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Tuesday, September 3, 2019
Which model?
Did LANS and LLNS move work at LANL and LLNL away from a workforce acknowledged mission centric model, to a contractor profit centric model?
34 comments:
Anonymous
said...
Yes NNSA changed the model because LANL mostly, refused to listen to NNSA because they felt they knew better. Examples, PF-4 safety basis, LETF safety basis, and the list goes on and on. When you refuse to listen to your customer, this is the response you will get. See how that worked out for everyone. Balance and true listening is necessary to prevent this happening again. Arrogance (not from science but from ops) was the cause. Additionally NNSA and DOE-EM needed a contractor fall guy to do the dirty work of getting rid of bloated pension and medical programs that they could no longer afford. This happened to the production facilities a decade before it finally reached the labs.
It's perfectly OK for a business or LLC to make a profit. But, when answering the topic question, it would be helpful to include free market models where those businesses aren't essentially guaranteed funding by 12+ year Federal contracts. Non-federally funded free market businesses must compete with other businesses to stay viable in real time. In contrast, the NNSA has shown they are unable to remove a lab contractor for poor performance in a manner even remotely resembling real time.
"Workforce acknowledged mission centric", doesn't mean much if it isn't materially reflected in the contract and doesn't negatively impact the contractors profit stream. In this scenerio, the basket of lab employee benefits we have are merely a closed door NNSA and contractor negotiation away from going bye-bye at any time.
"Arrogance (not from science but from ops was the cause."
The problem is that for political reasons you cannot say arrogance from ops was the problem. So if you go down the arrogance route that only leaves science.
I also don't but that "ops" refused to listen to NNSA, I think they simply cannot understand what NNSA is saying or ops simply does not have the skills to carry it out what NNSA wants. Excellence in operations is like excellence anyplace you need to get good people and retain them. For many reasons when it comes to New Mexico this is going to be very difficult and many forces are going to fight you tooth and nail. No contractor can change this and the problem is never going away.
Diatribes against an imminent nuclear disaster? This is the denial culture of LANL. The next move will be to say you have an agenda and finally your intelligence will be questioned because they do not like your grammar. Hilarious.
I wish it was just poor skills and I agree they cannot keep trained OPS and RP people. The ones that come here run away screaming because of the poor nuclear safety culture. The trouble is I have on more than one occasion had to listen to laboratory directors and PADs say in meetings how the NNSA and DNFSB just don’t understand. How the rules, used by all of the production facilities, aren't applicable at LANL and how LANL should write its own rule book because only they know. Now, I’m not defending the ignorance of some NNSA personnel but having worked across the complex and now being at LANL, I found it profoundly and blatantly arrogant, beyond stupid, and a poor reflection of the great institution of LANL. I guess these PADs, the great “Charlie” and the UC caretakers think LANL science is operating the facilities, which they are not. Working with the scientists and engineers at LANL in the weapons program, I have nothing but respect. Strong, solid method and results. OPS on the other hand, an absolute disaster.
Working with the scientists and engineers at LANL in the weapons program, I have nothing but respect. Strong, solid method and results. OPS on the other hand, an absolute disaster.
9/07/2019 4:33 PM
Kind of a conflict here, if the OPS people are the ones with the rules, but you say LANL wants to write their own. That means the scientists, yes?
OPS has “rules” and DOE standards but doesn’t follow them. LANL executives (directors) make excuses for OPS under the guise that LANL is “smarter” than the rule makers. Problem is the smart people (scientists and weapons engineers) aren't operating the nuclear facilities PF-4, CMR, LETF, WASTE PROGRAMS. Even if the scientists wrote the rules (which some times they do), OPS wouldn’t follow them because they are either inconvenient or frankly some people are just not too smart. Again, It’s an excuse. LANL has put off meeting DOE Standards that have been in place since the 90s and implemented at all the production facilities. (System engineering, configuration management, etc.) It took them until 2013 to get onboard and only after being threatened with shutdown by DOE. Literally a quote from a former PAD, “We decided to shutdown PF-4 before the DOE did because we wanted to maintain control of the restart”.
