Contributed anonymously:
Sure doesn't look like it.
WFO has multiple extra taxes taken out(Safety and Security, Facility Administrative Charge, etc).
Also, the chain of command to approve and accept the money takes at least a month, often more. There are approximately 9 levels of "oversight" that need to approve the money. Let's ask the question- is incoming money ever rejected? My guess is no- so what is the delay and multiple approvers for? One time I did not hound each of the nine "approvers" incessantly, and it took 4 months to get my money in- this is 4 MONTHS after a "check" was cut by the sponsor. This whole system needs to be streamlined. Why are there so many barriers?
LLNS this is a cry for help- bring us into a modern age of WFO! We need "support" services who actually "serve" the scientific mission. We are in competition with other labs and companies. When we delay accepting money and demand excessive overhead rates, we are slowly, sponsor by sponsor, putting ourselves out of the WFO business. LLNS wake up and take this seriously before it is too late.
Sure doesn't look like it.
WFO has multiple extra taxes taken out(Safety and Security, Facility Administrative Charge, etc).
Also, the chain of command to approve and accept the money takes at least a month, often more. There are approximately 9 levels of "oversight" that need to approve the money. Let's ask the question- is incoming money ever rejected? My guess is no- so what is the delay and multiple approvers for? One time I did not hound each of the nine "approvers" incessantly, and it took 4 months to get my money in- this is 4 MONTHS after a "check" was cut by the sponsor. This whole system needs to be streamlined. Why are there so many barriers?
LLNS this is a cry for help- bring us into a modern age of WFO! We need "support" services who actually "serve" the scientific mission. We are in competition with other labs and companies. When we delay accepting money and demand excessive overhead rates, we are slowly, sponsor by sponsor, putting ourselves out of the WFO business. LLNS wake up and take this seriously before it is too late.
Comments
Anyone who has had to jump through the hoops of fire to bring in this funding knows the true story. And when the money is finally ready to be used, the labor costs of the NNSA labs mean that $500 K will only support one scientist for about a year.
It's hopeless. Your efforts at bringing it these projects don't even get rewarded by lab upper management. Give it up!
It NNSA, especially the site offices that give lip service to WFO. They do everything in their power to make WFO hard at the labs. NNSA is about nuke weapons, not WFO, so why would they care in the first place. Talk to anyone who has had to deal with LSO on a LLNL WFO project. LSO has killed more WFO for LLNL than you could possibly imagine or will every really know.
NNSA has been mandated to destroy the weapons complex. By regulation and budgetary means they will reduce the workforce to unsustainable levels, then close facilities one by one.
WFO is merely a trick to give the workforce hope they can hang on a few more years. Don't fall for it.
Sad, but true. How else to explain the relentless downward spiral that is happening at the NNSA weapon labs under their control? Incompetence by NNSA doesn't even begin to explain it.
They've been given orders from above and will keep on this dismal path until over half of the complex has disappeared and what is left is mostly production facilities that are kept on life-support levels of funding.
There is no "magic fix". To put it simply, the NNSA labs are dieing.