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From
Weapons Complex Monitor
March 17, 2011
Nat'l Academy's Weapons Lab Panel Hits The Road
The National Academy of Sciences panel tasked with studying the health of the National Nuclear Security Administration's three nuclear weapons laboratories and the impact privatizing management has had on the institutions will hold public meetings at all three of the labs it is studying over the next month or so. The panel, which is chaired by former Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Director Charles Shank and UCLA professor Kumar Patel, will host a meeting next week at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque and will visit Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories in April.
At the March 22-23 Sandia meeting, the panel will hear testimony from a handful of lab officials, including current lab director Paul Hommert as well as retired lab director Tom Hunter and Sandia Site Office Manager Patty Wagner. The panel will visit Los Alamos April 11-12 and Lawrence Livermore April 26-27, but agendas for those meetings have not been released.
16 comments:
Welcome to our lovely Potemkin Village of science, National Academy Weapons Lab Panel board members!
You can feel secure in knowing that your nation's strategic nuclear weapon research labs are in good "for profit" hands and being well managed by Bechtel Construction Company. All's well.
Hope you enjoy the wonderful banquet we have prepared for you and have a nice trip back home on the Bechtel Gulfstream jet. See ya at the Bohemian Grove encampment in July!
Thanks for the head-ups on the March 22-23 meeting at Sandia which was 2 days ago. Can anyone provide any details on what the esteemed National Academy is reporting? All due respect but I do not believe that a handful of esteemed scientists will have any impact on the Bechtel finely-tuned megamachine machine that is running the Labs. All aboard....., next stop Sandia.
Here is the link to the National Academies web page:
http://www8.nationalacademies.org/cp/projectview.aspx?key=49314
WEAPONS PANEL LINE OF INQUIRY 1 -- Have the mid-year severances been announced yet?
SITUATION REPORT - The short-term budget shortfalls due CR constipation are forcing viable programs into an urgent layoff situation, even if the longer-term outlook is less damaging.
Coupled with LLNS cowardice to loan funds "at risk" temporarily to the affected programs to cover the shortfall, the impact is amplified.
GENERALIZED QUESTION - LLNS has collected over $75M in fee since 2007 and will collect another $50M this year.
For what? They are too cheap to support their own programs.
With leadership like this, who needs Osama bin Laden?
WEAPONS PANEL LINE OF INQUIRY 2 -
Can either lab produce a viable weapons design under current management?
SITUATION REPORT 2
Since 2007, the design labs have been inundated under a Tsunami of DOE directives, large and small. The lack of management willingness or structure to organize, focus, resist and prioritize the competing DOE "shout outs", undermines the mission of the labs and demoralizes the confused technical staff.
KEY QUESTIONS - Does the wonderwall of external requests, demands, stipulations and directives so undermine the missions that they cannot be accomplished? Is the complex in a position to even judge whether they can be successful?
COROLLARY - Why are the labs not able to manage the impact of external distubances on the primary missions? Are the Director's staffs incompetent, or is there a failure in the design of the contract and its interaction with the primary sponsor?
WEAPONS PANEL LINE OF INQUIRY 3 - Is senior management supporting the Director competent to manage the challenges posed by reduced public support, unfocused DOE intervention, competition for funds with less competent but stronger and more nible congressionally-supported national lab competitors under the unfocessed and uncommitted NNSA long-term weapons complex confusion?
SITUATION REPORT - Senior staff is now mandated by contract, with short-term occupants with no understanding of the labs nor a commitment to their future. Formerly these positions, occupied by scientists like Sewell, May, Mara, Kuckuck, Foster ably aided Directors in managing the deluge of interests that could have undermined the labs primary missions. Those training grounds are now gone.
Corollary - Where will the next generation of weapons science leadership come from?
Will the contract structure allow them to do what is necessary to accomplish the mission in spite of able established pockets of resistance?
LINE OF INQUIRY 4 - Are the financial incentives aligned with mission objectives.
SITUATION REPORT
Currently the bulk of the value provided to customers is by indivdual contributor. Mid-level and support functions barely contribute and often inhibit individual contributors focus on mission objectives.
