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Tuesday, December 14, 2021
900 parking spots
900 new parking spots added under Triad. That’s all folks! Billions wasted but at least there are parking spaces.
25 comments:
Anonymous
said...
I am not sure what your point is, parking has been a issue for some time and they expect more people with the pit production so they have to do something to address the issue. If this was Bechtel it would still be under construction with huge cost overruns and safety issues.
What does this huge accomplishment have to do with Bechtel? Parking wouldn’t be an issue if all the dead wood was cut out. So many people doing nothing for a handsome paycheck. You don’t seem to know much about Bechtel and the projects they’ve completed over the years. These Triad schmucks could never operate in the same arena.
TRIAD can honestly claim success for building a few parking spaces. It isn’t like winning the Cold War, but if you are Tom Mason and crew you’ve got to take credit where you can. This is it!
TRIAD can honestly claim success for building a few parking spaces. It isn’t like winning the Cold War, but if you are Tom Mason and crew you’ve got to take credit where you can. This is it!
All the bitter Bechtel haters are cracking me up. Wake up people. So much waste and potential for major safety incidents with all the incompetence that’s been on that hill for years. Throw in poor triad mgt, lack of accountability and slow decision making that will result in nothing but failure. Of course failure is rewarded.
"Hilarious all the folks that could never work outside of LANL in a real EPCM world bash Bechtel"
I hate to break it to you but there way more Bechtel bashers outside of LANL than in LANL. Just ask the people who lost family in Bolivia. There are several book about how sleazy corrupt and incompetent Bechtel is.
The Profiteers: Bechtel and the Men Who Built the World Paperback – February 14, 2017 by Sally Denton (Author).
Friends in High Places: The Bechtel Story: The Most Secret Corporation and How It Engineered the World by Laton McCartney.
Laton McCartney has torn the cover off of the Bechtel Group and given us insight into one of the most successful, most influential, and most controversial mega-businesses in the history of the planet earth. A giant octopus with tentacles everywhere imaginable, plunking down projects, and sucking up billions of private and public funds, all over the world. We hear lots about Halliburton and it's foibles, but when was the last time you heard a peep from the Bechtel Group? Bechtel is a "private" corporation with no stockholders and no messy SEC investigations to endure. These guys, as the book tells us, know how to operate out of sight. Even their internal power struggles and disappointments are out of public sight. The book describes Stephen Bechtel, Jr as operating his personal life in a way that would make an experienced undercover spy proud. And then there is "The Grove", the real "friends in high places". There are things in this book you should know, but don't believe everything. A dollop of good sense will guide you through what is on the edge of truth and what isn't. Just be careful not to believe everything. This is one of the most interesting reads of non-fiction that one will ever make, because it informs us of what has been going on behind our backs, out of reach of the "evening news" or "headline news", Time, or Newsweek, or the New York Times, for that matter. You can thank publishers Simon and Schuster for bringing this to the light of day. The definitive Halliburton book has not been written yet because so much 'flotsam and jetsam' has yet to be retrieved and examined in the wake of the Iraqi War(s) and disasters like Hurricane Katrina. To be sure, Bechtel was and is involved in both wars AND Katrina, on a parallel track with Halliburton. So knowing Bechtel, gives general strategic insight into Halliburton and vice versa. In addition, when one finishes this book, you must immediately 'google' the word 'Bechtel' to see what they are currently 'up to'. Clues are everywhere on the web, but they are still secretive and still very active, making money 'hand over fist', but not without making their own strategic mistakes. Guess who is responsible for rebuilding the Baghdad electrical grid and water/sewage systems? Well, well! The fact that they have made it through the rough patches attests to their internal strengths as detailed in the book. And yes, there is Reagan, Bush I, George Pratt Schultz, (and probably Bush II involvement, since Riley Bechtel is a presidential advisor on middle eastern trade). Well, well, indeed! The book folds nicely into current events. While Halliburton is getting nothing but grief over Iraq, Bechtel is all but invisible and bullet-proof, just as our author suggests in earlier times. Some of this is appalling, almost immoral, but it always seems to be quite legal. Like giving a Saudi a 10 percent share in Arabian Bechtel in order to secure the initiation of a project. Sounds like a bribe to me, but it was
9:03 having known several Bechtelians first hand, I can honestly say I have never known a more sleazy, corrupt, genuinely stupid group in my life. Their projects suck billions out of public pockets and more often than not accomplish nothing. They ARE well connected. It shames me to admit their long standing association with Republican politicians and operatives in “The Grove” is part of that global network. Shame on each and every one of them.
