ACCELERATING
the Pace of Progress
Los Alamos National Security, LLC
Board of Governors
Operated by Los Alamos National Security, LLC for
DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration
2007 ANNUAL REPORT
A Message
From Our Governors
Los Alamos National Security, LLC (LANS) was formed in
2005, when four organizations came together to pursue
the NNSA management and operations contract for Los
Alamos National Laboratory. Each of them brought complementary capabilities:
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Bechtel National, Inc. contributes expertise in solving
the business and operational problems that were distracting Los Alamos scientists from their core mission.
University of California contributes leadership and
expertise in its role as the academic force behind the
science that enables stockpile stewardship.
The Babcock & Wilcox Company and Washington
Group International contribute site and nuclear operations expertise.
As part of the LANS parent organizations’ commitment to
support Michael Anastasio and his leadership team in the
revitalization of the Laboratory, they created a Board of Governors, which operates with discipline and with autonomy
from the four parent organizations.
The LANS Board of Governors has made three fundamental
commitments to NNSA:
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February 12, 2008
Dear Administrator D’Agostino:
Contents
Board of Governors
2
Systems, Tools & Resources
4
Board Oversight
6
Reachback to LANS Partner
Expertise
8
Accelerating & Sustaining
Change
10
Transformation, Integration
& the Future
12
To apply the best systems, tools, and practices to
Los Alamos.
To oversee Laboratory operations to ensure excellence and efficiency.
Los Alamos National Security, LLC is committed to achieving needed changes and outstanding results at LANL. We are proud of our performance to date, and our regular discussions with you and other DOE leaders have helped us identify continuing opportunities for
improvement.
Per our proposal, we have drawn on the resources of all four LANS parent organizations
to achieve NNSA’s mission for the Laboratory and to create and sustain safe, reliable, and
consistent processes and behaviors. Apart from establishing a new leadership team, we have
imported numerous advanced systems and processes to improve security, safety, and business
practices, and more than 200 parent organization experts have contributed their talents to
the Laboratory. Already we see significant results. A prime example: we demonstrated the
Laboratory’s ability to deliver high-quality products at a scalable production rate, justifying
NNSA’s decision to save billions of dollars by deferring the Modern Pit Facility.
One of our key objectives is to help NNSA transform and integrate the weapons complex,
and NNSA’s preference for Los Alamos national security science in weapons design, plutonium research, and research supercomputing supports that objective. Large-scale modeling and
simulations, coupled with broad capabilities in experimental science, allow LANL to tackle
for NNSA and other national security customers such challenges as biothreats, nuclear forensics, counterterrorism, and energy security.
As we integrate the resources of LANS and Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC,
we are finding new opportunities to meet technical challenges and to share business and
operations improvements. We have, for example, achieved substantial cost reductions at both
laboratories by integrating our approaches to managing retirement benefits.
To facilitate reachback to tap parent organization
talent and resources.
This report summarizes our progress toward meeting these
commitments, actions we are taking to accelerate progress,
and our vision for the future of the Laboratory.
Our rate of progress at LANL is accelerating, but we are not yet satisfied. We share your
sense of urgency, and we are confident that our management team has the right skills, our
workforce has the demonstrated competence, and our unique facilities provide the requisite
tools for Los Alamos to deliver results that are unsurpassed.
Sincerely,
COVER:
A Los Alamos scientist works in an immersive visualization facility, an example of
the Laboratory’s integration of experiments
with exceptional theory, modeling, and highperformance computing.
Gerald Parsky
Chair, LANS, LLC,
Board of Governors
Thomas Hash
Vice Chair, LANS, LLC,
Board of Governors
LANS, LLC 2006–2007
Board of Governors
The Board of Governors is the
conduit through which the LANS
parent organizations provide
oversight of the Laboratory
and promote consolidation,
cooperation, and communication
across the national laboratory
system.
