Diversification Eyed
By John FleckAlbuquerque Journal Staff Writer
Los Alamos National Laboratory needs to reach beyond the nuclear weapons program to find the money to support its national security work, lab director Michael Anastasio said Thursday.
At a time of shrinking nuclear weapons budgets, the lab must pursue work outside the weapons program to support the lab's scientific base, according to Anastasio.
Anastasio's comments came during a briefing Thursday morning for lab employees and in subsequent news media briefings.
The new approach involves seeking out work for agencies like the Department of Homeland Security, the Pentagon and the energy research arm of the Department of Energy.
That type of work already makes up $700 million a year of the lab's $2 billion-plus budget, Anastasio said, and is rising at 10 percent annually.
Nuclear weapons work has been the heart of Los Alamos' mission since it was founded during World War II to build the first atomic bombs. But with decreasing federal support for weapons work, Anastasio said the lab must diversify its base of support in order to maintain the supercomputers, laboratory space and personnel needed to tackle whatever problems of national importance the federal government needs the lab to solve.
Anastasio's comments Thursday coincided with Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman's announcement of an initiative to broaden the national security mission of Los Alamos and its sister nuclear weapons labs, Sandia in Albuquerque and Lawrence Livermore in California, along with the Nevada Test Site, where nuclear materials testing is done.
Bodman's announcement reflects a consensus among the managers of the labs and the test site that their mission should not be limited to nuclear weapons, but “rather is one encompassing the full spectrum of national security interests,” according to an announcement of the plan.
Anastasio's comments and the new Energy Department initiative reflect an approach that has already been successful at Sandia National Laboratories. Sandia in recent years has been buffered from the effects of nuclear weapons budget cuts by expanded work in other areas, especially for the intelligence community and the Pentagon's non-nuclear military programs.
Los Alamos, meanwhile, has cut some 2,300 people from its work force in recent years, according to Anastasio.
Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., praised the new initiatives, but cautioned that achieving the goal of scientific diversification would not be easy.
Domenici has voiced concerns that plans to shrink the U.S. nuclear weapons complex did not take into account the importance of the labs' scientific capabilities.
“I've always believed that the scientific capabilities at our labs have broad applications, but those capabilities require investments in computing, science and infrastructure,” Domenici said in a statement. “Secretary Bodman's commitment is welcomed but we obviously have ongoing challenges to meet it.”
50 comments:
If LANL decides to diversify it will be very painful to the work-force. You think that the loss of 2000 job's is bad wait till you hear the estimates of the new and improved diverification project!!!First of all the big money for green stuff is already allocated, we are jumping in mid-stream, second the money will dry up just as soon as we either find more oil, or design a guzzle-less automobile. Either way it's temporary funding, and not a whole lot.
Know anybody who wants to purchase a house?
Too little, too late.
I guess Mikey does not want to be the last LANL director so he's trying to sound like a real manager. Too bad the overhead will kill all the great outside projects.
"Los Alamos, meanwhile, has cut some 2,300 people from its work force in recent years, according to Anastasio."
That statement doesn't make sense to me.
Maybe he's including students at earlier times and excluding them now?
Maybe he means that's how many left but is not including the new people brought in?
FY06 Beginning
Staff Incl PDs - 9110
Staff Aug Contractors - 530
Total - 9640
FY06 May (Just prior to LANS)
Staff Incl PDs - 9206
Staff Aug Contractors - 489
Total - 9695
FY07 Beginning
Staff Incl PDs - 9139
Staff Aug Contractors - 653
Total - 9792
FY08 Beginning
Staff Incl PDs - 8912
Staff Aug Contractors - 452
Total - 9364
FY08 March
Staff Incl PDs - 8352
Staff Aug Contractors - 343
Total - 8695
So from Oct 05 to Mar 08 I get a net loss of 9640-8695 = 945
May 06 to Mar 08
9695-8695 = 1000
Oct 06 to Mar 08
9792-8695 = 1097
Oct 07 to Mar 08
9364-8695 = 669
Anonymous at 6/27/08 4:23 PM
has most of the math correct but is leaving out the PTLA, JCI, etc contractors.
