In my opinion the current NNSA Lab "for profit" management fee structure has caused most of the damage to LLNL. The annual management fee is taken from the overhead "tax" and was not an added amount by DOE/NNSA to the Lab's annual budget. So this is an additional $40 - $45 million less that is available for Lab activities. While UC puts its half mostly back into UCOP funded research collaborations between UC campus and LLNL, the LLNS industrial partners pocket their share of the fee and use none of it for Lab activities.
Prior to LLNS the Lab had more overhead funding available for infrastructure projects and activities (aka GPP - General Plant Project). However since the management fee hit to the overhead, basically all direct GPP funded capital improvements have disappeared. A major reduction in the fee - which is being considered by DOE/NNSA - could free up $10 to $20 million a year for infrastructure and site improvement GPP projects depending on how much the Director's Office decided to lower the overhead rates.
Prior to LLNS the Lab had more overhead funding available for infrastructure projects and activities (aka GPP - General Plant Project). However since the management fee hit to the overhead, basically all direct GPP funded capital improvements have disappeared. A major reduction in the fee - which is being considered by DOE/NNSA - could free up $10 to $20 million a year for infrastructure and site improvement GPP projects depending on how much the Director's Office decided to lower the overhead rates.
Comments
Of course, none of it is true - whatever efficiency was gained by private companies managing the lab was eaten up by the management fee of LLNS.
Not to mention the fact that corporations have NO IDEA how to properly conduct science. (Whereas government agencies do.)
You tell me how a civil engineering contractor is going to "manage" research on fusion. Yeah, good luck - they aren't, and they haven't the foggiest about how to attract top talent. (Hint: it isn't by pissing off all the scientists who are actually worth their PhD with salary games and benefit cancellations.)
About 10 years ago, a research organization in Japan invited me to give a talk on an open scientific topic that had nothing to do with my Laboratory employment. The plan was for Japan to pay my travel expenses, and I would charge my time to vacation. This trip wasn't going to cost the Laboratory anything.
Can't do that. It's not that anyone at the Lab felt I shouldn't go or that the trip wouldn't be scientifically valuable, but such a travel arrangement was not considered an appropriate business practice. In the end, this free trip cost the Laboratory and government $30K (my travel costs, my time since I wasn't allowed to charge vacation, and the effort necessary to get through the bureaucratic hassles). This was when the Laboratory was managed by UC.
LLNS/LLNL is a private organization in name only. In practice, the Laboratory did not lose any of it's "governmentness" following the transition. The same government inefficiencies that existed under UC exist at the Laboratory today. Nothing has really changed. It's become worse, yes, but it hasn't changed.
This has nothing to do with the business practices of a corporation. The Laboratory is not a private organization. The Laboratory cannot even buy bottled water for employees because this is not an allowable cost based on some contract mumbo-jumbo. Private organizations don't face these issues. If they want to buy bottle water for employees, they buy bottled water for employees.
The Lab as a government organization was inefficient when it was managed by UC. The Lab as a government organization is inefficient today - probably more so, since now we have to pay more money for being inefficient in the form of a management fee.
Good post, you are very correct in your comments. The earlier post on private companies doing research defies reality. All those drugs you get at the hospital come from private company research. Virtually none come from government research. Maybe you mean private companies can't do hugely inefficient bureaucratic research. Then I would agree. LLNL is not a private company. It is a government lab managed by a private contractor. Hardly a model of privatization. Both the U.C. model and the current one make little sense. The lab and the employees should be part of, and employed, by the feds. These hybrid setups, on net, have been bad for the lab. Please, no rants on UC benefits, I am talking about the lab itself, not your personal gain.
This is only partially true, a huge amount of the basic research into biological chemistry and biochemistry that ultimately gets used by the private drug companies came from government funding at Universities. Also I would add that most drug companies also have partnerships with universities where again much of the infrastructure, faculty, and students are at least partially funded by the government.
In any case the labs are not private companies, they are instead a hybrid beasts which manage to combine the worse aspects of both government run and privately run institutions at the same time to create unique synergy of pure dysfunction.
July 3, 2014 at 10:42 PM
How about reducing (i.e. pay cuts) salaries and bonuses of senior management? And start at the top (Goldstein / McMillan) down!
Time to revert to the federal science lab model with a University LLC.
That way we can significantly thin out the management and support structures, and get back to running national laboratories, not national management companies.
Locally at LLNL
1. 1700 very good folks laid off
2. Reduced $ for basic infrastruture keeps server bays inadequate and haphazard. Lack of backup cooling on hot days overheats server rooms, setting off fire suppression systems.