30 years of Proud NWC experience across labs and production facilities, listening in the audience, dumbfounded. This level of arrogance by executives and OPS, NOT by science, is the downfall of LANL.
I only hope this can be turned around but I agree with others that believe production and science cannot coexist at LANL. Personally, I would rather production leave LANL and science remain.
Nuclear safety culture- I've worked in PF-4 operations for 15+ years. There are good people and bad just like you find everywhere else. Arrogance? hardly. I'm convinced this is the mantra sung by others to justify the TA_55 woes. Every internal safety culture survey we've ever done, says the work place safety culture is healthy. Ok, next.... What are the real issues? TA-55 is more riddled with incompetent managers, bureaucracy and lack of resources. People dont run away screaming from 55 due to a poor safety culture. Here are the real reasons: technicians and RP- typically motivated by money. Ops steals RP employees because its the easy button for Q cleared/HRP people. Hard to accomplish mission bringing in outside folks when it takes 2-3 years to get cleared and trained. There's been an RC (RP) shortage for 10 years. This is nothing new. Techs leave for other parts of the lab because there is better pay and opportunities throughout LANL for less responsibility and better work environment (people aren't crammed into offices, can ditch HRP, etc). Glovebox work is also hard and the associated training is laborious. This type of work is physically demanding and takes a toll on bodies after many years. If you are RP, why do you want to be in a respirator for 6 hours a day when you can go be a tech?. Scientists and engineers- again, leave for other opportunities, promotions, able to apply engineering and scientific skills in other organizations. Once in production, not much to engineer anymore. You just need to keep the baseline equipment up and operational. Not very challenging for a youngster.
"I only hope this can be turned around but I agree with others that believe production and science cannot coexist at LANL. Personally, I would rather production leave LANL and science remain.
9/09/2019 9:05 PM"
No going to happen, production is the only future. Science will be leaving one way or another, which could be that it just gets weaker and weaker, or somebody just says "look it just makes no sense to have production and science together so we are moving the science out". But it is clear that science has no future at LANL and the writing has been on the wall for some time. Perhaps it is a good thing and will save some money. You consolidate at LLNL or Sandia, the best stuff from LANL science and them you use the remaining infrastructure for for the production. I have also heard that it is a matter of time before South Carolina gives up on pits, which will happen in less than 5 years. After that that it is clear that LANL needs to become the production faculty.
Excellent on-site, first-hand report of conditions. Thank you. Too much bloviating on this blog with too little real info. Thanks again. Any of you bloviators want to refute him?
Yes. Half of what 7:17am says is absolutely true but he denies the safety culture issue. How can you have “incompetent managers”, “lack of resources”, stealing of qualified resources from one pool to the other, lack of trained resources, disdain for “bureaucracy” (I.e. rules and processes), etc. and then say safety culture is “healthy”. This is fundamental misunderstanding of what comprises a nuclear safety culture. It is not just how you “feel” in a survey. It is your program including your people, their training, a consistent set and application of processes, a compliance mindset coupled with a questioning attitude, and HOW THESE THINGS ARE APPIED AND OVERSEEN BY MANAGEMENT. 7:17am,’s comments are actually damning of LANL nuclear safety culture and 6:13pm’s clear ignorance to this reinforces my point. LANL does not understand nuclear safety in a production environment.
To the untruths. I too have worked in PF-4 and many who could leave because they have valued skills and are not tied to the Northern New Mexico area, did leave, because of poor management (agree with 7:17am) AND poor culture. One Safety Basis colleague saying he had never seen such blatant disregard for following process and lack of process in the first place.
If you need further education on what a healthy nuclear safety culture looks like I encourage you to read the INPO document “Traits of a healthy Nuclear Safety Culture” which is used throughout the DOE complex and Nuclear power.
Some true reflection and less denial would be helpful to you all.