President, LANS, LLC
Michael Anastasio
Director, Los Alamos National
Laboratory
Independent Governors
Executive Committee
Gerald Parsky, Chair
Thomas Hash, Vice Chair
Sidney Drell
Regent, University of California
President, Bechtel Systems and
Infrastructure, Inc.
Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution,
Stanford University
Chairman, Aurora Capital Group
Board of Governors
Laboratory Director
Michael Anastasio
Vice Chair of the Mission
Committee
Richard Mies
Bruce Darling
Craig Weaver
Executive Vice President - University Affairs,
University of California
Executive Vice President, Strategy
Bechtel Systems and Infrastructure, Inc.
Chair of the Nominations and Compensation
Committee
Chair of the Business and Operations
Committee
Admiral, U.S. Navy (Retired)
Former Commander in Chief,
U.S. Strategic Command
Chair of the Nuclear Weapons Complex
Integration Committee
Nicholas Moore
William Frazer
S. Robert Cochran
Senior Vice President Emeritus,
University of California
President, Babcock & Wilcox Technical
Services Group
Chair of the Science and Technology
Committee
Chair of the Safeguards and Security
Committee
Threat Weapons Environmental
Reduction Programs Management
Science & Technology
Missions & Programs
David Walker
Nick Salazar
Regent, University of California
President, Bechtel National, Inc.
Founder & Chairman, Westwood One, Inc.
Vice Chair of Business and Operations
Committee
Representative,
House of Representatives
State of New Mexico
– 475 DOE budget categories
– 1,226 work-for-others
projects
14%
2%
4%
Norman Pattiz
Laboratory &
Business Operations
LANL Budget by Program Area – $2.2 billion total
Chair of the Ethics and Audit
Committee
William Perry
Laboratory &
Business
Operations
LEGEND:
54%
3%
8%
6%
Chair of the Mission Committee
Advisory Members
Missions & Programs
Science &
Technology
Director, Gilead Sciences, Inc.
Senior Fellow,
Stanford Institute for International
Studies
2
LANS Organization
9%
LEGEND:
Defense Programs
Nonproliferation & National Security
Safeguards & Security
Environmental Management
DOE Office of Science
Other DOE Programs
Reimbursable Work from Other
DOE Sites
Work for Others (Non-DOE)
NNSA programs represent 69 percent of the operating program portfolio.
3
Systems, Tools &
Resources
Business Services
Meeting Our Commitment:
The LANS Board of Governors
contributes industry best practices,
systems, tools, and resources from
the four parent organizations to
improve Laboratory performance
and help NNSA transform the
nation’s nuclear weapons complex.
Accomplishment: Implemented industry best practices and
applied expertise from LANS parent organizations to improve
the Laboratory’s business processes and systems.
Results:
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Realized 10 percent cost savings in the Laboratory’s first 18
eAuctions using NNSA’s multisite online tool. Led the NNSA
complex in eAuctions in fiscal year 2007, solidifying LANL’s
role as the complex’s eAuction expert.
Safety
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Accomplishment: Implemented best safety practices drawn from industry
leaders Bechtel, The Babcock & Wilcox Company, and Washington Group
International.
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Created a Voluntary Protection Program (VPP) to promote excellence in occupational safety and health through worker involvement. LANL is working
closely with VPP mentors from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Idaho
National Laboratory, and Honeywell to ensure maximum effectiveness.
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Rate per 200,000 hours
Results:
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Reduced the Laboratory’s accident rate by 35 percent and its days-awayfrom-work rate by 41 percent between June 2006 and December 2007.
Total Reportable Cases
Days Away/Restricted/Transferred Cases
3.2
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35%
Reduction
2
2.09
1.4
1
0.83
2007
Instilling Desired Behaviors & Values
Accomplishment: Provided Senior Leadership Alignment Core Training to help
drive higher performance.
Results:
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Began applying behavioral science throughout the Laboratory to align workforce behavior with NNSA’s strategic vision, providing employees with clear
responsibilities and accountabilities and ensuring that Laboratory management leads by example.
