Parking shuttle begins Jan. 24
Laboratory officials signed a contract with LA Bus system Monday setting the stage for a parking-shuttle pilot program to begin Jan. 24.
LA Bus, a local nonprofit corporation, will provide four "airport shuttle" type buses and commercially licensed drivers who will begin picking up and dropping off passengers at seven stops in and around TA-3 starting at 7:30 a.m. Monday, Jan. 24. Shuttle service will be provided continuously from 7:30 to 9:30 a.m. and from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. The buses are New Mexico Department of Transportation certified and will undergo standard annual NMDOT safety and operational inspections as well as daily inspections by LA Bus personnel.
"We're pleased to offer this service to employees who find themselves parking a bit farther away than they used to," said Tony Stanford, division director for Facility and Waste Operations (FWO). "We're happy to be getting the shuttle service underway before fully closing the Strategic Computing Complex construction zone to parking, and we plan to continually reevaluate the system, and tweak it if necessary, in order to make it work best for everyone."
The 20-passenger buses will make stops at the following off-street locations: The East Jemez Road bus stop near Roads and Grounds, the Otowi Building, the Theoretical (T) Division Building (SM-132), the CMR (SM-29) parking lot, the main shops (SM-39), the Physics Building (SM-40) and the new expanded parking lot behind the JCNNM (SM-261). Signs will be posted clearly showing the location of each bus stop.
"The buses will begin their route at the stop near Roads and Grounds and make two stops on each route at the Otowi Building. It should take about 20 minutes to make one circuit," said Dru Price of FWO. "With four buses in service there should be one at each stop every seven minutes." Due to safety concerns all passengers must be seated while the buses are in motion.
The shuttle-service contract is good for one year with options every six months at a cost of $200,000 per year. If the service works well for employees, the contract could be continued throughout the construction of the SCC.
"This shuttle service should alleviate some of the problems of having to park farther away and having to deal with inclement weather. We really hope it works for people," said Stanford. "During SCC construction and the subsequent phases of TA-3 revitalization, parking will continue to be inconvenient for some employees. We'd like to ask people to be understanding and patient and continue to focus on safety while we work to make these important improvements to our infrastructure."
--Kevin Roark
Click the map for a PDF file showing the proposed bus routes (Adobe Acrobat required), or click here for a 15- by 10-inch image of the map.
New Mexico senator to present colloquium Thursday
On Thursday, Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) will present a Director's Colloquium titled "Washington Perspectives on Laboratory Issues" at 9:45 a.m. in the Administration Building Auditorium. The colloquium is open to badgeholders only and will be shown live on LABNET Channel 9.
Public Affairs launches
'Science for the 21st Century' series
New ways to test and build nuclear rockets is the focus of the inaugural issue of "Science in the 21st Century," a communication project launched last week by the Lab's Public Affairs Office.
The project, which involves a series of one-page papers describing Laboratory technologies and research that have an impact on science and will continue to do so for the next century and beyond, will cover diverse topics and highlight many areas of Laboratory research, including those efforts that involve numerous groups, divisions and directorates. Topics will range from quantum cryptography and neutrino research to carbon sequestration and nanotechnologies. The first paper, Nuclear Rockets, outlines work in building nuclear reactors to power rockets in space.
"The 'Science in the 21st Century' project will showcase some of the most exciting, innovative and far-reaching work the Laboratory does," said Todd Hanson of Public Affairs, coordinator of the project. "Much of the material featured in the articles will be research that normally would not be widely publicized because although the work has a proven track record, some of the directions may still be rather speculative and not exactly the kind of 'hard news' the news media wants."
A "Science for the 21st Century" article will be distributed each week during the next year to science editors at national, regional and local publications. The articles also will be available to employees on the Web at http://www.lanl.gov./orgs/pa/science21 as they are released. The Bradbury Science Museum hopes to incorporate some of the best articles into rotating exhibits, and several newspapers plan to use the articles in regular columns.
"When the project is complete, the articles should give a good account of where the Lab was scientifically at the end of the 20th century and where we thought its work was headed going into the 21st," said Hanson.
Currently available online are "Nuclear Rockets" and "Carbon Sequestration," which was released today.
Managers, employees prepare for 9/80 schedule
Starting Jan. 24, the Laboratory will implement a new "9/80" work schedule as the Laboratory standard. Most University of California employees at the Lab will follow the new schedule. Employees who follow a 9/80 schedule will work nine-hour days Monday through Thursday, eight-hour days on Friday and will have a day-off every other Friday.
Deputy Laboratory Director for Business Administration and Outreach, Joe Salgado, said, "The new 9/80 schedule is part of our effort to continue to improve the quality of work life here at the Lab. We had extensive feedback from employees saying that they wanted to have this option, and we're glad that it's becoming a reality. At the same time, there are business considerations and constraints that guide how we implement this policy."
Helga Christopherson, director of the Human Resources (HR) Division, explained that employees and managers should be finalizing schedules for their teams and groups. Schedules need to be arranged so that backups are in place and vital services continue on Fridays.
From Jan. 10 through Jan. 21, employees, supervisors and office timekeepers will be able to designate individual schedules through the Time and Effort system. Employees will need to indicate whether they are planning to work a 5/40 or a 9/80, and if they will be working a 9/80 they will need to select between Schedule A and Schedule B. The two 9/80 schedules, A and B, determine which Fridays they will have off (see table below).