You have to understand that this blog and the original LANL blog where created to address issues at the labs once Bechtel came in with the contact changes. You have close to 15 years of these blogs documenting all the crazy stuff that went down. I will not go through them all since you can easily find them but leave with one fact. Bechtel came in saying that with the new business practices that they would save money which would more than compensate for the 100 million dollar fee, yet shortly after they came in LLNL had to fire hundreds of workers and LANL had to do a voluntary separation since they now did not have enough money. LLNS and LANS not only did not save money but cost whole lot more. That is all you really need to do to see the problem.
The next thing is can anyone show me single thing of "value added" that Bechtel did for the labs? This question has been asked over and over again on the blogs for 15 years yet not a single poster has offered any sort of reply. If history has been rewritten now is your time to make it right. Let us see a reply beyond "scientists suck so it is not Bechtel fault", "Bechtel just could not control a cowboy culture", "Bechtel got out waited by clever roach like LANL workers", "Bechtel expected to work with normal people with some dignity, not the LANL weirdos". "Bechtel was not aware of what tremendous feats human beings are capable of once they abandon dignity"
As for the last part you may think that is over the top but a high level person from another DOE lab told us about the time he sat next to Bechtel executive on plane and when asked about the loss of the LANL contract the Bechtel guy completely lost it saying how the LANL scientists are worse of the worse and could not changed and that they had never dealt with such bizarre, undignified but insanly persistent people, and that they where like roaches in that nothing could be done to get rid of the infestation. The DOE guy was shaken up by just how insulting what the Bechtel guy was saying. I knew a few of the Bechtel types and they just had a horrible attitude toward the non-Bechtel people.
Can you ramble a little less and state your position a little more succinctly? Thanks,
12/22/2021 8:31 PM
Ok. There more people outside of NNSA labs that have problems with Bechtel corruption and incompetence. There are several books written on this. Bechtel said they would save money at the labs. They cost so much more money that LLNL had fired\ people and LANL had to do separation options. In short Bechtel did very poorly at the labs and has a long track record messing things up elsewhere. There is no evidence of history being rewritten about Bechtel performance at LLNL and LANL. If you disagree please provide evidence to counter this.
It's called iPhone diarrhea, complete with all the misspellings and ugly grammar that comes from typing with thumbs.
12/22/2021 10:36 PM
It may be iPhone thumb ramble but I have yet you see your insightful well written keyboard with all the facts and figures to show how well Bechtel performed.
Now they are cracking me up. No "Contractor" will ever be good enough. Bechtel is horrible, Triad is horrible. IT IS ALL STILL UC. UC never lost majority control and still maintains it to this day. Its the same group of mid level and some upper level manager trolls still at LANL. No change really. Just shuffling the deck chairs.
After a couple bad relationships with contractors you may need to reflect. Maybe it is you.
I will say it isn't the scientists at LANL that are the problem. It is the operations and maintenance teams. I have seen first hand the poor nuclear operations culture at LANL. By a WIDE margin the worst in the entire complex having worked at SRS, Y-12, Hanford, Pantex, and LANL. Never seen a group who gave so little care to material accountability, nuclear safety, and configuration control. How many haz cat facilities have been shut down at LANL for nuclear safety issues. Try all of them. Hilarious....
"I will say it isn't the scientists at LANL that are the problem. It is the operations and maintenance teams. I have seen first hand the poor nuclear operations culture at LANL. By a WIDE margin the worst in the entire complex having worked at SRS, Y-12, Hanford, Pantex, and LANL. Never seen a group who gave so little care to material accountability, nuclear safety, and configuration control. How many haz cat facilities have been shut down at LANL for nuclear safety issues. Try all of them. Hilarious...."
