Maintaining High Scientific Quality at Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories (2004) / Chapter Skim
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Contents of Report
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. As a result of this concern and a general preference for holding regular competitions for ongoing federal contracts, Congress directed the Department of Energy (DOE)
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The [NRC] will conduct its study with careful attention to the mis sions of LANL and LLNL and the needs of NNSA, the current situations at LANL and LLNL and operating requirements imposed upon them, the trends in the management of scientific activities at other relevant federal R&D organiza tions, and the future availability of scientific manpower required at LANL, LLNL, and similar laboratories.
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and proposal evaluations should ensure that the laboratories continue to attract, retain, and develop the world-class S&T staffs that are es sential to accomplishing the laboratories' missions. The RFPs and subsequent proposal evaluations should address the aspects under direct control of the contractor (e.g., laboratory facilities and site conditions)
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· Seek contractors that can provide intellectual leadership. It is essential to the missions of the laboratories and to the continuance of mission-oriented S&T work of the highest quality that the NNSA's RFPs and resulting proposal evaluations identify contrac tors that can lead the laboratories to continued technical excellence.
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3 U.S. Department of Energy, Blue Ribbon Commission on the Use of Competitive Procedures for Department of Energy Labs, "Competing the Management and Operations Contracts for DOE's National Laboratories," public draft, November 24, 2003.
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The NNSA informed the NRC that it had assigned to others the responsibility for ensuring that security and operations management would be properly addressed by the competitions. To address the study's charge, the NRC constituted the Committee on Criteria for the Management of Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories,6 a group of 15 scientists and engineers with experience in S&T management in a variety of institutions who met during January-April 2004 in Washington, D.C., and at each of the two laboratories, conducted a set of site visits to other DOE laboratories, and gathered additional information.7 THE SPECIAL CHALLENGES OF MANAGEMENT AT LANL AND LLNL The successful accomplishment of the LANL and LLNL missions requires that DOE, the contractor(s)
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9U.S. Department of Energy, Blue Ribbon Commission on the Use of Competitive Procedures for Department of Energy Labs, "Competing the Management and Operations Contracts for DOE's National Laboratories," public draft, November 24, 2003, p.
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Absent the normal scrutiny of outside peers, such a deliberate overlapping of missions is desirable, and it has been very successful over the decades in enabling the two laboratories to provide a healthy check of one another's work. The spirit of competition among equals that now exists encourages the science and engineering staffs of both laboratories to aim for high achievements and ensures that the best S&T efforts are brought to bear on the main missions.
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The NNSA should also evaluate its own capabilities for playing the coordinating role if LANL and LLNL were managed by different contractors and should factor that evaluation into its contractor selection decisions. With this recommendation, the committee disagrees with the Blue Ribbon Commission on the Use of Competitive Procedures for the De value of staff interchanges, and concludes: "In our experience all of these are difficult under a single contractor and would be greatly exacerbated with separate contractors." The letter also asserts that there would be "great value" in competing the contracts simultaneously.
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The following are probably the most important of these incentives: · The contracts could clarify, and expand if possible, indemnifica tion against the consequences of laboratory operations (in the ab 11U.S. Department of Energy, Blue Ribbon Commission on the Use of Competitive Procedures for the Department of Energy Labs, "Competing the Management and Operations Contracts for DOE's National Laboratories," public draft, November 24, 2003, p.
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· The contracts should make use of the DOE's procurement provi sions12 that allow it to approve 10-year M&O contracts, with 5 year option terms, in order to create an incentive for long-term com mitments appropriate to the laboratories' missions and to make the up-front investment in proposal preparation less of a disincentive to some potential offerors. The committee's concern about the use of 5-year contracts for the management of LANL and LLNL ech oes that expressed in the recent draft report from the Blue Ribbon Commission on the Use of Competitive Procedures for the Depart ment of Energy Labs, which suggested a framework for retaining an incumbent contractor for as long as 20 years, as long as its per formance meets or exceeds DOE expectations.13 A 5-year contract with a simple mechanism for a 5-year extension, or the use of a rolling 5-year contract in the absence of underperformance by the contractor, would seem to be one such desirable mechanism.