Futher, the bulk of remuneration, $50M goes to a organization that provides essentially nothing. Incentives and rewards seem inverted compared to the effort that must be attained for mission success.
Corollary - Is the contract structure capable of sustaining the long-term mission or was it a mistake, crafted by NNSA procurement specialists that fundamentally misunderstood the scientific, organizational and political challenges that faces the missions future.
To expect LLNS and LANS to use their fee awards to support DOE/NNSA programs to avoid short-term layoffs is sheer naivete. They are for-profit corporations and have no corporate stake in any particular program's funding status. Only someone who thinks he still works for UC should be surprised at this.
We are talking about very short term loans to overcome bureacratic wrangling. Perhaps 10 days "loan" of $1-2M.
From the public's perspective, what is the purpose of a management contractor if not to support the mission? What is the fee for?
The contribution of Riley Bechtel and his band of incompetents has been less than zero. Washington group and U Texas also zero. UC has a presence, but no interest in any fee. Batelle is still invisible , seemingly a marketing organization with little to offer.
Why have them?
LINE OF INQUIRY 5 - Sponsor
NNSA , is it relevant or an impediment to the mission?
LINE OF INQUIRY 6
Is DOE and adequate steward of the national energy and weapons missions? Does is have adequate energy to accomplish missions in the face of Congressional adversity?
Dir Shank is listed as a guest staff on the LBNL website. His email is
CVShank@lbl.gov
I will be sending him an email with my thoughts on the joke moving from UC to the LLC has been at LLNL.
Don't know if he'll actually take them into account, but at least I'll give it a try.
From the public's perspective, what is the purpose of a management contractor if not to support the mission? What is the fee for?
March 24, 2011 2:23 PM
Unfortunately, the public's perspective has absolutely nothing to do with this. It is completely irrelevant. The public barely knows DOE exists, let alone NNSA or the weapons labs.
PS: The fee is for managing and operating the labs, not for "supporting" the programs. Why should the contractor care what programs are or are not funded? If you really don't know what the fee is for you probably do still think you work for UC.
These are a lot of good questions that the National Academy is asking. Question is whether the National Academy final report will collect dust like the LANS upward employee survey or result in some real changes. I suspect it will be the former.
I would say the LLNS takeover has been a mixed bag. I like the corporate professionalism they are try to put in place. I know the academic types don't like it, but it is making life a little easier. On the very negative side, management has continued to bloat. They laid off a thousand plus of which this included only a couple managers. Managers that have failed as division leaders are never laid off, they just make up another position for them. GS has this PD setup that is supposed to support the programs but has not. Yet our overhead is parasitized to support their high salaries. With the CR we experiencing a lot of people who will not have funds to pay for their project work. The reaction? Send the workers out to get money. Why do we pay these PD folks? We are experiencing some tight financial times with the CR and it is time for George Miller to step up and downsize management by 50%. Then we would have plenty of money to do the projects AND reduce overhead burdens AND be more competitive on price with the other labs and contractors. And the view from the trenches is the layers of management above us do little to nothing to help get the work done. Most of the time they are doing things to try to justify their existence. If a large chunk of management went away, I do believe things would operate more effectively. Somehow I doubt the Nat'l Acad. panel will comment on this gross inefficiency.
Anyone remember the DoD report that came out about 2 years ago which lambasted the destruction of the staff morale at the weapon labs and made several observations about the poor quality of oversight from an overly bureaucratic, broken and incredible risk averse NNSA? What come about from that report? Nothing, that's what.
Same thing with the Stimson Center report that also came out about the same time. It clearly elaborated the very same problems, yet like the DoD report, was totally ignored by the politicians in power.
There is a reason for this and it envolves money. Some people in very powerful positions like having the NNSA labs run by money-grubbing outfits like Bechtel. Our Congress (both parties) are bought and paid for by the corporate lobbyists. Follow the money and you'll find all the answers you need as to why this nation is currently headed on the corrupt path that you see before you.
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