I don't know if the number of losses
is actually 2000, but I think that
it is more than 1000.
Interestingly I've heard from within UCOP that the Regents have suddenly realized that they no longer control LANL and LLNL, and that more and more sponsors (inside and outside DOE) are seeing only LBNL as a true UC national lab. As such UC is beginning to put more interest into expanding and growing work for "its" national lab. While LANL and LLNL have being laying off, LBNL has been hiring and UCOP approved the lab's request to increase its overall FTE count. And I've noticed an undercurrent of competition from counterparts at LBNL, while LANL and LLNL are being told to work together or else.
Turns out having UC on our masthead and business cards made getting non-NNSA/DOE sponsors and work easier than most of us realized.
LANL has not lost 2,300 jobs as Mikey says, he is using a "tactic" to try to get Congress attention to his Brain-drain situation...Sorry Mikey but it just doesnt add up, please give us the real numbers the work-force at LANL has remained basically the same for the past few years. Lies more lies and damn Lies.
Kirkland Air Force Base (KAFB) has several, separate research organizations located on their premises – Sandia National Laboratory and Air Force Research Lab to name two. Los Alamos should emulate the KAFB model by establishing additional, separate research organizations. The separate organizations would be better suited for competing for work-for-others (WFO) money. NNSA and LANS both make it nearly impossible for us to successfully compete for work-for-others (WFO) money. NNSA combined with LANS management double the cost of doing business. Due to this enormous overhead, we need a separate science lab that is solely run by UNM or a scientific government agency like NASA. If the pure science lab is separate from both LANS and NNSA, then the overhead will be comparable with other scientific institutions, for example, John Hopkins Applied Physics Lab.
Next, we need DTRA to take over a large portion of LANL real estate and establish a research lab. KAFB has the Air Force Research Lab and Los Alamos would have the DTRA research lab. Congress continues to increase money for nonproliferation so the budgets at DTRA are much healthier than NNSA. DTRA owns lots of real estate, e.g. white-sands missile range, but they currently do not have a research lab. NNSA can save money by reducing the nuclear weapon complex footprint, and DTRA will save money by no longer paying the LANS overhead.
Anastasio is naive to think LANL, with its huge overhead, can offset the declining NNSA budgets with WFO money. Likewise, if Udall were wise, he should start championing an independent research institution located at Los Alamos dedicated to green science; rather than believing an NNSA lab can go green. Secondly, Udall can win support from Los Alamos County if we see him fighting to establish a DTRA lab, which will hire nuclear weapon scientists/engineers like myself. Establishing a science laboratory and a DTRA laboratory will benefit Northern New Mexico and the US, plus it will provide many of us jobs.
"Interestingly I've heard from within UCOP that the Regents have suddenly realized that they no longer control LANL and LLNL, and that more and more sponsors (inside and outside DOE) are seeing only LBNL as a true UC national lab."
Yeah, LBNL is growing. My guess is that it was DOE's plan all along to focus on LBNL to do its basic R&D. It makes sense -- next to a world class university with cheap workforce (grad students and postdocs) and no security costs. The DOE biofuels initiative is one example.
Mike may have been quoting a true figure. Those who have calculated here on the blog have used net numbers.
9000 employees going to 8000 is a net loss of 1000 positions.
but
9000 plus 1000 minus 2000 is a still net loss of 1000 positions, but 2000 bodies.
Come on. At least he was positive and acted like he cared about building up WFO. I think LANS has found it can't instantly fix the cost of this place- at least not while meeting 50,000 DOE directives. Maybe the bloggers should give him a break.
I would personally love to work on the current energy crisis... I don't want my children to live in a world modeled on "Mad Max"
We are never EVER going to have any success at diversification if we do not reduce our outrageous taxes!
To 9:18 PM
To me, many of your suggestions are feasible. I have heard variations on them for years now.
Are you willing to work, non-anonymously, to make some of them come true?
Are any other readers willing to work to make some of these things comes true, to at least take a first step toward making them come true.
