Anonymous said ....
How in the hell, did HEAF in the early 90s, go from a PhD level Facility Manager leadership requirement, devolve into a Faculty Manager that early in his LLNL career, just qualify him for a security guard position? Is this a follow the Bechtel money situation?
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A non-degreed “fab solder tech” was catapulted to a division superintendent
position. Having a Division Leader as a close home neighbor, of course, had nothing to do with it. Not.
Why in the early 1990s, was a Phd caliber faculty manager for HEAF a UC/LLNL requirement, but when LLNS took over, a non-degreed security guard was more than adequate? What changed?
A Master of Science in “Interdisciplinary Studies” at Texas A&M for example, may require very little science, and only a demonstrated competence in basic math skills. Not to say this would not be a valuable degree in a property matched work environment.
It depends on what said FM did subsequently, did he retire, get a position in H.R. or the Security Department, or, did the former HEAF FM land another LLNS position also historically requiring a PhD or Masters in the “hard sciences”?
“ran like a well oiled machine”
HEAF was a “well oiled machine”?
I don’t think so, read the HEAF and HEAF related Site 300 accident reports and the DOE IG “Accountability and Control of Explosives at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's High Explosives
Applications Facility” (HEAF) report for starters. So not exactly a “well oiled machine”. But clearly a decision was made to promote a specific employee to HEAF FM by greasing the skids.
So let’s get this straight you clearly don’t know what job this employee had after this but you think you know how he treated his employees??? Yea no you clearly have no idea do you!!!! Typical of those PHD’s aka Penasco High School Deploma
I read the referenced 2013 PDF, under the Security Guard qualified HEAF FM watch. Looks like “failing up”.
https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2013/10/f3/INS-O-13-06.pdf
Employees considered for positions especially leadership positions, should be considered based on APPLICABLE credentials and interpersonal skills. When that criteria is skipped over, a toxic work environment is created from the get go. The referenced 2013 IG report starts out with:
“The Office of Inspector General received a complaint alleging weaknesses with the controls over physical access to explosive material, as well as weaknesses with explosive inventory control and accountability in the HEAF explosive operations area.”
Hmm. Why might the individual
observing these “weaknesses”, not simply forward HEAF concerns to the Facility Manager? Or did he or she do so? Or, did the individual know sure as h_ll, the retaliation blowback that would immediately follow? I hope this sheds light on your question.
Lots of HEAF shenanigans 10+ years back, Randy, a freshly promoted division leader, hired an unqualified 500 series E tech to a HEAF Supervisor position that would clearly be Randy’s lap dog.
The problem was, the dude wasn’t even close to being qualified for this supervisor position as described and it gets worse.
Randy, ignored the written 300 tech associate series job posting requirement, and instead, secretly allowed 500 series techs to apply because it would be an instant promotion to a 300 series (only a hoodwink review) position despite what the 300 series existing status posting requirements stated in black and white.
Why was this important? The assignment was not a 100% supervisor position. It was a ~70+ 300 series and 300 caliber tech position requiring experience in existing high voltage and potentially lethal high voltage HEAF systems.
Randy knew this, but building his empire was more important than technical progress or human safety.
How nice to be in a woke shroud of protection while making self-serving hiring decisions at the potential expense of human life.
So what happened to these established high voltage programmatic systems? They collapsed due to the failure to hire the obviously needed staff.
Another example of leaders like Randy and other HEAF leadership figures failing up as was said earlier.