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One of the greatest disincentives for highly qualified offerors to compete for the M&O contracts is the potential for significant post-award surprises associated with pre-existing environmental, infrastructure, or human resource issues. In at least the case of the latest competition for management of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the constraints of the competition led to significant unanticipated challenges for the new management team, which in turn limited its ability to target other important issues and to minimize surprises to the staff.
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In evaluating proposals from partnerships, the NNSA may want to ask whether the strengths of the parent organizations have been combined logically and whether the partnership has identified a workable mechanism for applying the various capabilities and corporate experiences against the varied tasks and responsibilities of the M&O contractor. Special Considerations for Los Alamos National Laboratory For a laboratory in an isolated location like LANL, staff attraction and retention and, consequently, scientific excellence at the laboratory, are strongly influenced by the quality of the community schools, opportunities for spouses, employee family assistance programs such as child care, and so on.
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These circumstances underscore that stewardship of the local environment constitutes a set of challenges specific to LANL and its future. Special Considerations for Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory lies at the edge of the technical megalopolis of the Silicon Valley and is close to other major intellectual centers that include Stanford University, the Universities of California at Berkeley, Davis, San Francisco, and Merced, several campuses of the California State University system, and private colleges and universities.
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For that reason, the committee also recommends that the proposal evaluation board have available, as an added resource, a panel of experts in S&T management to help assess offerors' responses in areas where additional S&T experience is required and to help formulate questions for the proposal evaluation board to pose to the offerors. Transition Planning and Execution The instability and uncertainty associated with a competition will, at the least, affect staff productivity, and it will cause many people to consider retiring or leaving.
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· The contractor should make no sudden or hasty changes, waiting instead until it thoroughly understands the strengths and weak nesses of current laboratory management procedures. RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE RFPs AND FOR EVALUATION OF THE RESULTING PROPOSALS An accomplished and effective R&D laboratory needs a compelling and well-defined mission, excellent staff, adequate tools and facilities, efficient business and project management, and strong leadership.
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The NNSA is already very aware that the laboratory staffs are affected negatively by uncertainty: the uncertainty of their continued employment, benefit plans, laboratory funding, scientific directions, managers, and so on. Therefore, the next M&O contractor(s)
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As noted in the section above titled "Contract Incentives," the committee recommends that the NNSA consider arrangements that reduce the risk of disruptive competitions every 5 years, both to provide an incentive to prospective offerors and to minimize del 16For example, the number of peer-reviewed publications trended upward during the years surrounding the management transition, while the average citations per paper stayed fairly constant, according to data from the ISI Science Citation Index.
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In addition, the long-term nature of the work of the weapons laboratories is benefited by having a stable staff and effective continuity planning, so that corporate knowledge (which, at least in the case of past weapons testing, remains valid on a timescale of decades) is retained.
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These plans and capabilities should cover aspects under the direct control of the contractor (e.g., laboratory facilities and site conditions) as well as the contractor's contributions to those aspects in the communities that enable the attraction and retention of highly qualified science and engineering staff.