Thanks,
I hear that LLNL lost about 2000 people in the last couple of years. Maybe Mikey still thinks he is at LLNL?
Not disagreeing 1:23, just said it didn't make sense to me with the figures I had.
Of course that's like telling people that
9000 + 1000 - 1000 = 9000 and I lost 1000 people. Guess I'd say I lost 1000 and gained 1000 to be clear.
Presumably, net headcount is what matters for gross budgeting no matter how many left.
Personally, I'm neutral on the Director, just like every other Director since I've been here.
It's not just the number of people lost, however you decide to count it. It's the fact that some of LANL's best scientists have been bailing out of the lab over the last few years.
As far as bringing in WFO work, Mike will first have to make LANL a more attractive place for outside sponsors to spend their dollars. That means (a) reducing the paperwork, (b) streamlining policies, and (c) reducing the huge amount of management and support which helps to drive up FTE costs through overhead charges.
None of these things is likely to be done by either LANS or NNSA. Therefore, we'll stay with an average TSM FTE cost of about $450K or higher and continue to slowly lose more scientists who will decide to move on to much better working environments.
Mike's WFO cheerleading is mainly being done so he can look back in a few years and say, "Well, I tried, people." In reality, he won't be trying because it would be far too painful for management to do what needs to be done to radically grow the number of WFO projects at LANL.
Mike is an old nuke weaponeer at heart. If what you really want is more WFOs at LANL, then Mike is not the man for the job of LANL Director. Even worse, NNSA is not the agency to be running a lab chock full of WFO projects.
Let's see, Mike's new WFO vision will go about like this at LANL...
"I'm having a tough time finding charge codes to bill to for my time. When can I count on you people bringing in some WFOs so I can start charging my time to them with overhead?"
Anonymous at 6/28/08 12:22 PM writes:
"I'm having a tough time finding charge codes to bill to for my time. When can I count on you people bringing in some WFOs so I can start charging my time to them with overhead?"
I actually had a program manager do that. His didn't get enough programs in, so he charged directly to a number of them!
From 6/28/08 12:50 PM
"I actually had a program manager do that. His didn't get enough programs in, so he charged directly to a number of them!"
Indeed, your punishment for not bringing in enough money is that we will take more of what you have brought in!
It's this mentality that will forever prevent LANL from bringing in any meaningful amount of WFO.
Well, if I recall correctly, I thought I heard the Director say that he was going to cut OH by having people start charging directly to programs.
I understand that one of LANL's ADs, Doug Beason, is leaving. If so, does anyone know why? How many ADs have left or are going to leave within the next 12 months?
Anonymous at6/28/08 3:05 PM said...
"Well, if I recall correctly, I thought I heard the Director say that he was going to cut OH by having people start charging directly to programs."
Yes, that is true!
But, there is a major difference between "charging directly to a program" and actually doing any work on it.
Yes, Doug Beason is calling it quits as head of Threat Reduction. Too bad, really. His decisions weren't always the best but Beason always struck me as a nice guy with with a good heart.
Now that Beason has announced he is leaving, I have to believe that Terry Wallace's little maneuver last month to pull staff out of TR and put them under TSC (and Form-B them back to TR) was done knowing that Beason would soon be gone from his position.
"I actually had a program manager do that. His didn't get enough programs in, so he charged directly to a number of them!"
You know, this happens all the time at LANL and it should be viewed as criminal behavior. Taking funding from outside sponsors when you had nothing really to do with their programs is just plain wrong.
Why does LANS continue to let some of the Program Managers at LANL get away with this crap?
Do you think that anybody from the IG's office is reading these posts about the horseshit behavior of the Program Managers?
I've had group leaders pull the same stunt. Divison leader sets a low overhead to look good and tells the GL's they have to do programmatic work part of the time. So they charge a few hours on each program that comes into their group. One guy used most of this "project" time to self-contract his new house in Quemazon.
Did anyone else hear that our deputy director, Van P., inbibed a little too much and totalled his LANS (leased) vehicle? Does that mean he will lose his Q? Is the vehicle considered government property?
