Skip to main content

Will the labs really improve when LANS and LLNS are out?

Image
By scooby
Will the labs really improve when LANS and LLNS are out?

1. Will funding priorities, operational efficiency, safety culture, Contractor accountability, and employee morale, materially improve and remain improved, when LANS and LLNS are replaced with new for profit LLCs?

2. Is waiting and hoping for a change in management at LANL and LLNL for "better times" like saying, "my next marriage will be better, so in the meantime....". Is this a constructive and healthy approach? 

Comments

Anonymous said…
From the "employee morale" topic but applicable here:

"...Perhaps crazier to believe LANS will be replaced with an improved LLC by Devine intervention. You can wait for the polished HR Power Point presentation introducing the next for profit LLC to the worker bees at LANL, or systematically capture the strengths and weaknesses of LANS and make constructive suggestions and reasonable expectations to DOE and NNSA before hand. Way way way before..."

"...Same goes for LLNS down the road. Otherwise both labs will give birth to LANSLLNS 2.0 and employees will play the low morale record again in a few years time..."
2/24/2015 12:50 PM
Anonymous said…
Employees are hanging on at LANL but it appears the place is done for.

Can't blame the remaining employees for wanting to keep the glorious past alive but that is not going to happen. The decline has been relentless and ongoing for many years. Exchanging one LLC for another LLC isn't going to improve things.
2/25/2015 8:10 PM
Anonymous said…
Two different questions. LLNL WORKS FINE. It always has.

Congress learned last time that changing the LLNL contact 48 to contact 44 was a mistake.

LLNL will be left alone. Its performance to metrics are more that acceptable, its contact durations will be extended.

The two companies are separate.
2/26/2015 5:45 AM
Anonymous said…

"...LLNL will be left alone. Its performance to metrics are more that acceptable, its contact durations will be extended..."

A 68% (D+) at LANS and a 78% (C+) at LLNS? Grading on a curve you are technically correct. LLNS is top notch. Not.

"...The firm that manages the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico “received only 68 percent of its possible at-risk award fee of $46.5 million for the last budget year, primarily because of cost overruns that ballooned a security project from $213 million to $254 million,” according to a press release from the organization..."

"...Lawrence Livermore National Security earned 78 percent of its “available at-risk incentive fee, still short of the gateway of 80 percent,” the group said. “However, acting NNSA Administrator Neile Miller overrode that too, giving the lab contractor an extra $541,527 to help it meet the 80 percent mark and extending the management contract another year.”..."

http://www.nti.org/gsn/article/nnsa-defends-contract-extensions-congressional-scrutiny-expected/
2/26/2015 7:51 AM
Anonymous said…
Wow, 7:51 AM that is old news. Who knows what Neile Miller was doing when she overrode the local NNSA office decision on the LANL contract extension. Who cares? That was years ago. LLNL scored higher than LANL in the most recent annual reports, and it was not even close.
2/26/2015 9:23 AM
Anonymous said…
Yeah, February 26, 2015 at 7:51 AM's "news" predates the WIPP problems and subsequent loss of 90% of award fee by LANS.
2/26/2015 11:02 AM
Anonymous said…
LANS and LLNS have different missions, deliverables, and different NNSA Field Office "graders". Also, it is not clear that each NNSA Field Office has comparable influence on the end product annual performance report. One must normalize these grades for these factors to extract a real comparison. Yes, LANS did blow the bottom out with WIPP. No question there.
2/26/2015 6:59 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Plutonium Shots on NIF.

By scooby
Tri-Valley Cares needs to be on this if they aren't already. We need to make sure that NNSA and LLNL does not make good on promises to pursue such stupid ideas as doing Plutonium experiments on NIF. The stupidity arises from the fact that a huge population is placed at risk in the short and long term. Why do this kind of experiment in a heavily populated area? Only a moron would push that kind of imbecile area. Do it somewhere else in the god forsaken hills of Los Alamos. Why should the communities in the Bay Area be subjected to such increased risk just because the lab's NIF has failed twice and is trying the Hail Mary pass of doing an SNM experiment just to justify their existence? Those Laser EoS techniques and the people analyzing the raw data are all just BAD anyways. You know what comes next after they do the experiment. They'll figure out that they need larger samples. More risk for the local population. Stop this imbecilic pursuit. They wan...
155 comments
Read more

Trump is to gut the labs.

By scooby
The budget has a 20% decrease to DOE office of science, 20% cut to NIH. NASA also gets a cut. This will  have a huge negative effect on the lab. Crazy, juts crazy. He also wants to cut NEA and PBS, this may not seem like  a big deal but they get very little money and do great things.
124 comments
Read more

LLNL un-diversity

By scooby
Actual post from Dec. 15 from one of the streams. This is a real topic. As far as promoting women and minorities even if their qualifications are not as good as the white male scientists, I am all for it. We need diversity at the lab and if that is what it takes, so be it.  Quit your whining. Look around the lab, what do you see? White male geezers. How many African Americans do you see at the lab? Virtually none. LLNL is one of the MOST undiverse places you will see. Face it folks, LLNL is an institution of white male privilege and they don't want to give up their privileged positions. California, a state of majority Hispanics has the "crown jewel" LLNL nestled in the middle of it with very FEW Hispanics at all!
79 comments
Read more