questions. 's. >> we have worn you out. all right. if you have any other questions, especially late at night if you would please call craig he will be our team scribe, i think you guys for listening we appreciate it we will be around if you have any other questions i will tell you we are leaning on partners and friends and develop relationships here as we look to working in that market in a new and different way. there are several companies that we are teaming with facilitating them entering a new market while we as a company work to enter a new market. so very much appreciate the collaboration, thank you, enjoy the rest of the conference. [applause] >> if i can ask you r

seats please. and we will get started with our next panel. before we do, and while you are making your way to your seats, a special shout out from our team. one of our key managers from savannah river was just promoted to vice president today. kelly, congratulations. well done. [applause] all right. i'm honored once again to be able to chair a panel of the three directors, who probably have if not the most difficult job, one of the most difficult jobs in d.o.e.. we are going to talk today about the challenges they face. this is -- we have done this a few times before but this is the last time that shane will be

with a spear we have tried for a year to talk him out of his retirement, and unsuccessfully so. james, thank you for all of you have done for the country. let's have a round of applause for james. [applause] with that, i'm going to make this a real panel and dispense with the podium. what we would like to do today is talk about the same things that teresa talked about earlier today, the key elements of success, for the national security enterprise, and the lads. these three lab directors, and their institutions, have made great progress in the last year in a number of areas. what we are going to do today is talk about that. and then talk about what comes next. and let -- by teaching that up, if you think about what they did, and you heard this in the briefings this morning.

the life extension programs, and the r&d programs, streamlining the way we do business. all of them have had both of this bottoms up and top-down approach, where they challenge their teams to give them innovative ideas, and then they heard both from the new employees we have in the existing employees, those ideas and made them actionable, and always using a risk-based approach to make sure we are applying the great requirements to each mission and project. third is streamlined decision-making. we all know we need that. they have done a tremendous job. and of course it is the basics of moving the decisions down to the lowest possible level, to let things get done faster. at the same time, maintaining the proper level of oversight and governance, which we know is critical using digital tools and other things. but just having good metrics and a contractor assurance programs. of course, for all of the above, using digital tools to analyze

this mountain of data we generate to detect trends and inform the work we do in real time so that we avoid the problems, not just find them and fix them, but avoid them before they can impact our mission and projects. we are going to talk about the same four that teresa in dj teed up today. we will talk about innovation. then we will talk about infrastructure. thirdly, we will talk about operations and then finally, what makes it all work is developing the workforce of the future, are people strategy. let me start with innovation. i mentioned before implementing digital tools and digital transformation as areas where you made great progress. can you describe what you have achieved? and i know in the past year, you have used it to improve our design methods, improve our operations, and our production capability, and of course,

maintaining a strong science base. and then, finally, if you could wrap into that, what do you need to take that next step? would do you need from an nsa to take the next step in that innovation? do you want to start? >> i picked the wrong chair. [laughter] that was a big question. and thank you for bringing us back together again. we have spent a lot of this year talking about the digital transformation we are trying to find -- drive forward. i think it will impact our work in a number of ways that i will start with simple as part. conceptually simplest part which is the backbone to collect the labs, plants and sites anymore seamless manner and ensure we have common electronic infrastructure that we can share information seamlessly between sites, to really streamline how we go from design through engineering to production. and make those cycles efficient and modern and provide what we are hoping will be a digital thread for the work we do so

that they will have a really good data and great tools to enable us to do stockpile modernization in new ways. within the laboratories, we are also using our new tools and capabilities. you heard earlier that we just cited several new computers. , will talk about what they are doing at los alamos but we decided at livermore. this is the first exit scale computer for national security. they are number one. which is pretty exciting. but the computing is now at a scale where we can do things that seem inconceivable 10 years ago. 3d modeling has become a routine tool of design we are linking together our engineering and physical design capabilities. this machine also has 44,000 gp use in it. it is an amazing tool for things like ai. are starting to bring that even those into our science and design communities to speed the

pace of learning, and really be able to think differently about how we do all elements of our work on the stockpile. i think i will stop there and pass it over to my colleagues. >> i will just pick up where kim left off, actually. if you look at what went into making el capitan possible, and by the way, all three labs are going to be able to use that resource. so we are kind of basking in the reflected glory. i think there are a dozen key technologies that went into enabling that tremendous computational resource, that were developed as part of the computing project, that are actually baked into all of the big investments that are being made by the hyper scalars to train their models. it doesn't get a lot of attention, but that exit scale