The narrative has always been that the problems at LANL has always been the scientists. This was stated by the media, stated by LANL managers such as Nanos and stated by the DOE heads such as Bodman. I am not saying you are wrong in your assessment of issues at LANL but scientists have been blamed and most likely will continue to be blamed. I good question is why this is the case? Is it that people are just confused about who works at LANL and they assume everybody is a scientist therefore if anything goes wrong a scientists has to be responsible? Is it convenient for management to deflect blame from themselves? Is it just that people hate scientists and will happily blame whenever the opportunity arises?
My guess is that once pit production gets going there will be some form a major safety incident and the number one target will be scientists.
It's very simple 12/25/2021 12:51 AM. The sources you cite (media, managers, Nanos, DOE heads, Bodman) have had no inkling of what science is, nor how it is practiced. And since HR had its way and classified all the TSMs as "engineers," or "scientists," blaming "scientist" is obviously easy pickings for the muck-rakers that you cited. Maybe the next time the "engineers" will get the blame.
All this is under a thread called "Parking Lots." A complete description of the seriousness and impact of this blog. What a joke.
12/27/2021 5:42 PM
Ok, please tell us some other accomplishment has been done under TRIAD or LANS. I get it that Bechtel can claim it blew-up WIP costing 10 billion dollars, it could not build a fence, and lost the contract. TRIAD has at least built a parking lot. Is there some other great thing that LANL has done in the last 10 years that we should be talking about?
25 comments:
I am not sure what your point is, parking has been a issue for some time and they expect more people with the pit production so they have to do something to address the issue. If this was Bechtel it would still be under construction with huge cost overruns and safety issues.
What does this huge accomplishment have to do with Bechtel? Parking wouldn’t be an issue if all the dead wood was cut out. So many people doing nothing for a handsome paycheck. You don’t seem to know much about Bechtel and the projects they’ve completed over the years. These Triad schmucks could never operate in the same arena.
TRIAD can honestly claim success for building a few parking spaces. It isn’t like winning the Cold War, but if you are Tom Mason and crew you’ve got to take credit where you can. This is it!
Critics of the long-overdue new parking structures obviously don't work at Los Alamos.
TRIAD can honestly claim success for building a few parking spaces. It isn’t like winning the Cold War, but if you are Tom Mason and crew you’ve got to take credit where you can. This is it!
12/14/2021 6:06 PM
It is better than anything Bechtel could do.
All the bitter Bechtel haters are cracking me up. Wake up people. So much waste and potential for major safety incidents with all the incompetence that’s been on that hill for years. Throw in poor triad mgt, lack of accountability and slow decision making that will result in nothing but failure. Of course failure is rewarded.
So TRIAD gets 10 billion dollars a year and all they can do is build a single parking spot unbelievable.
2:50 Be fair. They built two parking garages and finished the one Bechtel left behind.
Bechtel never built a parking garage at TA-55. They always had excuses why it couldn't be done.
Highly doubt that is true. Hilarious all the folks that could never work outside of LANL in a real EPCM world bash Bechtel, Fluor etc.
"Hilarious all the folks that could never work outside of LANL in a real EPCM world bash Bechtel"
I hate to break it to you but there way more Bechtel bashers outside of LANL than in LANL. Just ask the people who lost family in Bolivia. There are several book about how sleazy corrupt and incompetent Bechtel is.
The Profiteers: Bechtel and the Men Who Built the World Paperback – February 14, 2017
by Sally Denton (Author).
Friends in High Places: The Bechtel Story: The Most Secret Corporation and How It Engineered the World
by Laton McCartney.
