For immediate release June 16, 2022

GAO: current LANL contractor improving safety (NNSA and Triad say), more improvements said needed

Lab expansion, pit production mission face significant unresolved workforce challenges

NNSA: "Triad has already depleted the local talent pool in northern New Mexico"

Contact: Greg Mello, 505-265-1200 office, 505-577-8563 cell

Permalink * Prior press releases

Albuquerque, NM -- On June 14, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a report (GAO-22-105412) evaluating efforts by Triad National National Security, LLC, the management and operating (M&O) contractor at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), to improve safety and meet other management goals, including expanding and stabilizing LANL's workforce.

Triad runs LANL for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), a semi-autonomous part of the Department of Energy (DOE). Triad is a partnership of the Battelle Memorial Institute, the University of California, and Texas A&M.

The Triad contract runs for an initial 5 years (from November 1, 2018), plus up to 5 additional "option" years which may be awarded based on NNSA's assessments of Triad's performance. No "option years" have been awarded to Triad yet.

NNSA's performance evaluations of its LANL M&O contractor, to the extent they are publicly available, can be found here.

NNSA terminated the previous LANL M&O contract, held by Los Alamos National Security, LLC (LANS), eight years prior to its maximum duration. This was primarily due to serious accidents (e.g. sending a drum of unstable transuranic waste to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, which drum then exploded, closing WIPP for three years), multiple serious safety violations (which closed down most operations in LANL's main plutonium facility for four years), and numerous other accidents and safety problems.

NNSA has requested $4.575 billion (B) for LANL for fiscal year (FY) 2023, up from the $2.535 B enacted in FY2018, an 80% increase during Triad's management, if the request is fully funded as is likely.

Safety

GAO divided safety into four aspects: issues management, documentation, conduct of operations, and safety culture. NNSA awarded the new contract "in the hopes of achieving improved safety performance" (p. 10). Such hopes are perennial at LANL.

NNSA's Los Alamos Field Office (LAFO) defines its safety expectations for Triad "in general terms" (p. 11), eschewing specific safety metrics in favor of a more "holistic" approach. GAO's auditors relate these subjective impressions as best they can in this report.

According to Triad and NNSA, Triad's management of safety issues has improved, but Triad still lacks "an effective means to evaluate and identify trends across the laboratory," and "corrective actions were not as effective they could be." There has been minimal improvement in consistently categorizing and reporting events. (p. 13).

Triad's safety documentation has improved in some areas (e.g. criticality safety) but is still lacking in others (e.g. some safety bases, those documents which establish the safe operating conditions and boundaries for a facility).

GAO touches upon, but does not explore, the problematic interactions at LANL's main plutonium facility between criticality safety limits on the one hand, and the operational flexibility needed for LANL's expanding missions on the other (p. 15).

GAO describes Triad's "efforts" to improve conduct of operations, while also citing significant accidents and chronic problems (p. 16) which affected LANL's mission. The report does not actually say there has been a reduction in safety incidents, only that "reduction in incidents remains an important long-term goal" (p. 16). It is not clear whether safety problems in the subcontractor workforce were included. Recordable injuries in the subcontractor workforce more than tripled (slide 14) from June 2018 to July 2019. We have no comparable data since.

Safety culture is another subjective quality. GAO reports on Triad's "efforts" to improve safety culture -- and also reports that NNSA believes LANL's safety culture needs improvement, as evidenced by the incidents reported (see abridged list, pp. 36-37 and below). According to NNSA's Office of Safety, "a culture where efficiency is prioritized above safety still prevailed in some operations at PF-4."

Here is GAO's abridged list of safety performance "issues" for FY2021, from p. 37:

• Lapses in disciplined operations, which affected mission, due to not following approved procedures, lack of effective line management engagement, and normalizing adverse conditions;

• Significant events such as the vault water bath overflow event at PF-4, which demonstrate corrective action management is not effective;

• Inconsistent approach to managing and reporting abnormal events, which increases risk for repeat events, compliance violations, and releases of hazardous energy;

• Lack of consistency across the laboratory to report and categorize abnormal events. Minimal improvement despite actions taken to address these issues;

• Ongoing conduct of operations weaknesses in some areas.

Does the contract save money?

The short answer is no. The maximum annual savings from the new contract is about $6.4 million ([$76.1 - $12.4]/10 years), which is less than 0.2% of the very roughly $4 billion average annual cost at LANL (compare to footnote 52, p. 20; we subtracted the cost of contract competition, p. 21).