"There are good people and bad just like you find everywhere else. Arrogance? " This is attitude that "of course we have some low quality employees but heck every place does so no big deal, it is no difference at MacDonalds or TA-55, some good people, some bad, some ok, just like everyplace else" Do you see the problem with this attitude?
Outstanding refute!!!!! Mike drop big time. This is the problem with LANL, we just accept things, we accept that there are lots of bad people , we accept bad managers, we accept low quality, we accept failure, and most of all we accept that nothing can be done.
All I can say is if we ever have to test again, everything changes at the labs...EVERYTHING.
Lots of "we" in there, as if you are part of everything and your "we" group could just decide NOT to "accept" what you don't like. Just how, exactly, would that work? I bet your personal part in the "we" is very, very small, if it exists at all.
I have to agree with 5:15. Apparently we (a true plural pronoun) have a former employee with a Napoleon complex and nearly complete lack of knowledge of the subject. No need to comment on his/her grammar as the other deficits are damning enough.
“In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room, or blog, with the primary intent of provoking readers into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.”
If you are not trolling: address the topic in your response don’t just insult people you don’t agree with. (left you one grammar troll)
From what I can tell there are four trolls on this blog:
1) The Grammar troll, who pushes the belief that this is a high school English class to deflect from the issues addressed in topics (UC defender)
2) The bitter soul troll. ANYONE who provides evidence of issues at LANL is immediately called bitter and told to get a life. (UC Defender)
3) The cowboy troll. Any topic is immediately swung to cowboy scientists although I haven’t met a scientist with a cowboy hat yet. (EVERYTHING LANL does is bad)
4) The Millennial troll. The newest edition, anyone who criticizes the actions of LANL is a racist. (UC defender).
I came to this blog to learn about the issues and have intelligent discussion. What I quickly realized is that there are a few that want the same (including the moderators, thank you) and many who just want to troll the others to defend there broader points of view (LANL GOOD you stupid (uh uh) or COWBOY SCIENCE LANL BAD (uh uh)).
6:13pm. First of all, I'm a she not a he. I'm not a troll nor some sort of narcissistic retiree. I'm not ignorant or self-aggrandizing. THis is MY opinion based on first hand experience working in the plant for many years. You can disagree with my opinion without name calling. Second, why are you even quoting safety basis people? They are not experts on nuclear facility work nor conduct of operations. They are risk management/number crunchers. Most of those people don't even know where PF-4 is, let alone how the work gets done. Oh but of course, they know everything about nuclear safety and the culture.
We've all been trained to INPO over the years so I don't need to be lectured. We can absorb good practices from INPO just like we can use tools human performance initiative.
Whats a healthy safety culture? A learning organization where people feel comfortable coming forward and admitting mistakes to management, without fear of retaliation or finger pointing, striving for continual improvement. Workers who feel comfortable standing up to their coworkers when they feel something is being performed unsafely-The ability to pause work when required. Managers who walk the talk and listen to workers and who address issues. An unhealthy culture would be attitudes like yours (you're ignorant, you're stupid, you don't know how to do nuclear work safely) that cause workers to drive reporting underground.
12:00pm. Assuming you are 7:17am. You provided all of the first hand information needed to deem the culture unhealthy. I will not readdress it. To your new statements, to asay Safety Basis people know nothing of conduct of ops nor nuclear facility work is also damning either way you slice it. Either you have no respect for their role in the process which DOES include conduct of ops or you are saying they are not able in performing the vital, DOE mandated, role of setting the facility basis to which it will be OPERATED.
I too have worked in PF-4. You aren’t telling me anything I don’t know. You are just reinforcing my point.
"Whats a healthy safety culture? A learning organization where people feel comfortable coming forward and admitting mistakes to management, without fear of retaliation or finger pointing, striving for continual improvement. Workers who feel comfortable standing up to their coworkers when they feel something is being performed unsafely-"
This will never ever happen at LANL or any other NNSA lab. The whole point is to make sure management is not responsible. If anything goes wrong the reaction of management is to protect itself not fix the problem. Perhaps at least at LANL parts of TRIAD will attempt to change this.