3. Reduced $ for maintenance machinists lets unmaintained pumps leak directly onto servers below.
4. Lack of training support prevents keeping engineers current.
5. Lack of conference support keeps techical folks underinformed.
6. Lack of budgets for supervision allows modest importance safety, quality control and documentation to go unwatched.
7. Lack of supervison budgets reduces quality of personal evaluation and development.
8. The enlargement of engineering divisions from 200 to 400 plus makes it less likely best safety, security and implementation are passed on to employees as more urgent matters swamp smalled division offices.
The funds provided to the private industry partners is wasted. There is not one useful thing or person that has provided for the $140M dollars paid at LLNL over 7 years.
And LLNL is the NNSA success story. LANL has entered the twilight zone under LANS.
The damage of privatization were completely described and predicted to Congress members and staff well before it happened, but Domenici, Udall, Stupak and Dingell each wanted their pound of flesh, consequences be damned.
they each applied the knife and the holder of the "crown jewels" succumbed to her injuries.
remember this in 2016.
they each applied the knife and the holder of the "crown jewels" succumbed to her injuries.
remember this in 2016.
There are no pro nuke politicians. If you vote out the politicos that know you, you will lose ground. Feinstein chairs energy appropriations and intelligence committees and sits on many others.
This is a blog, so sure… complain, but don't advocate voting against CA, LLNL and your own interests. Would you rather another state had these chairs?
The path these days is about damage control and preservation of what little we still have.
7 years later, we are watching the same waste. The losers are taxpayers and employees !
Time to vote the incumbents out !!!
Excessive overhead is self limiting.
Compare their percent raise to yours! What are they contributing to their pension?
They have multi part annual "pay" package. Even in a freeze, they still get something (cost of living, seniority, etc).
A "University" run approach seems to work pretty well for the largest (budget wise) national lab in California - NASA's JPL. While I know its actually an GOCO FFRDC (I worked there for many years, Caltech runs it more as a separate division - the Lab Director is also a senior VP at Caltech.
For LLNL I'm more in favor of the "University LLC" model utilized by the University of Chicago to manage DOE's Argonne National Lab. They created a company to run that lab - "UChicago Argonne LLC" - as a separate entity, and ANL employees work for it not the university. This seems to be a good middle ground between direct university manage (i.e., LBNL) and industrial/university LLC (i.e., LANL and LLNL).
Unless someone has direct evidence otherwise, I've seen zero real value added in having an equal ownership industrial/university LLC running LLNL. I get why it makes sense for LANL given their large scale production activities and high risk nuclear facilities - LLNL has none of these.
So with three UC affiliated national labs - none that are identical - why not try three different management approaches that make the most sense for each;
- LBNL, managed/operated by UC.
- LLNL, managed/operated by a solely UC owned LLC (with industrial partners as subcontractors as needed).
- LANL, managed/operated by a LLC jointly owned by UC and industrial partners.
One size doesn't fit all.
Are you kidding?What large scale production? The only large scale productions we have here at LANL are memos, managerial BS, and oversight.
Seriously, please let us know what we are producing.
Good management isn't cheap. You blog whiners need to shut-up and be glad that the new lab management team has saved your jobs by running the labs more like a well run business than a playground for scientific prima donnas. Get with the team and give 110% or leave the field.
Keep it up, July 7, 2014 at 10:51 PM.... it's funny when they take you seriously and flame away.
Seriously, please let us know what we are producing.
July 7, 2014 at 7:50 PM
You absolutely right. LANL's PF-4 (Plutonium Facility), Weapons Engineering Tritium Facility (WETF), and the Transuranic Program all Haz Cat 2 facilities are all non-operational. That means no programmatic work is being accomplished at LANL, except artificial three-dimensional computer simulations.
July 10, 2014 at 4:00 PM
Ah, but computer simulations are so much easier and safer than those nasty ol' facilities! Give it a couple of years and we'll have no capability for doing anything real for our nuclear arsonal. How many years until some foreign nutcase thinks that they won't work, and decides to take a chance?
With almost all of the facilities halted, why not just shut the place down? Perhaps that is the plan.
Times have sure changed. Now it's YEARS. That's progress, for the government anyway.
What's happening is, real work is moving to Nevada/NNSS/NStech, and the labs will keep the computer simulations. This even makes some sense.
July 8, 2014 at 7:29 AM"
I would add that I have survived and thrived in the real world, something few at the labs could do. This of course is one of the reasons I am so angry at the fact that the labs do not and can not recognize by true abilities. I could leave any day I want and go to Google or Microsoft and make twice the money. Keep that in mind when you fools make fun of me or say I am a poor employee. I will stay of course but I know the truth.
You sound like somebody who should be voting with your feet! Both for your good, and for the good of folks who, for one reason or another, can't leave.
