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Wednesday, May 14, 1997

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New employee orientation is moving to Bradbury Science Museum
Lab seeks public comment on environmental cleanup plans
A new detour awaits commuters on Thursday
Reminder: return your UC survey by Monday
Lab-produced video documentary wins award

New employee orientation is moving to Bradbury Science Museum

Beginning June 2, newly hired employees at the Laboratory will get a much more up close and personal introduction to the Lab, its history and future when new employee orientation moves to the Bradbury Science Museum downtown.

The move will add a half-day to new employees' orientation. But the additional half-day will help employees better understand the Lab and their role, said Barbara Pacheco of the Human Resources (HR) Division's Staffing Group.

Pacheco and her staff have been revamping new employee orientation with John Rhoades of the museum, which is part of the Community Involvement and Outreach (CIO) Office.

Previously, when a new employee reported to work -- new employee orientation is always held on Mondays -- he or she would receive a half-day session on employee benefits and other matters, such as how to sign up for automatic payroll deposit and where certain Lab buildings and facilities are located.

In the afternoon, new hires would go to the Environment, Safety and Health (ESH) Division Training Center in White Rock to begin General Employee Training. This training would continue into the next morning, Pacheco said, and employees could report to their worksite that afternoon.

But under the new employee orientation program, employees will start their first day of employment at the museum. In addition to filling out various administrative and benefits forms, newly hired employees also will participate in an orientation program prepared by the museum staff.

The new employees then report to the White Rock Training Center for a complete day of training on Tuesday. Because of the new training component, employees won't be able to report to their worksite until Wednesday of that week, she said.

The sessions at the museum will be held on Monday mornings -- Tuesdays if Monday is an official Lab holiday -- because the museum is closed to the public for staff training, exhibit installation and cleaning. The museum opens to the public at 1 p.m. on Mondays.

Before changing new employee orientation, Pacheco said she visited other labs and companies to observe how they conduct their new hire sessions. Pacheco said she visited Sandia National Laboratories and Philips Semiconductors, both in Albuquerque. She also checked out Motorola and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

"What we learned is that new employee orientation programs are often focused on preparing and acclimating new employees in various ways in order to help them understand the 'institutional family' they are joining," Pacheco said. "We hope to accomplish that here at the Lab."

Rhoades noted that new employees hired at Motorola are required to tour Motorola's museum to gain some historical perspective on the company.

With the Lab's history dating to the Manhattan Project and the resources of the museum, introducing new Lab employees to the Lab within a historical context was only appropriate, Rhoades said. "People are hiring on not just unaware of the Lab's historical role, but not having a good knowledge of World War II, the Cold War and international events, and events which set the context for what we did here at the Lab," said Rhoades.

Incorporating the museum into new employee orientation will help people "understand what I think is a long and noble history of service to the country," he said.

At the museum, new hires will participate in a lecture and multimedia presentation on specific periods and projects in the Lab's history given by Rhoades and other museum staff in the museum's TechLab, an in-depth training and instruction area. They will then be given a guided tour of Lab exhibits and have some free time to browse through the museum.

"It's a very tough audience to reach because sitting in that room may be a Ph.D. biochemist who is an expert in his or her field who knows nothing about the Lab's nuclear mission," Rhoades said. "Sitting next to him or her could someone who has little technical background. That's the challenge."

Rhoades said he will encourage new employees to provide feedback to museum staff; the presentation will be improved based on the feedback. And new employees can ask questions at any point during the presentation.

"We don't want this to be death-by-viewgraph," said Rhoades. "The idea is to keep it fast-paced."

Rhoades and museum presenters also will talk about other less historical aspects of the Lab, survival skills such as the importance of safety awareness, how to establish an electronic mail address, what TA and other myriad acronyms at the Lab stand for, and how the Lab is organized.

The roles of the University of California and Department of Energy, from which the Lab receives much of its funding, and the Lab's role in Northern New Mexico, also will be discussed. Rhoades called it a "mini-civics lesson."

He also said that the presentation to newly hired employees may be opened up to other Lab staff if space permits. "Hopefully it'll be something employees who have been here awhile will want to sign up for too," said Rhoades.

-- Steve Sandoval

Lab seeks public comment on environmental cleanup plans

The public is invited to a dialogue session from 1 to 7 p.m. Thursday at the Los Alamos National Laboratory Outreach Center, downtown close to the Bradbury Science Museum at 1350 Central Ave., Suite 101., to discuss the Laboratory's environmental cleanup plans. The Laboratory and the Department of Energy will hold the session seeking public comment. The cleanup of potential release sites includes removal of contaminated soil, a septic tank, sumps, seepage pits and a sludge pit. Laboratory personnel will be present to receive comments and answer questions from the public. For more information, contact Carmen Rodriguez at 5-6770.

A new detour awaits commuters on Thursday

Laboratory employees who travel to work from Santa Fe and other points south will encounter a new traffic detour at the intersection of U.S. 84-285 and NM 502 beginning Thursday.