Laton McCartney has torn the cover off of the Bechtel Group and given us insight into one of the most successful, most influential, and most controversial mega-businesses in the history of the planet earth. A giant octopus with tentacles everywhere imaginable, plunking down projects, and sucking up billions of private and public funds, all over the world. We hear lots about Halliburton and it's foibles, but when was the last time you heard a peep from the Bechtel Group? Bechtel is a "private" corporation with no stockholders and no messy SEC investigations to endure. These guys, as the book tells us, know how to operate out of sight. Even their internal power struggles and disappointments are out of public sight. The book describes Stephen Bechtel, Jr as operating his personal life in a way that would make an experienced undercover spy proud. And then there is "The Grove", the real "friends in high places". There are things in this book you should know, but don't believe everything. A dollop of good sense will guide you through what is on the edge of truth and what isn't. Just be careful not to believe everything. This is one of the most interesting reads of non-fiction that one will ever make, because it informs us of what has been going on behind our backs, out of reach of the "evening news" or "headline news", Time, or Newsweek, or the New York Times, for that matter. You can thank publishers Simon and Schuster for bringing this to the light of day. The definitive Halliburton book has not been written yet because so much 'flotsam and jetsam' has yet to be retrieved and examined in the wake of the Iraqi War(s) and disasters like Hurricane Katrina. To be sure, Bechtel was and is involved in both wars AND Katrina, on a parallel track with Halliburton. So knowing Bechtel, gives general strategic insight into Halliburton and vice versa. In addition, when one finishes this book, you must immediately 'google' the word 'Bechtel' to see what they are currently 'up to'. Clues are everywhere on the web, but they are still secretive and still very active, making money 'hand over fist', but not without making their own strategic mistakes. Guess who is responsible for rebuilding the Baghdad electrical grid and water/sewage systems? Well, well! The fact that they have made it through the rough patches attests to their internal strengths as detailed in the book. And yes, there is Reagan, Bush I, George Pratt Schultz, (and probably Bush II involvement, since Riley Bechtel is a presidential advisor on middle eastern trade). Well, well, indeed! The book folds nicely into current events. While Halliburton is getting nothing but grief over Iraq, Bechtel is all but invisible and bullet-proof, just as our author suggests in earlier times. Some of this is appalling, almost immoral, but it always seems to be quite legal. Like giving a Saudi a 10 percent share in Arabian Bechtel in order to secure the initiation of a project. Sounds like a bribe to me, but it was
9:03 having known several Bechtelians first hand, I can honestly say I have never known a more sleazy, corrupt, genuinely stupid group in my life. Their projects suck billions out of public pockets and more often than not accomplish nothing. They ARE well connected. It shames me to admit their long standing association with Republican politicians and operatives in “The Grove” is part of that global network. Shame on each and every one of them.
Lots of axes being ground here. Los of history being rewritten too.
Los of history being rewritten too.
12/21/2021 6:39 PM
??
You have to understand that this blog and the original LANL blog where created to address issues at the labs once Bechtel came in with the contact changes. You have close to 15 years of these blogs documenting all the crazy stuff that went down. I will not go through them all since you can easily find them but leave with one fact. Bechtel came in saying that with the new business practices that they would save money which would more than compensate for the 100 million dollar fee, yet shortly after they came in LLNL had to fire hundreds of workers and LANL had to do a voluntary separation since they now did not have enough money. LLNS and LANS not only did not save money but cost whole lot more. That is all you really need to do to see the problem.
The next thing is can anyone show me single thing of "value added" that Bechtel did for the labs? This question has been asked over and over again on the blogs for 15 years yet not a single poster has offered any sort of reply. If history has been rewritten now is your time to make it right. Let us see a reply beyond "scientists suck so it is not Bechtel fault", "Bechtel just could not control a cowboy culture", "Bechtel got out waited by clever roach like LANL workers", "Bechtel expected to work with normal people with some dignity, not the LANL weirdos". "Bechtel was not aware of what tremendous feats human beings are capable of once they abandon dignity"
As for the last part you may think that is over the top but a high level person from another DOE lab told us about the time he sat next to Bechtel executive on plane and when asked about the loss of the LANL contract the Bechtel guy completely lost it saying how the LANL scientists are worse of the worse and could not changed and that they had never dealt with such bizarre, undignified but insanly persistent people, and that they where like roaches in that nothing could be done to get rid of the infestation. The DOE guy was shaken up by just how insulting what the Bechtel guy was saying. I knew a few of the Bechtel types and they just had a horrible attitude toward the non-Bechtel people.
You want to set history straight lets hear it.