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By the end of December 2007, completed training of a large percentage of
managers in the six key areas that comprise the Laboratory’s Senior Leadership Alignment Core Training curriculum:
Core Training Elements
—Mike Anastasio, Laboratory
Director and President of LANS, LLC.
Launched a human resources performance management
system to increase rigor and improve consistency.
41%
Reduction
0
“Our greatest challenge has been
improving several critical Laboratory
systems so that our workforce can
meet mission deliverables effectively,
efficiently, safely, and securely.”
Increased the number of competitive awards to maximize
small business participation.
EAuctions are also known as reverse auctions because competing online bidders
bid prices down rather than up. Ben Aguirre (pictured) monitors bids during a
recent LANL eAuction.
Improved performance by 31.5 percent according to NNSA’s Los Alamos Site
Office Conduct of Operations Performance Index.
2006
Implemented a new purchasing system that received NNSA
approval.
Performance-Based Leadership
Lean Six Sigma
Human Performance Improvement
Project Management
Environment, Safety, Health & Quality
Safeguards & Security
Leaders Trained to Date
89 percent
88 percent
98 percent
100 percent
99 percent
100 percent
Director Mike Anastasio discusses leadership training with Associate Director Sue Seestrom.
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Board Oversight
Science Capability
Meeting Our Commitment:
Increased contributions by
Board of Governors and parent
organizations, coupled with greater
transparency, have improved the
Laboratory’s operational safety
and security, science capability, and
community involvement.
Security
Accomplishment: Closely monitored security performance, reduced vulnerabilities, and improved sustainability of operations through creation of a new Safeguards and Security Board Committee.
Results:
■ Cut holdings of accountable classified removable electronic media (ACREM)
during fiscal year 2007 by 60 percent, classified parts by 31 percent, vaults and
vault-type rooms (VTRs) by 23 percent, and classified repositories by 15 percent.
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Consolidated 65 percent of the Laboratory’s total ACREM in one location.
Reduced the rate of serious security incidents by 39 percent between June 2006
and December 2007.
12,000
ACREM
10,000
8,000
6,000
4,000
2,000
0
Jun 06
Oct 06
Jan 07
LANL’s prototype Super VTR
was hailed by a GAO auditor as
the best-in-government approach
to security integration.
Apr 07
Jun 07
Jun 07
Oct 07
Dec 07
The Board:
■ Established seven advisory
committees:
– Mission
– Science & Technology
– Safeguards & Security
– Nuclear Weapons Complex
Integration
– Business & Operations
– Ethics & Audit
– Nominations & Compensation
■ Oversaw five Science & Technology capability reviews.
■ Integrated its assessments with
those of LANL’s new Contractor Assurance System.
■ Integrated its corrective action
findings with LANL’s Issues
Management Tracking System.
Accomplishment: Drawing on the University of California’s
scientific strength, participated in the review and assessment
of the Laboratory’s science and technology capabilities to
ensure their continued unique contribution to solving the
nation’s most difficult problems.
Results:
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Installed the first phase (70 teraflops) of the Roadrunner
supercomputer for computations in support of national security science. Roadrunner is in a race to become the world’s
first system to achieve a sustained petaflop—a million billion
calculations per second.
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Evaluated scientific concepts and merits for MaRIE (MatterRadiation Interactions in Extremes), the Laboratory’s proposed signature experimental facility.
Generated more than 1,700 peer-reviewed papers and 400
classified reports, won 127 awards from external organizations, and received 34 patents in fiscal year 2007, up from
25 the previous year.
The Roadrunner supercomputer is slated to become the computational cornerstone of the Laboratory’s mission-related work. Key contributors to the effort
include (left to right) Manuel Vigil, John Turner, and Josip Loncaric.
Community Involvement
Accomplishment: Supported aggressive efforts
in economic development, community giving, and
educational outreach.
Results:
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Awarded $550,000 from the LANS Venture Acceleration Fund to five northern New Mexico businesses for
technology maturation.
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Achieved a record-breaking United Way campaign total
of $1.7 million, through LANS matches of employee
contributions.