As GAO notes, the new contract places a greater emphasis on performance-based fee than on fixed fee, a much more significant contract management consideration.

Expanding and stabilizing the workforce

Again, NNSA does not set specific goals for Triad in this area (p. 23).

LANL struggles with employee retention. Voluntary attrition exceeded 7.5% for most of 2019. According to GAO, it was "below 7.5% for all of calendar year 2020 and the majority of calendar year 2021" (p. 24). About half of this is retirements (p. 24). Involuntary attrition will add to this  "below 7.5%". Students, postdocs, and craft employees are apparently not included in LANL's headcounts (p. 23).

Of note, in its internal review of LANL pit production plans, NNSA reported that LANL had an annual attrition rate of 8% in 2021 (p. 4), somewhat contradicting this report.

In any case serious challenges remain. Quoting at length:

While NNSA performance evaluations and NNSA officials stated that Triad’s initiatives discussed above suggest greater workforce stability for LANL, officials also acknowledged several challenges to attracting and retaining new talent. For example, NNSA officials stated that Triad has already depleted the local talent pool in northern New Mexico. Triad is targeting other geographic areas for recruitment, such as the city of Albuquerque. However, it is also competing with large technology companies moving into such areas that can offer high salaries and that do not require staff to commute long distances, according to NNSA officials. DOE’s Human Reliability Program also places unique requirements on certain employees, including that LANL staff with access to certain materials, nuclear explosive devices, facilities, and programs meet high standards for reliability and physical and mental suitability. NNSA officials also said that having to maintain security clearances and be subject to random drug testing can deter some potential employees.

Triad is seeking to address these workforce challenges by (1) allowing hundreds of positions to work remotely, (2) establishing regional commuter pools, and (3) leasing office space in other locations to provide staff with localized worksites, according to NNSA officials.

It is too early to tell whether Triad’s efforts will provide workforce stability throughout the potential 10-year contract. As stated above, Triad data show that LANL’s workforce grew by roughly 1,600 employees from fiscal years 2019 through 2021. Triad data also show that LANL’s voluntary attrition remained below Triad’s 7.5 percent threshold for all of calendar year 2020 and the majority of calendar year 2021. Such data suggest that Triad has been successful thus far in growing LANL’s workforce and retaining employees. It is nonetheless difficult to assess any workforce trends with only 3 years of contractor data. Moreover, neither NNSA nor Triad assess workforce stability in aggregate for the entire laboratory, but rather, workforce needs are established and monitored at the program level, according to NNSA officials and Triad representatives. (pp. 25-26, emphasis added)

Comments

Study Group Director Greg Mello: "Although GAO's evaluation is incomplete pending further data from Triad and NNSA, this is an important report.

"The safety progress reported is real in some areas. LANS was terrible, setting a low bar for comparison. But overall? That is far less clear. There is something akin to the triumph of hope -- or hype -- over experience involved. NNSA 'hopes' Triad will continue to improve safety, despite the objective increase in risk that comes from 24/7 operations in an old facility being remodeled under crowded conditions.

"The NNSA evaluations that form the basis of contract 'option years' are not fully public, even in FOIA responses. This is purely political and we believe illegal.

"NNSA's safety evaluation criteria are vague and subjective, suggesting NNSA's incentive structure is inadequate. In any case improving safety culture is one of the slower processes in the universe, at best. This report provides no confidence -- no real data, or convincing argument -- that any overall safety improvement has actually taken place, or will. Triad 'efforts' don't count. NNSA hopes safety will improve in time to handle rapidly increasing missions. Our reading of Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board documents, and Triad's push-back against prior safety commitments (e.g., a safety-class ventilation system in Building PF-4), suggest NNSA's "hopes" are misplaced.

"Let us hope members of Congress can tell the difference between 'efforts' and 'hopes' and actual results.

"Perhaps most important, in this report NNSA and GAO are raising a red flag about adequately staffing LANL's expanding missions. The challenges they mention -- the "depleted" local talent pool, the long commutes to larger labor markets, the challenges of the Human Reliability Program, security clearances, and random drug testing in the New Mexico context, are not an exhaustive list. To these must be added the problem that the local road network is at or exceeds capacity, the housing market is tight, and, outside Los Alamos County, the quality of public education is poor. Meanwhile the entire region is "ground zero" for climate change, with an unprecedented combination of heat, drought, and forest fires. There is no nearby university.

"Can LANL's new industrial plutonium missions thrive, at the end of what LANL Director Thom Mason dubbed 'the world's longest cul-de-sac?' We doubt it."

***ENDS***