Before doing anything, however, employees should check with their supervisor or office timekeeper to see how their office is going to designate schedules. In some offices, timekeepers will designate schedules for everyone, while in other offices individual employees will be responsible for indicating their scheduling plans in the Time and Effort system. For more information on the process, employees should visit the Administrative Resources Web site at http://int.lanl.gov/enterprise/ or access two brochures that explain how the Time and Effort system will be handled under a 9/80. The brochures are available at http://iosun.lanl.gov:2001/pdfs/quickreftext/mwwentertime.pdf and http://iosun.lanl.gov:2001/pdfs/quickreftext/workschedules.pdf.
After the new schedule has been implemented, employees will be able to change schedules -- for instance, from Schedule A to Schedule B, or from 9/80 to 5/40 -- four times per year if individual or organizational circumstances require them to change. Changes that are made take effect on the first day of a pay period. Once an employee changes schedules, he or she must stay on that schedule for two full pay periods. Supervisory approval is required to change schedules in order to ensure appropriate work distribution and coverage.
Although the 9/80 will be the new standard Lab schedule, some employees may work a 5/40 schedule for reasons such as child-care arrangements or programmatic requirements. Because not all employees will be on the 9/80 schedule, the system setup ensures that all employees are treated equitably when it comes to holiday pay. All employees will be paid eight hours in holiday pay, even if the holiday falls on a nine-hour day for someone following the 9/80 schedule. This is the same method that is currently used for employees who work a 4/10 schedule.
A 9/80 employee who receives eight hours of holiday pay on what is normally a nine-hour day will need to make up the extra hour sometime during that week. Nonexempt employees, as an alternative, could report the hour as vacation.
Paying 9/80 employees nine hours for holidays would have meant that they would receive an extra day and a half of holiday per year, compared to their 5/40 counterparts. Additionally, the costs of paying all employees nine hours for holidays would be significant.
Christopherson said, "Providing holiday pay in nine-hour increments for all employees would have cost the Lab an additional $4 to $5 million per year. And, in the currently constrained fiscal environment, that simply is not appropriate."
Exempt employees who are sick or take vacation will continue to charge their time in half-day increments. A half day will be either 4.5 hours -- when the leave occurs on a day that the employee was scheduled to work nine hours -- or four hours, and a full day will be either nine or eight hours. Nonexempt employees will charge the actual numbers of hours used.
Examples of the two 9/80 schedules are listed in the table below. Initially, the new 9/80 schedule will apply only to full-time UC employees, but will eventually apply to contractors in the next several months.
|
Schedule A |
Schedule B |
|
Week One: Week Two: |
Week One: Week Two: |
--David Lyons
'La Niña' weather pattern continues
in Los Alamos and White Rock
A consistent "La Niña" weather pattern continued in Los Alamos and White Rock last month with mostly clear skies and very little precipitation.
Only .34 of an inch of precipitation was recorded at the Technical Area 6 measuring station in Los Alamos last month, said meteorologist George Fenton of Air Quality (ESH-17). The normal recorded precipitation in December in Los Alamos is slightly more than 1 inch.
The 4.7 inches of snow that fell last month was slightly more than one-third of the normal 12.5 inches of snowfall that falls in December, said Fenton. The recorded snowfall occurred on two days, Dec. 3 and 25.
For all of 1999, 16.31 inches of precipitation was recorded in Los Alamos, about 87 percent of the normal annual precipitation of 18.73 inches.
Even less precipitation -- .24 of an inch -- was recorded at the Technical Area 54 measuring station in White Rock last month, said Fenton. The total is about one-third of normal for the month.
The relatively clear skies and a persistent high-pressure system over the Four Corners region contributed to the slightly cooler than normal days, said Fenton.
The mean temperature in Los Alamos was 29 degrees Fahrenheit in December, while the average daily maximum and mean minimum temperatures of 41 degrees F and 18 degrees F, respectively, were all about 1 degree F below normal, he said.
Similarly, in White Rock, the mean temperature of 28 degrees F in December was 2 degrees F below normal. The average daily maximum temperature of 43 degrees was about normal, but the mean minimum temperature of 13 degrees F was 4 degrees F below normal, said Fenton.
Two temperature records were tied in White Rock last month. The overnight temperature of 5 degrees F on Dec. 5 matched the low temperature for the day established in 1992. And a low temperature of 0 degrees F on Dec. 15 tied the record low for the day set in 1997, said Fenton.
A 49-mile-per-hour wind gust was recorded in Los Alamos on Dec. 14.
--Steve Sandoval
|
On today's bulletin board |
|
|
|
Security issues at the Laboratory
Past
Daily Newsbulletins | Last
week's headlines
Searchable database
of past issues
Other news sources
Reflections
| News
Releases | Dateline:
Los Alamos | DOE
Pulse
Questions? Contact the Newsbulletin at newsbulletin@lanl.gov.
LANL | Phone Book | Search | Help
L O S A L A M O S
N A T I O N A L
L A B O R A T O R Y
Operated by the University
of California for the US Department
of Energy
Newsbulletin - Copyright © UC 1996 - Disclaimer - Monday, Sept. 20
Lost: saphire ring
