Meeting gets small businesses, DOE in touch

CARLSBAD — A meeting hosted by U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich encouraged small area businesses to look into opportunities to provide products and services to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant and other Department of Energy facilities on Wednesday.

The meeting allowed small businesses to meet with representatives from the Supply Chain Management Center, an organization that works with Department of Energy contractors to connect them with contractors and subcontractors to provide basic goods and services, and learn more about their procurement process.

"It's important that our small local businesses have a fair chance to compete for the opportunity to supply commodities and provide services to all of our DOE facilities," Heinrich said to a crowd of around 75 people.

Earlier in the year, Heinrich hosted a similar workshop in Albuquerque aimed at helping businesses connect with Sandia and Los Alamos national laboratories.

"I thought it was important to do a more regionally specific event," Heinrich said.

Marty Rodriguez, an employee with Albuquerque-based Frank's Supply, said his company already works with the two labs but he came from Hobbs to learn more about getting involved with WIPP.

Frank's Supply provides safety supplies and other basic supplies to the labs.

Nuclear Waste Partnership president and project manager Phil Breidenbach said that WIPP currently works with 30 small businesses.

"We hope through this small business workshop we build on those relationships with those folks and build additional relationships," Breidenbach said.

Heinrich said he hopes getting area small businesses involved with the Department of Energy may help offset the economic downturn due to oil and gas.

"...many of the great local companies here in southeastern New Mexico that have a long record of providing services to the oil and gas operations could stand to benefit if they were able to compete for contracts to provide services to our Department of Energy sites like WIPP," he said.