Probably be pretty obscure to most of you (I don’t even expect many posts here) but I’m just TOTALLY pissed off that Lockheed Martin lost! Gods sometimes I HATE fucking politicians. Well, DoE and the government has dicked us all, and dicked the labs most of all. It will be either the same fucked up BS we’ve had for years now…or it will be worse. Unless anyone thinks Bechtel is bound to do a good job. snort.
Anyway, if anyone is interested in reading some of what the hell I’m talking about here is a blog about the LANL story. I’m basically too pissed to type more at this point. :mad:
They had a piece on NPR about it. There was all kinds of bullshit spoken about the contract, but when you come down to it, the lab was totally fucked up by So Cal’s management, so they had to put its management up for bid and then awarded the contract to … So Cal.
Yeah, THAT doesn’t reek to high heaven. :rolleyes:
Exactly. Not only that, but during one of the presentation phases So Cal and Bechtel actually got into an arguement so heated they had to call for a recess so they could deal with each other in private before they could resume. And THESE fools are the ones awarded.
The cost thing is SUCH BS…especially when you consider that (mysteriously) Lockheed was never asked for a BaF offer when it supposedly came back to cost (of course, Lockheed appearently scored higher in ever category but one so how it could come back to cost is a mystery itself).
The fix was definitely in. Fucking politicians: A pox on BOTH your houses you slimy dogs!
Can you highlight the practical implications of this for those of use more outside the loop (in fact I can’t even see the loop from where I’m standing)?
I can’t help but recount a similar feeling before the Supercollider (SSC Waxahachie) began its decline and made my life more difficult. I often get the feeling that the US is falling into a “science depression” - bad for people with non-medical, higher-level degrees.
Its kind of a long and complicated story…I’m not sure I’m up for the full account right now. The short version though is the lab has been mismanaged by UoC for at least a decade now (arguably longer). They had essentially a lock on the ‘contract’…I say contract though really it was an exclusive no bid process that basically granted UoC the running of the lab. After a series of spectacular fuckups in the press and out the federal government decided to put the contract up for bid…but the original bid was so biased towards UoC that no one but them bothered to even submit a proposal. After another egg on face episode a new RFP was proposed that wasn’t too biased. The main contender was Lockheed Martin/University of Texas.
At this point things get fuzzy. From what I’ve been reading on the various blogs basically LM/UoT won…hands down. However, several government folks then went back to B/UoC and, er, encouraged them to, um, ‘fix’ their submissions (the contract was SUPPOSED to be awarded the first of December IIRC…its now nearly January). Even after ‘fixing’ their submission (from what I can tell) LM/UoT STILL won in every category but one…and that one may or may not have been biased. Also, supposedly LM/UoT lost by only a few points.
Long and the short is that DoE then decided it was ‘too close to call’ so went back on price. LM/UoT was basically $89 million over B/UoC (which btw is less than 1% of the total award price over the lifetime of the contract)…but without asking LM/UoT for a Best and Final Offer (which is pretty much standard).
There are a LOT of, um, unusual circumstances surrounding this cluster fuck…all of them with the big boot prints of our beloved government on them (and to show some non-partisanship reguardless of where you stand the major players are a certain not to be named Republican Senator from the south west…and the Democratic governor from the same state).
What are the implications? Well, I HOPE that LM/UoC protest this and the GAO puts the hammah down on some folks heads. If not then I suppose the implications are that the lab thats been mismanaged for some extended time period will continue to be for the forseeable future. Plus xtisme’s head will probably explode.
To clarify this…LM/UoT lost by only a few points IN THAT ONE CATEGORY. They supposedly won by large margins in the others (if some of the blogs are to be believed).
Out of curiosity, was Cal the only university associate with their bid? I’m wondering, since the Texas bid also included the University of Colorado and (I think) Colorado School of Mines.
I believe so. Texas/LM actually has a larger coalition (of the willing) that, ironically IIRC includes…UoCal. However they would no longer be in a management position which is probably a good thing overall. I believe they were invited in (if they lost and LM/Texas won) as consultants and to provide some technical resources.
