Chamber breakfast hears what's up at the lab
ROGER SNODGRASS Monitor Assistant EditorPOJOAQUE - Kevin Holsapple, executive director of the Los Alamos Commerce and Development Corporation welcomed a couple of dozen business people to a regional breakfast at the Cities of Gold Convention Center Thursday morning.
He said the regional arrangement was one the Los Alamos Chamber of Commerce hoped to repeat a couple of times a year to address the question, "How do you plan for the future in the environment that we have?"
The featured speaker was Doris Heim, associate director for business services at Los Alamos National Laboratory, who said she was in charge of the infrastructure, services for the lab's mission, procurement, property, human resources, finances and training.
She gave a quick survey of activities in her area, since June 1, 2006, when Los Alamos National Security (LANS), LLC, assumed the laboratory contract.
She said the changes included new management, new procedures, and new expectations from employees and customers who may have been hoping for a "a white knight."
There were also new issues, like the $176 million increase in costs, including a big jump in gross receipts taxes. Another set of issues, she said was not only how the new partnership had to learn to work together, but also how the parent companies added a new level of oversight to activities.
From that earliest set of challenges, she said, the lab has continued to focus on safety, security, business excellence and making sure goals are met.
There are also new efforts to perfect the laboratory's electronic data management system, improve cycle time for hiring and procurement, and improve process management projects.
Among new building projects, she cited the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement building, acknowledging that the funding was up and done on that. She also highlighted planning for a recently announced "signature" science building, known as MaRIE (for Matter-Radiation Interactions in Extremes), and work on new $11 million facility for the Los Alamos Site Office to house the staff of the Department of Energy.
After her talk, Heim was asked about the budget situation in Washington and how the lab was dealing with as much as a $350 million reduction.
"We're looking at all the possibilities," she said, including how to create more efficiencies.
14 comments:
Buh-bye Marie! Too bad Terry won't go into the sunset with Marie.
"Happy talk" from Kevin Holsapple is not going to help the local business community. Next year is going to be very difficult and the business community need to be prepared for it.
"...and work on new $11 million facility for the Los Alamos Site Office to house the staff of the Department of Energy."
Was this just for general info or is there a link to the Lab?
The Chamber - that wonderful association which will not support the current local businesses because they bought the Kevin Holsapple pie-in-the-sky Boyerville development. The Chamber is more than happy to see a number of businesses, all who are members, disappear for the sake of promoting the waste of residents' dollars in the form of higher and higher taxes to pay for County projects.
Just to show that LANL has the welfare of this County in mind, the next time anyone has a large copy job sent out of LANL, ask where it's going. I'll bet it's not going to a local business. It's probably on its way to ABQ or SF instead. Now that's real support of the local businesses.
I heard that Doris Heim is leaving in December, having completed her two year obligation since she started at LANS during the transition. Bet she can hardly wait to leave and not deal with the RIF/HR/budget issues. The other "key" personnel" i.e., Bechtel folks, who started in December 05 are also packing up their belongings.
Doris Heim has been very instrumental in keeping small businesses from getting task order contracts with LANL. She has been taken to task as far up the line as the congressional delegation for the runaround she's supported. I'm not surprised she is leaving. It can't happen too soon. I believe there will be more money for small companies after the RIFs simply because there will be lots of shortterm jobs that will be contracted out.
Note the conflict of interest because she's had byers telling folks how to write very specific statements of work and then she's had HR folks telling those same folks that the SOWs sound like staff augmentation.
"The other "key" personnel" i.e., Bechtel folks, who started in December 05 are also packing up their belongings." (9/9/07 3:54 PM)
Yep, sounds like LANL is slowly being prepared for virtual "shutdown" mode. You know it's really bad when even the rats are beginning to leave the sinking USS LANL.
Someone needs to clue the hapless County government and business people in on what is really happening across the bridge. Happy talk from Kevin is not the answer.
Horse Apples to Holsapple!
Old Slogan: Los Alamos, more MILLIONAIRES than any other town in the USA!
New Slogan: Los Alamos, more HALF-MILLIONAIRES than any other town in the USA!
What is your point 12:28? People here deserve to lose their jobs because they make the same amount of money that other people do elsewhere with the same skills and responsibilities? Every year LANL salaries are compared nationally (for technical staff) with people with the same skill set. Many people at LANL have very advanced and highly sought-after skills. They often would make more elsewhere but like living here (which is not cheap but not perhaps a costly as the other LA). Los Alamos has such a high percentage of millionaires because it has a very concentrated population of people with advanced technical skills which are always in short supply nationally. If you don't understand that, go flip another burger.
9/10/07 1:26 AM
"Los Alamos has such a high percentage of millionaires because it has a very concentrated population of people with advanced technical skills which are always in short supply nationally."
Yeah, that and the fact that there's nothing to spend money on here, except a bigger house.
"Many people at LANL have very advanced and highly sought-after skills. They often would make more elsewhere but like living here" (1:26 AM)
Ohh, Pleeeze. Stop with the "I could make tons of money elsewhere, but I choose to stay here" shtick. Face it, you're stuck here. That's why you stay. If you could find an easy way to leave Los Alamos and make bigger bucks elsewhere, you would probably do it in a flash.
When morale is as low as it is at LANL, year after year, and few leave, this begins to tell you something. LANL pays more than most employers, and the staff who have gone out job-shopping the last few years know this to be true. That's why almost everyone who is disgruntled is still here, year after year, even though they could have sold their homes last year and left the place. For 99% of the staff, this is the best employment deal they are ever going to see. It's no crime to admit that truth to yourself.
7:11, there probably was some truth to that.
I sold my house in June of '06 just as LANS took over - definitely intentional. Call it acting on my perception that I am an expendable TSM. I looked at funding, politics, new contract costs and the fact that LANL went from about 7200 regular FTEs in '01 to about 9200 in '06. Watching my buds get decimated in the early 90s in the CA defense industry was a factor too.
My Group saw a chart in '06 that had the components of LANL operating costs stacked over time, including past and projected costs. LANL employee labor costs were the largest fraction and growing, even though other costs were projected to decrease. Assuming LANS has worked on all the costs except the labor costs, I would not be surprised to see labor as a percentage of total costs even larger than it was. I have always been amazed that LANL seemed to hire up to budget capacity based on the premise of an ever-increasing budget. It always seemed to me there was very little buffer for any substantial downturn.
Assuming I don't get RIF'ed, I won't consider buying another house until LANL funding and workforce numbers look sustainable at a new plateau. How long that takes is uncertain at this point.
Local business is looking mighty bleak. I was in CBFox two weeks ago and saw no other shoppers. Same goes for Central Ave Grill. Almost all the tables were empty.
This can't keep up for long. I suspect we are going to be shocked when many of the established businesses in town begin to fold during this next year. It makes me wonder how the County thinks we will be able to support the new Boyer mall complex and pay for all the other County buildings that are being drawn up for construction.
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