program actually was the building blocks of what is a transformational technological revolution that is underway right now. when you read about openai announcing stargate and x ai putting 100,000 gp use, working to one million gp use in memphis, under the hood is technology that not of person of ever faster computers. one of the nice and bright products of that is machines like el capitan or the supercomputer that we deployed at los alamos in the spring, not only our -- are wonderful for doing the multi-physics simulation that are critical to our ability to assure the effectiveness and the safety and reliability of our nuclear stockpile, they will also be great for artificial intelligence. because they have this hybrid

architecture. and i think one of the things we are excited about is the possibility of adding that to our fluke it, not to replace the traditional modeling and simulations that we have, but to accelerate it. it will be an important training database for ai. and also to take advantage of this tremendous resource we have in terms of experiment data. that is something where the three labs are working very closely together. we are hopeful that we can make an announcement of that before too long. but it is something that is going to enable us to go faster. and that is important, because we are going to be asked to go faster. we are being asked to go faster. the strategic posture commission capture that with the necessary but not sufficient, and we are very busy right now with things like infrastructure, topics that,. and the only way that we will have the capacity to go faster is to use some of the tools that

we have been working so hard to enable over the last few decades. >> kim and tom covered a lot of the pieces of the digital transformation. but there are some other areas here that are -- i will give you the positive pieces and the challenges. in the program, it will be born digital. all of the integrative product teams have bought into basically using digital thread as their way of doing design through manufacturing. in some cases, 87-one is doing digital thread. this is not without its challenges. because there is eight last implants into sites that have to come together and agree on a common sense of tools. culturally, that is a challenge at sandia by itself, and the mechanical tools or electrical design tools. coming with the ones that we are going to provide, only a certain version of it for our engineers.

and then things simply is staying up-to-date, something as simple as our award processing tools, that they are all at the same version level. there are a lot of challenges of this. i believe tomorrow, jimmy wolf will be on a panel talking about this. you can ask them more detailed questions. we are making progress in these areas but there are a lot of challenges. mr. longenecker: and i ask you to address on renovation, a term that general mcconnell uses that may have been coined by the pass administrator? technology insertion. you have had a strong tremendous act -- tremendous technology base at all of the labs, and you develop all of these technologies. one thing i've heard you speak about is how long it takes us, for a lot of good reasons and some not so good reasons, to deploy them. what progress have you made in the last year in technology insertion? you say, when you can deploy

those technologies sooner, it can work them into the mission to go faster and better and more efficiently. kim, do you want to start with what type -- with technology insertion? ms. budil: think this is an area where we have made a lot of progress. as james mentioned with the digital transformation, changing because of technologies we use and the way we use technology is equal parts technical and cultural. it is not a simple as saying i have a great new idea or technology, let's just roll with it. there is a high degree of confidence we have to build in a new technology or new manufacturing approach. and there are many legacy processes and procedures built on the way we do things today. that cultural peace cannot be ignored. i think we have really build a strong partnership across the labs, plans and sites that is allowing us to gain speed and inserting new technologies. we have put an emphasis on new manufacturing technologies. what's interesting to me is you

usually think about designing technology and then building things. manufacturing is a tool to enable you to do things. the capabilities we have with advanced manufacturing tools mean it changes the way you think about design, because you can make things that are very different from what you can conceive about with old tools. we are sort of seeing the whole process become much more iterative as we learn the capabilities and the power of these new tools, and things like on machine inspection and control, and design optimization tools that allow us to iterate through many variations of the new part. in our modernization programs that we are pursuing now, so we are the design agent for 80-4 and 87-1 mod, we are inserting new technologies because we have this capability to change the way we have thought about these designs to make them more manufacturing, more sustainable, easier to maintain through the

life of that system. mr. mason: i think we have gone through -- i will say we have gone through a phase transition. there was a long time where really build into the way we were thinking about things was, change as little as possible. we have designs that have their origins in the era of testing, and anything that we do to introduce a change in how we manufacture, can introduce some sort of uncertainty that might cause us to question that basis. and i think we are over that now. we are over it for a couple reasons. first off, because of the things like modeling and simulation tools, we have a better ability to understand the consequences of a change in material or a change in the manufacturing approach, and actually convince ourselves that it is ok. i think the other thing is, and

