Small Businesses Benefit from Berkeley Lab’s Recovery Act Funds
Funds also create jobs—at the Lab, at small businesses and down the chain.
As funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act start to flow into Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, much of that funding is flowing out to small businesses. To date, Berkeley Lab has been awarded more than $220 million in Recovery Act funds, a large part of which will go toward infrastructure projects and buying and upgrading computers and scientific equipment, such as microscopes, lasers and gene sequencers.
One of the largest subcontracts to receive Recovery Act funding at Berkeley Lab is with Clauss Construction, which falls into one of the federal government’s special subcategories of small businesses as it is owned by a service-disabled veteran.
Based in Lakeside, California, outside San Diego, Clauss had been awarded a $24.8 million contract back in July 2008 for demolition of the Bevatron, a massive facility that was once one of the world’s leading particle accelerators. It was a three-year contract, with the second and third year dependent on future funding.
Fortunately for Clauss, the Department of Energy announced in March that the demolition would receive $14.3 million in Recovery Act funding, guaranteeing that the work would continue uninterrupted into the second year of the contract. Source: Excerpt from LBNL Newletter October 28, 2009