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New contractor, new vision?

Once you get by all the news on the elections, the All Blacks of New Zealand won another international rugby championship this week. The Maori dance was covered in full on the story, and it brought up memories of a few months ago when Charlie flew the executive coach in for his vision meeting. Everyone was forced to sit in the auditorium through the whole Kiwi show. What a waste of time and money!

Now that the lab contractor will be replaced soon, wonder if the the vision will change yet again?

Comments

Anonymous said…
I expect the "new" contractor for LANL to be a "new" LLC owned jointly by Lockheed-Martin, Battelle and the University of California. Possible with URS as a subpartner.

The losing LLC will be owned by Bechtel and some of the other familiar names involved in DOE/NNSA M&O contracts.

I think the Lockheed-Martin, Battelle and the University of California formed LLC makes the most sense as it brings in one of the partners running Pantx and Sandia (Lockheed-Martin), some new blood with significant experience in managing DOE science labs at PNNL and ORNL (Battelle), and allows UC to stay involved in LANL.

Bottom line is UC and Bechtel cannot stay in bed together to win the next LANL contract, LANS has to be dissolved. If NNSA wanted to keep the Bechtel-UC team at LANL they would have extended the contract. Going though a major contract competition just to give it again to a Bechtel-UC team makes zero sense, even for a disfunctional bureaucracy like NNSA. UC clearly wants to keep the LANL contract so it will have to find an industrial partner that can help it win the contract. Yes, Lockheed-Martin go into some hot water and bad PR over the Sandia, but there are not a lot of partnering options for UC.

Anonymous said…
The root of the current sorry state of LLNL was the problems at LANL. And the root of the problems at LANL was UC's poor oversight. Say what you want about the past glory days of the labs, but that had more to do with bloated budgets and a mission focus on UGT than anything related to UC.

Anonymous said…
...the root of the problems at LANL was UC's poor oversight...Say what you want about the past glory days of the labs, but that had more to do with bloated budgets and a mission focus on UGT than anything related to UC.

February 3, 2016 at 8:55 AM

Uh, do you contradict yourself much??
Anonymous said…
10:14 PM

Try to sober up before posting.
Anonymous said…
Lockheed-Martin, Battelle and the University of California? Yep, that sounds about right.

Lockheed-Martin is already getting a much smaller fee than LANS for running SNL so they seem to be fine with that. The possibility of tighter integration between SNL and LANL using the conduit of Lockheed-Martin might also be a something that NNSA is looking at with this LLC partner match-up. What I'd like to know is... what happens to the current LANS executive team when the next LLC takes over LANL? You have to think that some of these guys are already jockeying to transfer over to the next LLC. However, what is needed is a fresh group of managers with none of the taint of LANS and their history of poor managerial performance.
Anonymous said…
Any team that hopes to stand a chance for running LANL will need to commit to DoE that they will do a complete house cleaning. It really doesn't matter which team wins the contract, all managers above the DL, and many of the current DLs, will be sent packing.
Anonymous said…
If a "Lockheed-Martin, Battelle and the University of California" owned LLC won at LANL, then I hope a "University of California and Battelle" owned LLC will take over LLNL.

Having industrial partners in the LLC running LLNL has added zero value to the lab. LLNL will never go back to direct UC management like LBNL, but a solely UC or joint UC-Battelle owned LLC makes the most sense for LLNL. Especially if NNSA goes back to a not for profit management model and cuts the fee in half to make it in line with that at the other NNSA and DOE national labs.
Anonymous said…
Battelle I can see but Lockheed will not play. Bank on it. UC is out. Texas is in. I see Texas and Battelle. Oh and, non profit is over. The state got a taste of the money and they will not give that up. Write this on your wall and read again in two years.
Anonymous said…
Battelle I can see but Lockheed will not play. Bank on it. UC is out. Texas is in. I see Texas and Battelle. Oh and, non profit is over. The state got a taste of the money and they will not give that up. Write this on your wall and read again in two years.

February 12, 2016 at 12:01 AM


From the looks of it, you are correct and there is zero chance that the locals will ever agree to return to the pre-GRT days for LANL.


On the other hand, anyone that thinks that Texas would be a good partner for LANL has not been keeping up. The ethics scandals at Texas are far, far worse than those at LANL.
Anonymous said…
What was decided at the UC Regents closed door meeting?
Anonymous said…
If not Texas then Chicago? Any other players?
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