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Sunday, December 25, 2016

All eyes will be on the new manager of Sandia Labs

Thought you might find this editorial bungle of interest. 

Or, maybe it’s buried in the fine print along with language re taking over NNSS and nobody’s found it yet?

The editorial was in the print edition, but apparently has been pulled from the on-line edition.


All eyes will be on the new manager of Sandia Labs
·         Albuquerque Journal – Editorial Page
·         24 Dec 2016
·          
As of June 1, Sandia National Laboratories — a huge driver of the local and state economies — comes under new management.
National Technology & Engineering Solutions of Sandia, a subsidiary of Honeywell International, won a $2.6 billion contract to take over management of Sandia, one of the nation’s three nuclear weapons labs.
For the past 23 years, Sandia has been operated by Sandia Corporation, a Lockheed Martin company, for the U.S. Department of Energy.
Sandia Corp. has been an important community partner, working closely with the University of New Mexico, New Mexico State University and others, as well as Technology Ventures Corp., a nonprofit foundation set up by Lockheed Martin to accelerate efforts to take new lab technologies to market.
The vision is that NTESS, which includes major defense contractor Northrop Grumman and the Universities Research Association, will continue and expand these important relationships.
Joe Cecchi, dean of UNM’s School of Engineering and associate provost for national laboratory relations, said the university has partnered with Honeywell and Northrop Grumman in the past and expects that cooperation to continue.
Both UNM and NMSU are members of the Universities Research Association, a group of 89 universities in the United States and other countries that collaborate on efforts to build and operate laboratory facilities to promote research and education.
Sandia’s importance to the economy and national security is hard to overstate.
Though Sandia’s main campus is here in Albuquerque, it also operates Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. It primarily designs and maintains nuclear weapons, but it also works on defense systems, energy efficiency, security technology, atomic physics, computational sciences, biological sciences, nanoscience and other areas of national interest.
Sandia has an annual budget of $2.9 billion and employs more than 10,500 employees working in 700 buildings across 13,740 acres on Kirtland Air Force Base. Sandia also employs about 1,160 other employees and contractors.
New Mexico businesses received $382 million from SNL contracts in 2015 — 39 percent of the labs’ contract payments.
It’s likely NTESS will replace Sandia’s leadership team — including lab President and Director Jill Hruby, Deputy Director and Executive Vice President Kim Sawyer and a dozen other vice presidents who head different lab programs and divisions. Albuquerque will wait with great anticipation to see who will succeed these capable leaders.
Frank G. Klotz, undersecretary for nuclear security and NNSA administrator, praised the tough competition that led to the contract award. “The Sandia bid generated unprecedented interest from across industry, demonstrating that our improved acquisitions process is attracting high-quality competition and the best talent to serve NNSA’s mission.”
Congratulations to NTESS on winning the five-year (renewable for another five years) contract and welcome to the new team
J. F

19 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think the idea of having NTESS run everything is the way to go. It makes it simple and much easier to run. It puts all the different locations on the same page. Additionally it gets rid of any university interference in how the labs run which as you can see as been very problematic at LLNL and LANL.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous said...

I think the idea of having NTESS run everything is the way to go.

How is this any different than today with Lockheed Martin? Nothing seems new here, replace Lockheed Martin with Northrop and Honeywell. A weak university connection (it was previously a weak connection with University of Texas). So what is your point?

Anonymous said...

So what is your point?

December 26, 2016 at 3:42 AM

My point is to take it to the logical conclusion of complete utter monolithic for profit control, out of the reach of the public, scientists, and even the government. If we give total control to a corporation beyond the reach of any law than we will never hear about another goddamm problem from these labs again. All problems will be taken care of swiftly and silently all will be good. Tell me the down side to this?

Anonymous said...

Lack of basic scientific integrity seems like a pretty serious downside.

Anonymous said...

Lack of basic scientific integrity seems like a pretty serious downside.

December 26, 2016 at 6:05 PM

I am confused, I thought all the problems at the labs where due to scientists, you know the old cowboy thing? Perhaps an iron hand around the necks of these scientists would fix the problems.

Anonymous said...

Ever since the labs have been outsourced to a group which includes private corporations the costs have gone through the roof, lots of half baked managers have been cycled in and out, plenty of corruption, nepotism and middle thru upper management getting paid way too much for being stupid. Overhead is out of control and lots of underperforming, no skills employees in the ranks.

Anonymous said...

Ever since the labs have been outsourced to a group which includes private corporations the costs have gone through the roof, lots of half baked managers have been cycled in and out, plenty of corruption, nepotism and middle thru upper management getting paid way too much for being stupid. Overhead is out of control and lots of underperforming, no skills employees in the ranks.

December 27, 2016 at 5:39 AM

So what if they are screwing over scientists than they are doing their job. You think scientists are honest good people, just look at what happened at LLNL with the "scientist" going to jail. At LANL WHL went to jail, say what you want about Bechtel but their managers are not going to jail. The problems at the labs are clear and have been clear for time. Crush the scientist and no one goes to jail and all problems are solved. What is so hard to understand about this?

Anonymous said...

"Though Sandia’s main campus is here in Albuquerque, it also operates Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California."

Really? I've always thought SNL, LLNL and LANL were operated by different bodies - I had no idea that LLNL was operated by Sandia . . .

Anonymous said...

You think men are honest good people, just look at what happened to all those men serving time in prison. Crush all men, and no more of them will go to jail.

Anonymous said...

Sandia has an office in Livermore. They do not manage LLNL.

Anonymous said...

Sandia has an office in Livermore. They do not manage LLNL.

December 31, 2016 at 2:29 PM

Uh, everyone here already knew that.

Anonymous said...

http://ntess-llc.com
the web site is up (perhaps this is not new but it was to me)
no real content yet of course

Anonymous said...

What we know so far: NTESS hired a logo design team from the 1980's

Anonymous said...

Its clear all contributors here do not understand that LLNL and LANL, especially LLNL are design and engineering labs, and previously, Pre Bechtel, incubators for ideas and concepts by a huge brain trust which is long gone exactly BECAUSE of no more UC involvement. The real brain trust has fled. The rest of the "Labs" in the complex are production and manufacturing facilities. Therefore as the first poster (Bechtel hack) December 25, 2016 at 6:56 PM stated putting "all locations on the same page" is impossible as they all conduct different types of operations and functions. THAT'S why the perception is that LANL and LLNL have been so called "problematic". Its actually because those 2 labs do not fit into the production and manufacturing posture, Not because of any interference by the UC.

the Complex was historically designed this way on purpose so not to have all the eggs in one basket. Learn your history before you think you speak with knowledge. Obviously these commenters have no idea of the history of the complex and how it evolved in this manner. Fools.....

Anonymous said...

If you really read the historical documents, you will find that the complex was not "designed", it just happened that way.

Anonymous said...

Trump will move the NNSA to DOD. He does give a crap about separation.

Anonymous said...

*doesn't

Anonymous said...

the complex was not "designed", it just happened that way.

January 13, 2017 at 3:22 PM

Incorrect. Leslie Groves had a very specific vision and he made it happen (or at least start to happen). For example, LASL Z Division did not "just happen" to become Sandia Labs.

Anonymous said...

You are dead wrong. Sandia was never a part of Groves' plan. Z division (AKA Sandia Site) happened in 1945 when Oppie reorganized the lab, and needed some extra space for the parts shop. By that time there was no space left on the hill. Read up on history, it helps.

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