"You know, this happens all the time at LANL and it should be viewed as criminal behavior. Taking funding from outside sponsors when you had nothing really to do with their programs is just plain wrong."
get over it. It happens everywhere, at every contractor I've ever worked for. It's a key piece of Bechtel's overhead reduction -- take overhead and charge it directly. Nothing changes, but it makes overhead *look* lower. You just bury what is really overhead in direct charges.
But management skimming contracts because overhead does not cover costs? Buesiness as usual everywhere, including sandia, I might add.
"Los Alamos National Laboratory needs to reach beyond the nuclear weapons program to find the money to support its national security work, lab director Michael Anastasio said Thursday."
Is this guy a genious or what? Only took him a couple of years a RIF to figure it out. Uncle Pete is still clueless though.
If Van P. was driving a LANS leased vehicle while DWI, then that should violates LANL policies. Even if it wasn't a LANS leased car, he would have to immediately report the DWI to security and it would effect his clearance.
Of course, if any of this did occur, you can be sure that LANS management will work hard to cover it up.
6/27/08 3:32 PM--"If LANL decides to diversify it will be very painful to the work-force. You think that the loss of 2000 job's is bad wait till you hear the estimates of the new and improved diverification project!!!First of all the big money for green stuff is already allocated, we are jumping in mid-stream"
So let's just go back to chewing our cud. Baaaaa....baaaa....
I've looked for confirmation on the Van P. story and could not find anything. The New Mexican's Police Notes don't mention him on the 25th of June, the 26th or the 28th. Oddly, the Police Notes for the 27th are not available.
I've located the Police Notes for June 27th and Van P. isn't mentioned there either. We'll have to wait for one of our blog readers to supply more details.
Anonymous at 6/29/08 11:13 AM says
"management skimming contracts because overhead does not cover costs? Business as usual everywhere, including sandia, I might add."
Maybe so, but that doesn't make it right. And, I can tell you from experience that it makes it very difficult to get the work done in budget when they steal your money.
The end result is that the poor slob the brings in the money is the only person who has any acountability to meet the cost, schedule, and performance objectives.
What needs to change is the GLs and DLs must have responsibility to fund their staffs. As it is now, both at LANL and LLNL, each individual is a profit center. If you become unfunded, it is your responsibility.
Frank, it is also not mentioned in the Los Alamos police beat. VanP lives on the hill.
No doubt the theory will go that LANS has buried the story. Kind of like Mitchell's security incident.
Frank - I heard it happened in his own driveway where he was blitzed and backed up into another car so there is no DUI report. Lucky for us he wasn't able to get on the road in that condition. The people at property know all about it. He was driving a LANS vehicle, paid by LANS so government property. This is the guy who has this vehicle picked up by property folks, fueled and washed once a week or more, it's a big black SUV, 2 MPG, probably fueled and maintained on a government gas card, nope no government vehicle for this guy, and also the bigger point, we are held to a higher standard ETHICS HANDBOOK and Q CLEARANCE reporting requirements so yeah he probably (!!) reported the incident to security since he was in a government vehicle. Yeah I'm also sure he reported it to the police. This will be another John Mitchell non-issue.
What was the occasion? Was he celebrating, upset, maybe an interaction with prescription medication?
VanP lives in Quemazon. An accident in his driveway certainly kept him from having a more serious one driving out of there on a steep windy downhill road.
Back to this post's main subject, diversity...
Does anyone believe that LANS is up for this difficult task?
How, exactly, does Mike propose it be done. Does he expect TSM level staff to keep working off their butts developing new proposals while management and support sit back and eat up large chunks of any of the incoming funds? Or perhaps he envisions hiring some really good Program Managers who have proven track records at securing outside funds? Or perhaps he plans on splitting LANL up into various segments with a low cost "WFO-lab" doing outside work (ala Batelle's PNNL approach)? And what about NNSA? Who is going to hold this highly dysfunctional agency in check while LANL begins taking on more and more outside projects?
He's given us a path, but what's his workable plan at getting us there?