The state Highway and Transportation Department is building a new "single point" interchange near Pojoaque that is designed to improve traffic flow through the intersection and make it safer to drive through the heavily traveled area, said Orlando Peralta, project manager with the state road agency's Española project office.

A.S. Horner Construction Co. of Albuquerque is the general contractor for the $11 million project, scheduled for completion in July, weather permitting. Construction began in August 1995 and includes a new bridge which has been completed, said Peralta.

Starting Thursday, a temporary traffic signal near the intersection of U.S. 84-285 and NM 502 will be moved north about 150 feet, Peralta explained. Commuters from Santa Fe and further south will continue to make a left turn to get onto NM 502 from U.S. 84-285. But in the afternoon, employees who live in Santa Fe, Albuquerque and other areas south of the highway intersection will have to travel underneath the new bridge which has been completed, come to a stop at the traffic signal and make a right turn onto U.S. 84-285, he said.

Peralta said the change in the traffic plan through the construction area is required to allow the contractor to remove the old bridge, which has been standing for several months. The contractor also will begin lowering NM 502 to make it even with the north side of the road and to complete storm drainage work, he said.

The existing ramp that carries vehicles from NM 502 onto U.S. 84-285 south to Santa Fe will be closed for up to six weeks, weather permitting, until this phase of the project is completed, said Peralta.

The contractor is working between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. during the work week, but won't work on the roadway during peak hours in the morning and afternoon, Peralta said.

Some 1,830 Lab employees and subcontractor personnel live in Santa Fe; another 500 live in Bernalillo and Sandoval counties south and west of Santa Fe. Many of them travel Interstate 25, then U.S. 84-285 to work daily.

The Lab allows managers to use flex-time scheduling, but employees should plan on delays and adjust their schedules accordingly.

Santa Fe and points south employees who commute along this route also may consider joining car or vanpools. Those interested in joining a vanpool can call 988-7433, 294-0302 or 877-9597.

The highway project is designed to improve safety and meet projected traffic growth to the year 2013. It has been in the planning stages since the mid-to-late 1980s. A consultant hired by the state road agency projected that traffic volume through and around the interchange could triple by the year 2013.

Additional phases of the project include eliminating hazardous crossing areas on U.S. 84-285 by building new frontage roads and installing traffic signals to allow motorists to cross U.S. 84-285 and access residences and businesses along the heavily traveled highway, he said.

Another feature of the new intersection is U.S. 84-285 will have three lanes in each direction south of the intersection when it is completed. There also will be two lanes for vehicles traveling to Los Alamos from Santa Fe through the intersection. There is now only one westbound lane under the existing bridge.

-- Steve Sandoval

Reminder: return your UC survey by Monday

University of California Laboratory employees are reminded to return their member satisfaction survey by Monday. The university's Benefits Office earlier this month mailed out a health care survey to a selected representative random sample of employees. The survey instructions ask that employees complete the survey and return it to the UC Benefits Office by May 19. Spouses may fill out the survey if they also were covered under the health care plan, the survey states. The survey contains 58 questions, and is accompanied by a letter to "survey participants" from James Sullivan, UC's interim assistant vice president. Survey participants are told in the cover letter that their responses will be kept confidential.

Lab-produced video documentary wins award

A Laboratory produced video documentary on how private companies bring products to market faster and better has won an award from the United States International Film and Video Festival.

"Workstories," which was produced by Dan Curry of the Human Resources (HR) Division's Training and Development Group and independent Santa Fe film producer Jack Loeffler, received a Certificate of Excellence from the festival. It was one of 300 video documentaries out of more than 1,500 submissions to be recognized, said Curry.

The festival is next month in Chicago. The documentary was recognized in the training and education/business and government: motivational, personal growth category.

"The award is recognition of the continued viability of multimedia training products developed by the Lab within the training community at large," said Curry.

The 47-minute video documentary includes stories from factories to boardrooms about how "concurrent engineering," or simultaneous engineering works, and how these real-life successes can be applied at Los Alamos and other national labs.

Harley Davidson, OshKosh B'Gosh, Boeing Co., Hughes Missile Systems Inc. and several other major corporations around the country are using "concurrent engineering," Curry said.

Concurrent engineering is the practice of bringing together the various portions of a work product so that everyone is working on the project together - simultaneously - thereby improving efficiency, reducing cost and substantially shortening development time.

Curry and Loeffler starting working on the project in March 1995 and did more than 50 hours of interviews before beginning the editing and voice over narration for "Workstories."

Curry said "Workstories" is part of a package of videos and a CD-ROM on teaming and concurrent engineering he is producing. He said concurrent engineering has a place in the DOE nuclear weapons complex. "Teaming is becoming an asset that can't be dismissed, even at the nuclear laboratories," he said.

The award from the U.S. International Film and Video Festival is the second for Curry. Two years ago, a 29-minute video documentary film, "Our Faces," won a Certificate of Excellence award from the festival. The video talks about the human side of the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, or AIDS.

-- Steve Sandoval

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