Skip to main content

So that's where all the overhead is going.....


"The Energy Department’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico spent $1.6 million to review similar travel and conference requests during one fiscal year, an increase of $1.4 million from the previous one.

And Los Alamos officials poured $708,500 into updating a travel and expense management system so they could track all the paperwork."


http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/federal-eye/wp/2015/03/23/consequences-of-the-federal-travel-clampdown-more-costs/

Comments

Anonymous said…
Yeah this must be like 2-3 FTE equivalent total. For LANL, that sounds about right. Huge overhead, little productivity.
Anonymous said…
Slow, broken and very costly.... the LANS model of operation. It's how the management seems to like it.
Anonymous said…
Layers upon layers of highly bloated overhead and management people who have no real purpose other than to sit around finding ways to justify their high salaries. It's what the NNSA labs have become. Very little productive work gets done anymore.
Anonymous said…
If a job could be done by one person, LANL will find a way to pay three. What a waste of overhead!

Take a look at the Strategic Outcomes Office as another useless black hole for overhead.
Anonymous said…
Yeah, Strategic Outcomes Office. Doesn't matter if the outcome is good or bad, as long as it is "strategic." What a joke.
Anonymous said…
The Strategic Outcomes Office has several accomplishments to brag about. For example it was successful in enlarging Wallace's empire, ticking off almost every sponsor in DC, and most importantly, decreasing WFO. Yep, the sweet smell of success is in the air!!
Anonymous said…
Wallace's empire? C'mon dude, an AD with one division? What kind of "empire" is that?
Anonymous said…
Wallace is still in line to be the next LANL director so best to get in line and kiss his rear end now before he takes up the crown after Charlie leaves and heads back to California.

And anyone who thinks LANS will be kicked out of the management contract is badly mistaken. In fact, glowing reports of "improvements" will be released in the next few years by NNSA allowing them to extend the LANS contract for many years to come. Kudos and back-pats will be generously handed out to the whole LANS management team as the annual scores improve from almost zero.

Everyone loves a good turn around story and LANS is heavily committed to seeing that is exactly what happens. Of course, to get to that point we'll need to have most work put aside to ensure absolute safety and zero risks. LANL will also need more managers for the purposes of greater oversight, too. And policies will need to be extended along with tons of more paperwork for CYA forms to be signed by everyone.

The future is clearer than it has been in years. Only problem is the path forward sucks for most of the scientific staff.



Anonymous said…
" Wallace is still in line to be the next LANL director so best to get in line and kiss his rear end now before he takes up the crown after Charlie leaves and heads back to California."

Na, Wallace looks like he is on his last legs. I think he will be done before long. Not sure what happened to him but he is looking pretty bad lately. Broken man.
Anonymous said…
Adam Rowen (who does not have a Ph.D.) is no longer the manager of the materials chemistry department at Sandia.

Popular posts from this blog

Plutonium Shots on NIF.

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...

Trump is to gut the labs.

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.

LLNL un-diversity

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!