The Billion-Dollar Opportunity in Your Backyard
Amy Lientz & Cody Doig · RizeX Monthly Mastermind · Eastern Idaho
Most Eastern Idaho business owners assume the Idaho National Laboratory is only for nuclear engineers and scientists. Amy Lientz and Cody Doig came to set the record straight: INL pushes nearly $2 billion in annual business volume, 38% of it flows through procurement, and over a billion dollars of that has landed in Eastern Idaho businesses over the past decade. The door is open — most local businesses just don’t know how to walk through it.
What Amy & Cody Covered
INL Is More Than Nuclear. Amy grounded the room in what INL actually does today — and it goes well beyond reactors. The lab leads nationally in critical infrastructure protection and cybersecurity, is at the center of the small modular reactor project slated to break ground by 2026, helped power the Mars rover, and is actively working on microgrid systems, rare earth material extraction, and one of the highest-performing data centers in the West. Each of those research areas comes with a vendor and supply chain — and INL wants to fill it locally.
What They Actually Buy. Cody broke procurement into five categories that surprised the room: commodities (paper, chemicals, gloves — everything), construction and facility upgrades, equipment and instrumentation, information technology, and professional and technical services. In fiscal year 2018 alone INL spent $478 million through procurement. The message was direct: if you think you can’t do business with INL because you’re not in nuclear, you’re wrong.
The Five Steps to Get In. Cody gave the room a specific, actionable checklist — not a vague invitation to “reach out.” To be vendor-ready when an opportunity hits:
- Get a Dun & Bradstreet number
- Obtain an EIN if you don’t have one
- Register in SAM (System for Award Management)
- Register in INL’s vendor portal at inl.gov
- Submit a capability statement to the small business program manager
The vendor portal step is the one most businesses skip — and it’s the one that costs them opportunities. When a project need comes up fast, procurement goes to vendors who are already cleared and papered. If you’re not in the portal, you’re not in the conversation.
Meet Stacy Francis. The single highest-leverage action any small business in the room could take, according to Cody: get to know Stacy Francis, INL’s small business program manager. She advocates for keeping work local, signs off on any contract above the small business threshold, and is the connective tissue between INL’s project needs and Eastern Idaho vendors. If you don’t know her yet, that’s the first thing to fix.
What the Room Walked Away With
A concrete to-do list: get registered in SAM and INL’s vendor portal, pull together a capability statement, and get it to Stacy Francis or Cody directly. INL also recently launched an opportunities portal on inl.gov where upcoming procurement needs are posted in advance — Cody acknowledged it’s still building out but encouraged businesses to check it regularly as larger deals start appearing there.
A Moment That Landed
Amy mentioned almost in passing that INL is heading back to Mars in 2020 — and that a local company, Premier Technologies, is already doing fabrication work supporting that mission. The room got quiet for a second. A business in Eastern Idaho is helping build hardware that’s going to Mars. That’s the kind of supply chain opportunity sitting right here — most people just don’t know to look for it.
“Anything we can keep local, we want to do. We have no intention of changing that.” — Cody Doig
“Tell all your friends — we are open for business. It’s an exciting time and we need a lot of help.” — Amy Lientz
About Amy & Cody
Amy Lientz leads INL’s industry partnerships and innovation initiatives, connecting the lab’s research capabilities with private sector opportunities across energy and national security. Cody Doig oversees procurement and acquisitions, with a straightforward goal: keep as much INL business in Eastern Idaho as possible. Both are genuinely accessible — and that’s not something you hear often about a national laboratory.
Learn more about doing business with INL ?
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