6:13 totally missed the mark on the definition of culture. He/she describes processes not culture. Culture is intangible-“ “The beliefs, customs, institutions, and other products of human work and thought considered as a unit”..
Workers who feel comfortable standing up to their coworkers when they feel something is being performed unsafely-"
9/18/2019 5:26 AM
No one should be empowering employees who act on their "feelings." If the employees do not have enough education, training, or experience to KNOW, TECHNICALLY, that something is unsafe, they should not even be in the vicinity of such operations. I do not want a highly technical, dangerous operation interrupted by an employee who "feels" he is unsafe. Give me a break. This is not grammar school.
ive worked with many safety basis people. There are only a handful who understand the actual scope of work and processing. The rest, you have to educate. Maybe you and I should meet at Starbucks sometime and we can discuss what safety culture really means and I can tell you all the gaps in safety basis that we’ve discovered over the years for our program.. We can also discuss the difference between bureaucracy and rules/processes and where the two diverge. You just like to point out processes, which is NOT culture. Again, I stand by my comments. Hope you’re not in management but by the sound of things, you must be a former reactor worker.
"No one should be empowering employees who act on their "feelings." If the employees do not have enough education, training, or experience to KNOW, TECHNICALLY, that something is unsafe, they should not even be in the vicinity of such operations. I do not want a highly technical, dangerous operation interrupted by an employee who "feels" he is unsafe. Give me a break. This is not grammar school."
If the word "feelings" were replaced with "reason to believe" your argument falls apart, but I think you know that. Employees that DO have "experience to KNOW, TECHNICALLY, that something is unsafe" don't always make the correct workplace decisions for a number of reasons, but I think you know that too. Ease up a little and don't let your feelings get the best of you. This is not grammar school.
ive worked with many safety basis people. There are only a handful who understand the actual scope of work and processing. The rest, you have to educate. Maybe you and I should meet at Starbucks sometime and we can discuss what safety culture really means and I can tell you all the gaps in safety basis that we’ve discovered over the years for our program.. We can also discuss the difference between bureaucracy and rules/processes and where the two diverge. You just like to point out processes, which is NOT culture. Again, I stand by my comments. Hope you’re not in management but by the sound of things, you must be a former reactor worker.
9/18/2019 6:20 PM
Not a reactor worker, more of a process line worker in my day but I have been in few. I understand the practical nature of what you are saying but having worked at 4 different DOE production/lab sites (while there were still 3 production sites operating) in different roles including operations, management, and CSE and I can tell you through personal experience that LANL really needs to stop and reflect on their nuclear safety culture. I have seen way too many instances where people either ignore problems with processes and move forward, believe they cannot speak up (hear it almost 50% of the time in critiques, I'm too old school to call them fact findings), do not understand the implications of their actions, or frankly do not care. Most of the time, there is no consequence. Understand, I do not disagree with ANY of your observations but having a process, following (and respecting) the process, or stopping and getting the process fixed IS the "culture" that must be in place. You cannot divest the two. Management and workers must support it. I do not see a critical mass (pun intended) of that in LANL OPS with some facilities being worse than others.
If you do not agree, we will just have to agree to disagree. I hope you strive to promote a stronger culture everyday at LANL.
34 comments:
Yes NNSA changed the model because LANL mostly, refused to listen to NNSA because they felt they knew better. Examples, PF-4 safety basis, LETF safety basis, and the list goes on and on. When you refuse to listen to your customer, this is the response you will get. See how that worked out for everyone. Balance and true listening is necessary to prevent this happening again. Arrogance (not from science but from ops) was the cause. Additionally NNSA and DOE-EM needed a contractor fall guy to do the dirty work of getting rid of bloated pension and medical programs that they could no longer afford. This happened to the production facilities a decade before it finally reached the labs.