Signed agreements with the LANL Foundation totaling
$3.9 million to fund science, technology, engineering, and mathematics initiatives and scholarships for
northern New Mexico schools and regional nonprofits.
Alayna Rodriguez, 2006 LANL Foundation Platinum Scholarship
award winner, who is now studying at Harvard.
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Reachback to
LANS Partner Expertise
Enhancing Project & Facility Management
Accomplishment: Tapped parent expertise and best practices to improve
project and facility management.
Results:
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Completed greater than 90 percent of all scheduled construction milestones.
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Provided seasoned project directors to take the lead on the Laboratory’s two
largest line-item projects: the CMRR and the Nuclear Materials Safeguards &
Security Upgrades.
Maintaining the Nation’s
Deterrent
Meeting Our Commitment:
We transferred 120 key leaders
and managers from our parent
organizations, along with their best
business practices, processes, and
tools, to lead the transformation
effort and expedite improvements.
Accomplishment: Conducted functional management
assessments, deployed AIM (assess, improve, and modernize)
teams, and contributed project management expertise
to restore and enhance sustainable, safe manufacturing
methods for our nuclear deterrent.
We also deployed 200 experts from
parent and affiliated organizations
to assess and improve critical
functions, processes, and systems
Labwide—from missions and
science & technology to nuclear
operations and security:
■ 59 functional management
assessments
■ 12 assess-improve-modernize
teams
Results:
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Restored our nation’s nuclear deterrent manufacturing
capability and manufactured the country’s first certified pit
in 20 years.
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Produced 11 W88 pits and delivered 6 to the Pantex Plant,
exceeding NNSA requirements by 10 percent while demonstrating improved quality assurance.
Induction vacuum furnace used for casting operations.
Reduced maintenance billing rates by 11% through efficiencies and aggressive
management of overhead costs.
Identified 1 million square feet of facilities that can be reduced from the inventory, and succeeded in removing staff from half of those facilities.
Environmental Stewardship
Accomplishment: Implemented industry best
practices in environmental management.
Sound project management
systems integrate elements
to support project planning,
development, and execution.
Results:
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Shipped offsite 10 percent more curies of transuranic waste than in all prior years combined.
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Completed upgrades to the Laboratory’s transuranic waste repackaging and shipping facilities,
enabling the processing and shipping to WIPP
of the highest risk transuranic waste stored at
LANL.
Earned seven NNSA pollution prevention awards.
LANL increased shipments of transuranic waste to the Waste
Isolation Pilot Plant from 823 drums in fiscal year 2005 to
2,499 and 3,073 drums, respectively, in 2006 and 2007.
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Accelerating &
Sustaining Change
Lasting transformation at
Los Alamos requires engaging
employees and thoroughly
integrating the essential elements
of change management: strategy,
process, and behavior.
We have an integrated approach to
accomplish exactly that.
We have realized gains in many areas, such as improving pit and component manufacturing, developing a prototype of the Super Vault-Type Room, and increasing the
Laboratory’s Threat Reduction portfolio by 10 percent. In other areas, however, we have
seen the need to redouble efforts, sharpen our focus, or make course corrections.
Based on our experience at other sites and in other large organizations, the leadership
team knows that significant and lasting behavioral changes at LANL will require time.
LANL’s latest RAPTOR (Rapid Telescopes for Optical Response) telescope. This
telescope will capture the first color cinematography of gamma ray bursts – nature’s
largest explosions.
Examples of recent progress addressing shortcomings or reversing negative trends:
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Project management. In November 2007, DOE’s Office of Engineering and
Construction Management used a team of outside experts to conduct a review of
the Laboratory’s $280 million Nuclear Material Safeguards and Security Project.
The team was impressed by how well the Laboratory had integrated functions,
roles, and responsibilities. We are working aggressively to replicate such effective
integration across the Laboratory.
Business initiatives. Having trained 525 LANL personnel in Lean Six Sigma, a
data-driven approach to identifying and implementing the changes necessary to
meet performance expectations, we can now better gauge and improve our own
performance. The Lean Six Sigma team has begun to improve eight Labwide
processes, starting with nuclear safety component life-cycle management.