Can you ramble a little less and state your position a little more succinctly? Thanks,
Can you ramble a little less and state your position a little more succinctly? Thanks,
12/22/2021 8:31 PM
Ok. There more people outside of NNSA labs that have problems with Bechtel corruption and incompetence. There are several books written on this. Bechtel said they would save money at the labs. They cost so much more money that LLNL had fired\ people and LANL had to do separation options. In short Bechtel did very poorly at the labs and has a long track record messing things up elsewhere. There is no evidence of history being rewritten about Bechtel performance at LLNL and LANL. If you disagree please provide evidence to counter this.
Good now?
Can you ramble a little less and state your position a little more succinctly? Thanks,
12/22/2021 8:31 PM
It's called iPhone diarrhea, complete with all the misspellings and ugly grammar that comes from typing with thumbs.
It's called iPhone diarrhea, complete with all the misspellings and ugly grammar that comes from typing with thumbs.
12/22/2021 10:36 PM
It may be iPhone thumb ramble but I have yet you see your insightful well written keyboard with all the facts and figures to show how well Bechtel performed.
Case in point ! Also devoid of logic.
Now they are cracking me up. No "Contractor" will ever be good enough. Bechtel is horrible, Triad is horrible. IT IS ALL STILL UC. UC never lost majority control and still maintains it to this day. Its the same group of mid level and some upper level manager trolls still at LANL. No change really. Just shuffling the deck chairs.
After a couple bad relationships with contractors you may need to reflect. Maybe it is you.
I will say it isn't the scientists at LANL that are the problem. It is the operations and maintenance teams. I have seen first hand the poor nuclear operations culture at LANL. By a WIDE margin the worst in the entire complex having worked at SRS, Y-12, Hanford, Pantex, and LANL. Never seen a group who gave so little care to material accountability, nuclear safety, and configuration control. How many haz cat facilities have been shut down at LANL for nuclear safety issues. Try all of them. Hilarious....
"I will say it isn't the scientists at LANL that are the problem. It is the operations and maintenance teams. I have seen first hand the poor nuclear operations culture at LANL. By a WIDE margin the worst in the entire complex having worked at SRS, Y-12, Hanford, Pantex, and LANL. Never seen a group who gave so little care to material accountability, nuclear safety, and configuration control. How many haz cat facilities have been shut down at LANL for nuclear safety issues. Try all of them. Hilarious...."
The narrative has always been that the problems at LANL has always been the scientists. This was stated by the media, stated by LANL managers such as Nanos and stated by the DOE heads such as Bodman. I am not saying you are wrong in your assessment of issues at LANL but scientists have been blamed and most likely will continue to be blamed. I good question is why this is the case? Is it that people are just confused about who works at LANL and they assume everybody is a scientist therefore if anything goes wrong a scientists has to be responsible? Is it convenient for management to deflect blame from themselves? Is it just that people hate scientists and will happily blame whenever the opportunity arises?
My guess is that once pit production gets going there will be some form a major safety incident and the number one target will be scientists.
It's very simple 12/25/2021 12:51 AM. The sources you cite (media, managers, Nanos, DOE heads, Bodman) have had no inkling of what science is, nor how it is practiced. And since HR had its way and classified all the TSMs as "engineers," or "scientists," blaming "scientist" is obviously easy pickings for the muck-rakers that you cited. Maybe the next time the "engineers" will get the blame.
All this is under a thread called "Parking Lots." A complete description of the seriousness and impact of this blog. What a joke.
All this is under a thread called "Parking Lots." A complete description of the seriousness and impact of this blog. What a joke.
12/27/2021 5:42 PM
Ok, please tell us some other accomplishment has been done under TRIAD or LANS. I get it that Bechtel can claim it blew-up WIP costing 10 billion dollars, it could not build a fence, and lost the contract. TRIAD has at least built a parking lot. Is there some other great thing that LANL has done in the last 10 years that we should be talking about?
Is there some other great thing that LANL has done in the last 10 years that we should be talking about?
12/27/2021 10:28 PM
How bout building the "great intestine" checkpoint to pile up commuter traffic?
and, of course, the magnificent emerald palace.
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