It's perfectly OK for a business or LLC to make a profit. But, when answering the topic question, it would be helpful to include free market models where those businesses aren't essentially guaranteed funding by 12+ year Federal contracts. Non-federally funded free market businesses must compete with other businesses to stay viable in real time. In contrast, the NNSA has shown they are unable to remove a lab contractor for poor performance in a manner even remotely resembling real time.
"Workforce acknowledged mission centric", doesn't mean much if it isn't materially reflected in the contract and doesn't negatively impact the contractors profit stream. In this scenerio, the basket of lab employee benefits we have are merely a closed door NNSA and contractor negotiation away from going bye-bye at any time.
"Arrogance (not from science but from ops was the cause."
The problem is that for political reasons you cannot say arrogance from ops was the problem. So if you go down the arrogance route that only leaves science.
I also don't but that "ops" refused to listen to NNSA, I think they simply cannot understand what NNSA is saying or ops simply does not have the skills to carry it out what NNSA wants. Excellence in operations is like excellence anyplace you need to get good people and retain them. For many reasons when it comes to New Mexico this is going to be very difficult and many forces are going to fight you tooth and nail. No contractor can change this and the problem is never going away.
Geez, your endless diatribes against LANL get really old. Will you ever give it up and go get a life?
Diatribes against an imminent nuclear disaster? This is the denial culture of LANL. The next move will be to say you have an agenda and finally your intelligence will be questioned because they do not like your grammar. Hilarious.
I wish it was just poor skills and I agree they cannot keep trained OPS and RP people. The ones that come here run away screaming because of the poor nuclear safety culture. The trouble is I have on more than one occasion had to listen to laboratory directors and PADs say in meetings how the NNSA and DNFSB just don’t understand. How the rules, used by all of the production facilities, aren't applicable at LANL and how LANL should write its own rule book because only they know. Now, I’m not defending the ignorance of some NNSA personnel but having worked across the complex and now being at LANL, I found it profoundly and blatantly arrogant, beyond stupid, and a poor reflection of the great institution of LANL. I guess these PADs, the great “Charlie” and the UC caretakers think LANL science is operating the facilities, which they are not. Working with the scientists and engineers at LANL in the weapons program, I have nothing but respect. Strong, solid method and results. OPS on the other hand, an absolute disaster.
Working with the scientists and engineers at LANL in the weapons program, I have nothing but respect. Strong, solid method and results. OPS on the other hand, an absolute disaster.
9/07/2019 4:33 PM
Kind of a conflict here, if the OPS people are the ones with the rules, but you say LANL wants to write their own. That means the scientists, yes?
5:16pm
OPS has “rules” and DOE standards but doesn’t follow them. LANL executives (directors) make excuses for OPS under the guise that LANL is “smarter” than the rule makers. Problem is the smart people (scientists and weapons engineers) aren't operating the nuclear facilities PF-4, CMR, LETF, WASTE PROGRAMS. Even if the scientists wrote the rules (which some times they do), OPS wouldn’t follow them because they are either inconvenient or frankly some people are just not too smart. Again, It’s an excuse.
LANL has put off meeting DOE Standards that have been in place since the 90s and implemented at all the production facilities. (System engineering, configuration management, etc.) It took them until 2013 to get onboard and only after being threatened with shutdown by DOE. Literally a quote from a former PAD, “We decided to shutdown PF-4 before the DOE did because we wanted to maintain control of the restart”.
30 years of Proud NWC experience across labs and production facilities, listening in the audience, dumbfounded. This level of arrogance by executives and OPS, NOT by science, is the downfall of LANL.
I only hope this can be turned around but I agree with others that believe production and science cannot coexist at LANL. Personally, I would rather production leave LANL and science remain.