In this scenario a significant portion of our LLNS managers would become EIT/EBAs. Since we are all "at will" employees, former managers unable to find SKA fit programatic assignments would ultimately face lay offs due to current "skills mix" need. I don't think this would ever happen at LLNS. Too many fruitful alliances here.
What is the logic you use to remain in a job which appears to have nothing but negatives for you?
What motivates you to make global statements like "a recurrent issue on this blog"? Are you new to the lab or new to the workforce in general? Do you have a PR or legal function at LLNS?
Many of our employees have decades of valuable knowledge. Experienced managers in successful leadership positions do not undermine employee opinions or advise them to leave when they disagree with them. To do so as has been said, are the actions of a "setting sun" organization. Think about it.
To July 21, 2014 at 11:16 AM: I can read this blog, so I can see what issues are recurrent. I am not new to the workforce, nor do I have a PR or legal function. I am, in fact, one of those with decades of valuable knowledge, and an experienced manager in many successful leadership positions. So what's your point?
I disagree with your assertion that it's bad to encourage some employees to look elsewhere. How can you be so callous as to want the original poster to continue under the circumstances he cited? That's just mean-spirited, and bad management.
I have never known a single person who regretted looking elsewhere for a job when (s)he was unhappy. The person invariably either found a nice new job, or found out that what they already had was pretty good and became more happy with it.
Think about it yourself.
As a manager would you respond to an employee in a group meeting by saying leave LLNS if you have concerns? I don't think so.
The best way to minimize LLNS blog negatively is to demonstrate LLNS is a workplace open to employee opinion and concerns free of employer intimidation and reprisal. Note the word demonstrate not simply state.
And you think employees with children, grandchildren, friends, family, mortgages (some underwater), spouses working in the area, etc. with value to LLNL missions, should simply pick up and leave as a solution to a solvable LLNS problem without FIRST attempting to resolve it? How do you define "experienced manager"?
Ideally management candidates are expected to have people skills and an understanding for others to solve employee concerns in the workplace setting while keeping workplace stress to a minimum.
Management candidates are not encouraged to escalate and polarize their staff by suggesting a member(s) leave the lab in response or as a solution to "dissenting opinions". Is this the LLNS doctrine?
The fire everyone who doesn't agree with me or strongly encourage them to leave management approach to a problem would not go over well in an interview for a management position with unknown interviewers to the candidate.
The "my way or the highway" culture at LLNS is getting progressively worse.
I think it is important for people to have a balanced perspective, which is why I asked the question "why are you still here?" (And recall that it was a question, not an instruction to leave.) The answer to that question is that there is set of positives that keep you here, which could include any of things cited above, plus: interesting work, interesting colleagues, good benefits, nice office, good weather, the comfort of inertia, whatever. Putting the complaint into more perspective would facilitate a more rational conversation about the things that need to be fixed, and their significance. To simply rail about how nobody CAN ever appreciate you, and you could make so much more money elsewhere doesn't contribute at all to solving whatever the issues might be. And the poster made no mention at all of trying to fix the problems.
Each of us always has the option of finding different employment. Trying to do so has benefits for us as individuals: either we find and accept a better position, or we find that the position we have has some positives that perhaps we did not appreciate. It also benefits everybody else: it improves the attitude of a co-worker, or it sends a message that LLNL is having trouble retaining that kind of employee. It is helpful and kind to remind people that they have choices, when they are feeling trapped, as the poster seemed to feel.
I am not recommending that managers should suggest in group meetings that somebody should look for a new job because of "dissenting opinions" (how do you people come up with this stuff?). And I am not endorsing any sort of "my way or the highway" culture.
All logical points with a systematic pathway to solutions. Well said.
However, it might be problematic for this or other employees to provide specific details without mapping himself to the workplace and coworkers involved. Your process is valid, but the consequences must be carefully considered against the probability of a positive benefit or outcome.
This becomes a quandary for employees with concerns that know of coworkers who have voiced their own concerns only to find themselves irreversibly cross-threaded with their LLNS managers.
This does not diminish the value of your suggestions. I'm just saying there is another dimension of consideration here.
1) Increasing future payout of TCP-1 pension
2) High salary - I could never make this much money at a real organization if I accomplished so little
3) Hassle factor of moving / starting over
4) Casual atmosphere (jeans, shorts, sandals)
I have been headhunted several times in the last 10 years, along with two formal job offers.
1) TCP1 could tank, too, and you can make a lot of money in 401Ks and stock options.
2) You can pull a much higher salary, in all areas save perhaps administrative/secretarial, outside. But you do have to work for it and accomplish great things; invigorating.
3) Yes, starting over is stressful but invigorating too. And you probably don't have to move, though you may have to commute farther.
4) Shorts and sandals, and two-hour lunches, doesn't cut it anywhere else, true, depends how important that is.