of what was said.
 Lockheed Martin holds two major DOE contracts in Oak Ridge, one
 for management of Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the other for
 operating the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant.
 Both of the contracts are due to expire in 2000, and DOE is on
 record as saying it plans to put the contracts up for competitive
 bids. In 1996, then-Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary gave Lockheed
 Martin two-year extensions on each of the Oak Ridge contracts, but
 vowed to seek bids after that as part the contract reform
 initiative.
 DOE has said nothing publicly to indicate its position has changed,
 although Lockheed Martin officials have hinted for months that
 another contract renewal is possible.
 Stevens, who visited Oak Ridge for the first time Thursday since
 getting his job in January, said DOE had indicated to him that an
 open contract competition was not "mandatory" in Oak Ridge. But he
 also said he had not held any direct negotiations regarding Lockheed
 Martin's contracts and did not know what it would take to get DOE
 officials to renew the contracts beyond 2000.
 Lockheed Martin Corp. is engaged in a heated contract dispute at a
 DOE laboratory in Idaho regarding the company's cleanup of a
 radioactive site known as Pit 9. The project is far over cost and
 behind schedule, drawing the ire of environmental regulators.
 Asked if Lockheed Martin's work on Pit 9 might hamper the
 company's contract situation in Oak Ridge, Stevens said, "I
 would hope not. ... It is an anomaly."
 Knoxville News Sentinel 13 March 1998
 This show the wide scope of Aviation Industry involvement. Jim
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