Nuclear safety culture- I've worked in PF-4 operations for 15+ years. There are good people and bad just like you find everywhere else. Arrogance? hardly. I'm convinced this is the mantra sung by others to justify the TA_55 woes. Every internal safety culture survey we've ever done, says the work place safety culture is healthy. Ok, next.... What are the real issues? TA-55 is more riddled with incompetent managers, bureaucracy and lack of resources. People dont run away screaming from 55 due to a poor safety culture. Here are the real reasons: technicians and RP- typically motivated by money. Ops steals RP employees because its the easy button for Q cleared/HRP people. Hard to accomplish mission bringing in outside folks when it takes 2-3 years to get cleared and trained. There's been an RC (RP) shortage for 10 years. This is nothing new. Techs leave for other parts of the lab because there is better pay and opportunities throughout LANL for less responsibility and better work environment (people aren't crammed into offices, can ditch HRP, etc). Glovebox work is also hard and the associated training is laborious. This type of work is physically demanding and takes a toll on bodies after many years. If you are RP, why do you want to be in a respirator for 6 hours a day when you can go be a tech?. Scientists and engineers- again, leave for other opportunities, promotions, able to apply engineering and scientific skills in other organizations. Once in production, not much to engineer anymore. You just need to keep the baseline equipment up and operational. Not very challenging for a youngster.
"I only hope this can be turned around but I agree with others that believe production and science cannot coexist at LANL. Personally, I would rather production leave LANL and science remain.
9/09/2019 9:05 PM"
No going to happen, production is the only future. Science will be leaving one way or another, which could be that it just gets weaker and weaker, or somebody just says "look it just makes no sense to have production and science together so we are moving the science out". But it is clear that science has no future at LANL and the writing has been on the wall for some time. Perhaps it is a good thing and will save some money. You consolidate at LLNL or Sandia, the best stuff from LANL science and them you use the remaining infrastructure for for the production. I have also heard that it is a matter of time before South Carolina gives up on pits, which will happen in less than 5 years. After that that it is clear that LANL needs to become the production faculty.
9/10/2019 7:17 AM
Excellent on-site, first-hand report of conditions. Thank you. Too much bloviating on this blog with too little real info. Thanks again. Any of you bloviators want to refute him?
6:13pm
Yes. Half of what 7:17am says is absolutely true but he denies the safety culture issue. How can you have “incompetent managers”, “lack of resources”, stealing of qualified resources from one pool to the other, lack of trained resources, disdain for “bureaucracy” (I.e. rules and processes), etc. and then say safety culture is “healthy”. This is fundamental misunderstanding of what comprises a nuclear safety culture. It is not just how you “feel” in a survey. It is your program including your people, their training, a consistent set and application of processes, a compliance mindset coupled with a questioning attitude, and HOW THESE THINGS ARE APPIED AND OVERSEEN BY MANAGEMENT. 7:17am,’s comments are actually damning of LANL nuclear safety culture and 6:13pm’s clear ignorance to this reinforces my point. LANL does not understand nuclear safety in a production environment.
To the untruths. I too have worked in PF-4 and many who could leave because they have valued skills and are not tied to the Northern New Mexico area, did leave, because of poor management (agree with 7:17am) AND poor culture. One Safety Basis colleague saying he had never seen such blatant disregard for following process and lack of process in the first place.
If you need further education on what a healthy nuclear safety culture looks like I encourage you to read the INPO document “Traits of a healthy Nuclear Safety Culture” which is used throughout the DOE complex and Nuclear power.
Some true reflection and less denial would be helpful to you all.
"Any of you bloviators want to refute him?
9/10/2019 6:13 PM"
Yes I refute him.
Case in point:
"There are good people and bad just like you find everywhere else. Arrogance? " This is attitude that "of course we have some low quality employees but heck every place does so no big deal, it is no difference at MacDonalds or TA-55, some good people, some bad, some ok, just like everyplace else" Do you see the problem with this attitude?
Do you see the problem with this attitude?
9/10/2019 10:41 PM
Except it is not an "attitude." It is a fact.
9/10/2019 10:41 PM
Outstanding refute!!!!! Mike drop big time. This is the problem with LANL, we just accept things, we accept that there are lots of bad people , we accept bad managers, we accept low quality, we accept failure, and most of all we accept that nothing can be done.
All I can say is if we ever have to test again, everything changes at the labs...EVERYTHING.