I’m far from as informed as you are xtisme, but after all the fuck-ups it took to get the contract taken from UC, it seems incredible they’re going back to 'em.
I agree…insane. I would say I was stunned yesterday when the news started filtering out, but after the postponement on December 1st I kind of suspected someone was playing fast and loose with the rules. Basically the way I see it is <unnamed government group> already had the decision they wanted before there was even a bid on this thing…and then have spent a lot of time and effort to make sure things match up to the decision they already made months ago. I hope to hell that LM/UoT protest…and I hope some fucking heads roll over all this for whoever decided to dick with the process. I feel REALLY bad for LM who put in a whole lot of time, money and effort on this only to be buttfucked by our friendly government and those upstanding folks at DoE.
The more I think about it, this seems almost as surreal as it would be if after all the mess we’ve got in Iraq, we finish the trial for Saddam, and put him back in power.
We’re talking about a management group that couldn’t account for how many harddrives with classified material they had or didn’t have? And only admitted that after Wen Ho Lee spent most of a year in jail? :eek:
And that’s just one fuck up, off the top of my head.
Would someone do me a favor regarding this thread? Search out what the relationship if any is between Bechtel and Haliburton, and what Bechtel’s relationship was to the Canol pipeline during World War II? I remember from when I was working in the construction industry some comments that implied that the first issue was a case of corporate incest, and the second was a classic example of “milking” a government contract without delivering anything, but I’m neither sure of my facts nor ready to slam a company without the facts.
I’m not surprised by this at all. The vast majority of defense contracts are determined more by relationships and reputations rather than by objective standards. The whole system needs to change. The best place to start would be to make the contracting process transparent and open to public review.
I don’t expect the Los Alamos bidding will change how things work, unless there’s another major blunder in the near future. How likely and how beneficial this would be depends on how cynical you are.
Just curious - a friend of mine is an engineer ( a gen-u-een “rocket scientist” ), currently up in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area. From what I have been able to deuce from some idle conversations, Lockheed’s competence seems to vary widely depending on the project/project team, from great to…not so great.
Nope…my company was part of the coalition of the willing actually. I also have several engineer friends at Lockheed though, alas, they are network engineer types not rocket scientists. I’ve seen plenty of other scientist types though in the last week…mainly physists and such.
Certainly. Most large companies are similar in fact. My main frustration was with their intranetwork…and their network engineers. Still, they really did deserve this contract and I feel bad for them that they got screwed over so badly.
Point of clarification: the University of California (UC), which runs Los Alamos, is a public university. It has ten campuses all over California. The University of Southern California (USC, or So Cal) does not run Los Alamos. It is a private school with a single campus in South Central LA. They are not connected.
I’m a UC graduate, but I have no real knowledge of the situation, other than hearing a story on the topic on NPR awhile back. I think I was a senior when I discovered that my university ran Los Alamos. For whatever reason, it’s not something people talk about much.
Are you kidding me? Diseased monkeys deserved this contract more than UC does. (Not saying the folks at Lockheed couldn’t handle it, only that anyone could probably do a better job than UC has done.)
[Dragging politics into this for a moment] It’s crap like this which puts the lie in the Administration’s claims of “doing everything to protect the American people.” If they gave two shits about it, UC would be barred from having anything to do with such a sensative operation for at least a decade. Shame also on the Dems for not screaming about this in the loudest possible tones. [/DPITFAM]
/my opinion mode
lol…the Democratic Governor of New Mexico is hip deep in this thing…on UC’s side. Much as I’d love to blast the adminstration over this its at a lower level that this thing stinks. Its at the Senate/Congress and Governor level that things are fishy. Look at the Governors of California and New Mexico some time…and Governor in NM. You’ll see that its not even possible to point a finger at a single party here.
/end my opinion mode
), currently up in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area. From what I have been able to deuce from some idle conversations, Lockheed’s competence seems to vary widely depending on the project/project team, from great to…not so great.