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The NNSA should evaluate the offerors' plans and track records for maintaining other aspects of the work environment that contribute to its attracting and retaining an excellent S&T workforce -- such factors as the quality of the buildings and equipment, existence and quality of recreational facilities, child care, safety, and so on -- even though they might not be directly necessary for the conduct of S&T work (as is the case with those factors listed or implied in Recommendation 4a)
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must be capable of playing a strong leadership role so that the DOE, Congress, and the laboratories' customers are confident that the laboratories are carrying out their mission without compromising national security and are applying sound financial and project management approaches. Furthermore, the contractor(s)
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In order to assess the offerors' competencies in strategic management, the RFPs for the LLNL and LANL competitions should ask offerors to describe their plans for, and demonstrate their capabilities in, the following: · Understanding deeply the missions of the laboratory and the NNSA; · Managing large, complex S&T organizations whose work ranges from basic, long-term research to near-term technology, project and program management, manufacturing, and the planning, construc tion, and operation of major user facilities; · Developing strategic, staffing, and program plans for the labora tory; · Addressing the challenges of work with many safety hazards and associated regulations; · Interacting with the DOE and other sponsors of the laboratory's work; · Facilitating technology transfers to other laboratories and the pri vate sector; · Managing relationships and interactions with other DOE weapons laboratories;
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The competition for the management of LLNL should also ask offerors to describe their capabilities and plans for the completion and operation of NIF, while the competition for the management of LANL should ask offerors to address how they will manage LANL's major user facility, LANSCE, and manage or restore aging facilities elsewhere on the site. To help the NNSA judge the responses, the committee makes the following subsidiary recommendations to the NNSA to guide its evaluation of the proposals for the LANL and LLNL M&O contracts as they apply to the leadership of the laboratories: Recommendation 5a.
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In proposals for the management of LANL, the NNSA should evaluate the offerors' capabilities and plans for the restoration and operation of the LANSCE facility and their past experience at operating major user facilities of a similar scale. In proposals for either laboratory, offerors should demonstrate their capabilities in constructing and maintaining world-class technical facilities, in managing and restoring aging facilities, and in managing very-large-scale computing facilities.
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Tactical Management: Best Practices The M&O contractors for LLNL and LANL should be expert in best business practices for project management, integrated safety and security management, human resource management, infrastructure management, and other administrative areas. Excellence in these practices can contribute directly to the scientific quality of a laboratory and the fulfillment of its mission if they are appropriately integrated into the S&T management.
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Ways to achieve good tactical management include establishing and defining the ground rules and boundaries for individuals and the organization (with broad scopes, clear rules of engagement, clear objectives, and avoidance of unnecessary change) and providing the right support of all kinds, ranging from specialized equipment, expertise in S&T project management, access to information and an appropriate mix of colleagues, adequate levels of skilled supporting personnel, and expertly conceived and executed processes for human resource management, safety, and security.
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The evaluation should examine such metrics as milestone completion rates, customer feedback, safety record, rates of staff attrition, staff commendations or disciplinary actions associated with projects, and so on, looking in particular at whether the offerors have achieved an appropriate balance between controls and flexibility. The offerors should also demonstrate how they have achieved the flexibility to change management procedures and policies as changing situations dictate.
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LANL and LLNL use LDRD funding to explore new opportunities that might translate into important technologies in the future, and for developing additional fundamental knowledge that underpins their missions. The LDRD program is the only source of funding with the degree of flexibility needed to address long-term, high-risk research not included in the rest of the laboratories' programs, and an adequate pool of LDRD funding promotes a healthy competition among laboratory staff to identify important research opportunities that should be explored now so as to provide technological options for the future.
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of publications, and ranking in number of patents and patent citations/referrals; · Any specialized facilities operated by the offerors that would be of value to the laboratories' missions; and · The offerors' success in involving highly qualified scientists and engineers from the broad technical community in research collabo rations, review panels, short visits, and special assignments.
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The committee suggests that the RFP language in response to Recommendations 2 through 8 be collected in one section of each RFP, so that the strength of the resulting proposals relative to S&T concerns will be readily apparent. The committee feels strongly that, given the central role of S&T throughout most functions of LLNL and LANL, the NNSA source selection process should allot twothirds of its total points for proposal responses that relate to the S&T matters in Recommendations 4a-d, 5a-f, 6a, 7a-c, and 8a-c, assuming the proposals evince solid strength in management of security, finances, and safety, which are essential underpinnings of the S&T work.
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