A vehicle leased by LANS to one of its executives would be a *corporate* vehicle, not a government vehicle. Sorry to burst your bubble.
I have seen no workable plans that would get LANL to become more diversified. By workable plan, I mean one that includes detailed SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) for each proposed area of potential diversification.
I started to sketch out such a plan 4 years ago but, when there was little interest, I went on to other things.
Does anyone, not just the Director, have such a plan or even part of one?
Spirals of distrust
If the Director came out with a diversification plan tomorrow, 600 pages and well thought out, who among the readers would work hard to make this plan succeed even though they disagreed with parts of it and did not understand other parts of it.
For LANL to improve, it seems that someone has to go first in trusting even though the other side has not yet deserved it.
Comments?
Mikey believes in the ultimate power of wishful thinking. Now, begin tapping your jewel encrusted ruby slippers three times, ignore those vicious flying monkeys sent by Congress, circle around, and repeat after me...
"I can diversify, I can diversify, I can diversify..."
A vehicle leased by LANS to one of its executives would be a *corporate* vehicle, not a government vehicle. Sorry to burst your bubble.
7/1/08 7:06 AM
Did you mean to say a Rechtel executive, not LANS right? So it's a corporate vehicle so we guess you must know that fact. That's not bursting anyone's bubble. Then if it's corporate, why do property people fill up the tank for him? Isn't that fraud waste and abuse to use LANS/govnt resources to run private errands such as filling up the tank of a *corporate* vehicle? (how does a property employee charge his time to that assignment???) Aren't we constantly being hammered about misuse of government resources and warned about time card fraud. Van P is a key person, with perks such as a personal *corporate* vehicle paid by LANS. Is a key person held to a higher standard of conduct or not? We all know that answer. Rechtel brings such a sense of entitlement and the rules don't apply to them and this is a perfect example. Hmm, when did pumping gas for the boss become assigned duty? Let's see that on the job descriptin and performance eval.
"Hmm, when did pumping gas for the boss become assigned duty?"
Interesting you brought that up - that was one of my first assignments at the Nevada Test Site a very long time ago (I didn't work for the Lab back then). Had to run to the Area 6 gas station for oil and lube job - and fill-er-up at the same time.
As this post's title says:
"Diversification Eyed"
Yes, that's it, diversification eyed, but not executed. It's all just a bunch of happy talk from Mike to help shake off the political heat.
Best, easiest and fastest way to diversify LANL and LLNL would be to move them out from under NNSA control. Place them back in DOE Office of Science, and have them do their NNSA work as WFO.
Since LANL became LLC operated under NNSA its name has really become - Los Alamos NNSA Laboratory ... not "National"
7/1 7:22 am: "By workable plan, I mean one that includes detailed SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) for each proposed area of potential diversification."
I'll bet that will involve some facilitated leveraging sessions with lots of flipcharts, lousy coffee, and people leaving every ten minutes to make phone calls. Great idea. That kind of "analysis" is for people who know nothing about the subject to convince themselves they've carefully considered every aspect of it. Meanwhile, the ones that are invited but don't show up will be maiking the decisions.
6:59 am: "Best, easiest and fastest way to diversify LANL and LLNL would be to move them out from under NNSA control. Place them back in DOE Office of Science, and have them do their NNSA work as WFO."
Why diversify LANL? LANL has a mission. If you don't like it, or can't make a career here, go get a different job. To expect the workplace to change to meet your desires is ludicrous. Like taking a job at NASA and suggesting it "diversify" to pharmaceutical research. Nobody owes you a permanent job.
"Why diversify LANL? LANL has a mission. If you don't like it, or can't make a career here, go get a different job." - 10:24 AM
Remember that quote when the big jobs layoffs come calling at LANL in the next few years because the weapons budget is scaled back by Congress.
I'll bet you'll be singing a different tune on the day you get your pink slip. But, hey, if you don't like it, too bad. You should have left when you still had a chance. The jobs that are left will be for those who are doing diversified research that the nation really needs.
The longer you work here, diverse it gets.
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