9/11/2019 6:05 PM
Lots of "we" in there, as if you are part of everything and your "we" group could just decide NOT to "accept" what you don't like. Just how, exactly, would that work? I bet your personal part in the "we" is very, very small, if it exists at all.
I have to agree with 5:15. Apparently we (a true plural pronoun) have a former employee with a Napoleon complex and nearly complete lack of knowledge of the subject. No need to comment on his/her grammar as the other deficits are damning enough.
5:15 and 10:47 choose to troll people instead of address the issue. Shocking.
Calling people out for being outrageously dumb and self-aggrandizing is not "trolling."
“In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room, or blog, with the primary intent of provoking readers into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.”
If you are not trolling: address the topic in your response don’t just insult people you don’t agree with. (left you one grammar troll)
From what I can tell there are four trolls on this blog:
1) The Grammar troll, who pushes the belief that this is a high school English class to deflect from the issues addressed in topics (UC defender)
2) The bitter soul troll. ANYONE who provides evidence of issues at LANL is immediately called bitter and told to get a life. (UC Defender)
3) The cowboy troll. Any topic is immediately swung to cowboy scientists although I haven’t met a scientist with a cowboy hat yet. (EVERYTHING LANL does is bad)
4) The Millennial troll. The newest edition, anyone who criticizes the actions of LANL is a racist. (UC defender).
I came to this blog to learn about the issues and have intelligent discussion. What I quickly realized is that there are a few that want the same (including the moderators, thank you) and many who just want to troll the others to defend there broader points of view (LANL GOOD you stupid (uh uh) or COWBOY SCIENCE LANL BAD (uh uh)).
"Calling people out for being outrageously dumb and self-aggrandizing is not "trolling."
9/14/2019 5:05 PM"
You can do that but you never address the address the actual issue. It is kind of telling.
9/15/2019 6:46 AM
No one who responds to the issue in an outrageously dumb and self-aggrandizing way deserves to be taken seriously. Calling out is appropriate.
"No one who responds to the issue in an outrageously dumb and self-aggrandizing way deserves to be taken seriously. Calling out is appropriate."
So you simply have no coherent argument to counter the issues raised. Again you response is very telling.
6:13pm. First of all, I'm a she not a he. I'm not a troll nor some sort of narcissistic retiree. I'm not ignorant or self-aggrandizing. THis is MY opinion based on first hand experience working in the plant for many years. You can disagree with my opinion without name calling. Second, why are you even quoting safety basis people? They are not experts on nuclear facility work nor conduct of operations. They are risk management/number crunchers. Most of those people don't even know where PF-4 is, let alone how the work gets done. Oh but of course, they know everything about nuclear safety and the culture.
We've all been trained to INPO over the years so I don't need to be lectured. We can absorb good practices from INPO just like we can use tools human performance initiative.
Whats a healthy safety culture? A learning organization where people feel comfortable coming forward and admitting mistakes to management, without fear of retaliation or finger pointing, striving for continual improvement. Workers who feel comfortable standing up to their coworkers when they feel something is being performed unsafely-The ability to pause work when required. Managers who walk the talk and listen to workers and who address issues. An unhealthy culture would be attitudes like yours (you're ignorant, you're stupid, you don't know how to do nuclear work safely) that cause workers to drive reporting underground.
12:00pm. Assuming you are 7:17am. You provided all of the first hand information needed to deem the culture unhealthy. I will not readdress it. To your new statements, to asay Safety Basis people know nothing of conduct of ops nor nuclear facility work is also damning either way you slice it. Either you have no respect for their role in the process which DOES include conduct of ops or you are saying they are not able in performing the vital, DOE mandated, role of setting the facility basis to which it will be OPERATED.
I too have worked in PF-4. You aren’t telling me anything I don’t know. You are just reinforcing my point.
9/17/2019 12:00 PM
You claim to be replying to 9/10/2019 6:13 PM, which is me. I totally supported your post of 9/10/2019 7:17 AM. Wrong person?? Wrong response??
