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A&M in charge of changing culture

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By scooby
Triad partner A&M is in charge of changing the LANL culture


https://www.mystatesman.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/system-charge-los-alamos-includes-improving-safety-culture/A6JebWY1Ivj2RrJunfWvHI/

Same story reconfirms that UT will not protest the loss and did not really want to win anyway.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Safety and Security is micromanaged by the primitive, compliance-based directives of NNSA. A culture of blind compliance impedes thinking, error-prevention and criticism by staff experts. Changing the LANL culture will mean changing the NNSA. Good luck with that.
6/16/2018 4:54 PM
Anonymous said…
Changing the LANL culture means changing scientific excellence, national security service, and commitment to a robust and reliable nuclear stockpile. Might want to think again. Comments about "cowboys and buttheads" will follow and only prove hatred and jealousy.
6/16/2018 5:49 PM
Anonymous said…
By MOU, the DOE Office of Enterprise Assessments (EA) can't touch the LLNL or LANL NNSA Field Office staff for willful misrepresentations or misconduct if they elect to protect LLNS or LANS contractors instead of objectively evaluating them. That loop hole needs to change.
6/16/2018 6:09 PM
scooby said…
4:48 PM, YOU are right om the money ! I remember the paralysis that ensued when LLNS was installed .Compliance at the expense of productivity and creativity .It seemed to me that the system encouraged mediocrity .
6/16/2018 6:12 PM
Anonymous said…

NNSA has no idea what culture is. All they want is to not have incidents. There is no other metric for success in other words there is no metric for accomplishing anything and even you did there is not credit for it. The NNSA is only about not having incidents. In the old days testing would be a metric, in other words if something went right that was good if something goes wrong that is bad. Now it is only if something goes wrong. A system like this can only fail, since the only that ever can happen is bad things. Everytime something goes wrong you scream cowboy, but in a system like this the only thing the scientists can be is a cowboy. Very short sighted and weak thinking but that is all you have now.

Look people take the bomb for granted, they do not understand how they work, what goes into making them work, what would go into having to make new systems if it came to that, how to maintain them and so on. To most the bombs are like iPhones and laptops, they are magic devices that have always been and always will be, they are simply part of nature like the sun coming up or rivers of flowing water, people have nothing to do with them. Someone getting you coffee at Starbucks is different, the person has to make the coffee and put it in a cup and so on, it takes people to make that work. Your iPhone just appears in stores just they have since the down of time, same with the bomb. You have this crazy place called Los Alamos, they had something to do with the bomb long long ago but now all they do is screw things up, what possible value is there at LANL. The bombs are not going anywhere and they will work because the sun comes up everyday , and no one ever comes out and says LANL "did such and such" to ensure they work, nope all you hear about are screwups. When you use the word culture and LANL the average person can only think of one thing, cowboy scientists, what else could culture possibly mean? Have you ever seen the TV show Big-Bang, well that must be what they are talking about. Also NNSA likes to say "culture" because it gets them off the hook, managers like culture because it gets them off the hook, so culture is never going way and by definition it cannot go way since even if LANL reduced incidents by 99% from the current rate something will still go wrong, so you left only with culture to blame when that happens. After all what else could it be?
6/16/2018 10:04 PM
Anonymous said…
Ahhhh, yes. “Culture”. The obvious root of evil. When will the NNSA realize that the Washington micromanagement of the most trivial detail is the actual cause of most of the problems with security, safety, and productivity?
6/17/2018 7:37 AM
Anonymous said…
When it was determined that the USS John S. McCain and a tanker ship collision was preventable, the Navy Officers responsible were relieved of their duties. The intentionally nebulous NNSA and Lab "culture" response after Lab accidents occur is a dangerous cop-out.
6/17/2018 12:30 PM
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