Nevertheless, we have more work to do.
The CMRR engineering
and construction project
is benefitting from
new management and
new systems.
NEW PHOTO COMING
FROM BOB BREWER
Creating Our Futu
Laboratory Goals – Creating Our Future
The work of the Laboratory continues advancing us toward the 12 overarching multiyear goals below. Established in May
2007, these ambitious goals and their associated commitments drive a combination of strategies, processes, and behaviors that will, over the long haul, best serve the complex and the nation.
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Make safety and security integral to every activity
we do.
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Be the premier national security science laboratory and
realize our vision for a capabilities-based organization.
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Implement a cyber security system that reduces risk
while providing exemplary service and productivity.
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Implement a performance-based management system
that drives mission and operational excellence.
Provide efficient, responsive, and secure infrastructure
and disciplined operations that effectively support the
Laboratory mission and its workforce.
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Establish excellence in environmental stewardship.
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Deliver improved business processes, systems, and tools
that meet the needs of our employees, reduce the cost of
doing business, and improve the Laboratory’s mission
performance.
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Develop employees and create a work environment to
achieve employee and Laboratory success.
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Leverage our science and technology advantage to anticipate, counter, and defeat global threats and meet national
priorities, including energy security.
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Assess the safety, reliability, and performance of
LANL weapons systems.
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Transform the Laboratory and the nation’s nuclear
weapons stockpile to achieve NNSA’s vision for
Complex transformation.
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Deliver improved business processes, systems, and
tools that meet the needs of our employees, reduce the
cost of doing business, and improve the Laboratory’s
mission performance.
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Transformation,
Integration & the Future
Transformation & Integration
LANS recognizes its continuing
responsibility to support NNSA’s
transformation of the weapons
complex through integration on
three levels:
■ The NWC as a whole.
■ The relationship between Los
Alamos and Livermore.
■ Within Los Alamos to provide
innovative and responsive solutions to broad national security
challenge.
LANS parent organizations’ management of five of the eight sites that comprise the
nuclear weapons complex gives the LANS Board unprecedented experience with the
challenges and successes at other sites. Such knowledge and perspective facilitate
communication and the exchange of ideas, needs, and technologies in support of
NNSA’s efforts to transform the complex.
Per the LANS proposal, the Laboratory established and chaired the Nuclear Weapons
Complex Integration Committee for NNSA. The committee:
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Achieved more than 90 percent of its multisite goals.
Established an unprecedented level of cooperation, including the “Code Blue”
approach in which sites help other sites to solve such problems as Y-12’s
throughput issue, for example.
To facilitate integration between LANL and LLNL, the LANS Board and its Livermore
counterpart have identical structures, including committees. Overlapping memberships
help NNSA facilitate and monitor intersite efficiencies and ensure that the talents and
resources of LLNL and LANL address performance problems at both laboratories.
The Future at Los Alamos
Our vision for LANL’s future includes:
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Continuing as NNSA’s center of excellence for nuclear weapons design and
engineering, plutonium research and manufacturing, and supercomputing.
Responding quickly to emerging threats and supporting mission objectives in
counterterrorism and in nuclear energy research, forensics, and safeguards.
Addressing broader scientific questions related to complex systems like Earth’s
weather, disease pandemics, and the security of the nation’s electricity grid.
Increasing our role as science provider of choice for the nation’s intelligence
community and growing our nonproliferation programs.
Addressing the need for energy security through energy storage solutions and
new materials, and assessing the impacts of decisions about energy choices.
Ensuring leading-edge capabilities by attracting and retaining top scientific
talent and providing them the tools to succeed.
will anticipate,
“ We
innovate, and deliver
science that matters.
“
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MICHAEL ANASTASIO
DIRECTOR
Operated by Los Alamos National Security, LLC for
DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration
Los Alamos National Security, LLC
Board of Governors
LAUR-08-0592