"Whats a healthy safety culture? A learning organization where people feel comfortable coming forward and admitting mistakes to management, without fear of retaliation or finger pointing, striving for continual improvement. Workers who feel comfortable standing up to their coworkers when they feel something is being performed unsafely-"
This will never ever happen at LANL or any other NNSA lab. The whole point is to make sure management is not responsible. If anything goes wrong the reaction of management is to protect itself not fix the problem. Perhaps at least at LANL parts of TRIAD will attempt to change this.
6:13 totally missed the mark on the definition of culture. He/she describes processes not culture. Culture is intangible-“
“The beliefs, customs, institutions, and other products of human work and thought considered as a unit”..
Workers who feel comfortable standing up to their coworkers when they feel something is being performed unsafely-"
9/18/2019 5:26 AM
No one should be empowering employees who act on their "feelings." If the employees do not have enough education, training, or experience to KNOW, TECHNICALLY, that something is unsafe, they should not even be in the vicinity of such operations. I do not want a highly technical, dangerous operation interrupted by an employee who "feels" he is unsafe. Give me a break. This is not grammar school.
ive worked with many safety basis people. There are only a handful who understand the actual scope of work and processing. The rest, you have to educate. Maybe you and I should meet at Starbucks sometime and we can discuss what safety culture really means and I can tell you all the gaps in safety basis that we’ve discovered over the years for our program.. We can also discuss the difference between bureaucracy and rules/processes and where the two diverge. You just like to point out processes, which is NOT culture. Again, I stand by my comments. Hope you’re not in management but by the sound of things, you must be a former reactor worker.
"No one should be empowering employees who act on their "feelings." If the employees do not have enough education, training, or experience to KNOW, TECHNICALLY, that something is unsafe, they should not even be in the vicinity of such operations. I do not want a highly technical, dangerous operation interrupted by an employee who "feels" he is unsafe. Give me a break. This is not grammar school."
If the word "feelings" were replaced with "reason to believe" your argument falls apart, but I think you know that. Employees that DO have "experience to KNOW, TECHNICALLY, that something is unsafe" don't always make the correct workplace decisions for a number of reasons, but I think you know that too. Ease up a little and don't let your feelings get the best of you. This is not grammar school.
Sloppy speech = sloppy thought = sloppy actions = dangerous conditions.
You claim to be replying to 9/10/2019 6:13 PM, which is me. I totally supported your post of 9/10/2019 7:17 AM. Wrong person?? Wrong response??
9/17/2019 5:40 PM
Possibly, and if so, I apologize.
ive worked with many safety basis people. There are only a handful who understand the actual scope of work and processing. The rest, you have to educate. Maybe you and I should meet at Starbucks sometime and we can discuss what safety culture really means and I can tell you all the gaps in safety basis that we’ve discovered over the years for our program.. We can also discuss the difference between bureaucracy and rules/processes and where the two diverge. You just like to point out processes, which is NOT culture. Again, I stand by my comments. Hope you’re not in management but by the sound of things, you must be a former reactor worker.
9/18/2019 6:20 PM
Not a reactor worker, more of a process line worker in my day but I have been in few. I understand the practical nature of what you are saying but having worked at 4 different DOE production/lab sites (while there were still 3 production sites operating) in different roles including operations, management, and CSE and I can tell you through personal experience that LANL really needs to stop and reflect on their nuclear safety culture. I have seen way too many instances where people either ignore problems with processes and move forward, believe they cannot speak up (hear it almost 50% of the time in critiques, I'm too old school to call them fact findings), do not understand the implications of their actions, or frankly do not care. Most of the time, there is no consequence. Understand, I do not disagree with ANY of your observations but having a process, following (and respecting) the process, or stopping and getting the process fixed IS the "culture" that must be in place. You cannot divest the two. Management and workers must support it. I do not see a critical mass (pun intended) of that in LANL OPS with some facilities being worse than others.
If you do not agree, we will just have to agree to disagree. I hope you strive to promote a stronger culture everyday at LANL.
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