james owen mentioned this in his session this morning, it is not just a question of can we design things that are easy to manufacture? this, what do the new manufacturing technologies enable in terms of design possibilities that simple he could not be accomplished any other way? and the fact that with a lot of additive manufacturing and digital design, complexity is much less frightening than it used to be. you can actually make things that are very complex, in a relatively straightforward way. and that gives the designers some flexibility in terms of how they approach solving a problem that they did not have in the past, and we are no longer bound by that. i think we have enough confidence or ability to understand those changes, that we can take advantage of it, and

also take advantage of the fact that it may require a smaller footprint. it may produce less waste material in the form of spoils, and curios we deal with, you would rather not deal with large quantities of unused material. all of these things are benefits that can help us stay within a bounded cost envelope. mr. peery: let's see, i'm pretty excited right now because last week, we had a successful 80-4 flight test with the air force. there is new technology in there. can't go into specifics, but between lawrence technology that they have inserted, it is an amazing advancement in how we think about the systems. there is a lot of stuff coming through, kind of the laboratory scale that is going to change the way that we think about our safety things for nuclear weapon systems. i'm really excited about that coming through. mr. longenecker: the next topic,

we will move onto to number two, infrastructure. kim, you can relax because i'm going to start with james this time. and infrastructure, we know our infrastructure was built 75 or 80 years ago, and needs to be upgraded. the enterprise blueprint that you all talked about and contributed to this a great description of the must-have infrastructure. and i like the way the past administrator said it is not a wish list, it's essential to the mission. to support over the next 25 years. with that, what are the key things you need at your lab to effectively carry out the enterprise blueprint, including health and implement in those creative approaches that i know you are all working on supply chain, using commercial standards and broadening the supply base? james, you want to start? mr. peery: i'm very exciting -- excited about the blueprint, and having negotiated with nnsa and

other lab plants, the list of facilities that need to be recapitalized. but i want to go in a different direction then your question. because we have to sustain a lot of cysts -- a lot of facilities before the new ones come around. that is going to be a really significant issue from a funding standpoint. we have to continue to have facilities that make the electronics for the weapons. we have to continue to have facilities that qualify parts for the weapons. and if you look at the enterprise blueprint, some of those facilities will be five to 10 years from now before we get new facilities. and we put these facilities in a run to failure mode literally a decade ago. that was a good decision at the time. because at that time, it looked like we would be recapitalizing these facilities today.

but it is going to take longer. we have to sustain these facilities to continue to execute the monetization programs. there are other things that are not in the blueprint that we need to pay attention to. lab space and office space. and a lot of that needs to be recapitalized through the complex. there is a lot to be done here. very excited about the blueprint, because it lays out a timeline for the facilities that we absolutely have to have. some of these facilities we have to have before they are recapitalized. mr. mason: the important thing in my mind about the blueprint is that it does look across the spectrum of types of infrastructure that it needed to support what we do. it's easy to spend all of your time focusing on the really big ticket nuclear facilities, because they do take a tremendous amount of dollars to

get built and they take a long time to get built. they have a very significant requirement in terms of safety and security that drives all of that. so you see a lot of focus on discussions with things like upf, the plutonium infrastructure investments at los alamos. the blueprint also talks about some of the infrastructure that we used to design, certify and assess the stockpile. those are scientific tools, they are test capabilities, they are absolutely important. paradoxically, even though sometimes we take the shorthand to refer to these as our science facilities, if you want to know what is the shortest path between infrastructure and impact on the on alert deterrent, it is actually through those facilities because it is in resolving questions that may arise, surveillance programs or whatever. and to be honest, the pits we

are building at los alamos, as important as they are, they are not going to affect the on alert deterrent until sentinel is in the field. there are a lot of pretty urgent things in that scientific piece of the infrastructure that are every bit as important as the big facilities. as james pointed out, one of the concerns is -- at los alamos, we got approval of critical decisions zero. the mission needed for much-needed modernization of the front end of our accelerated, which is one of those tools were used to resolve issues, the -- it is important for qualifying new high explosives. but we have to keep the facility running, and in fact, this year, we don't have enough spare parts. while the lamp upgrade is

tremendously important in ensuring the future of that facility, the more mundane things, we call it maintenance operations. it does not look quite as flashy as el capitan. but it is extremely important for the ongoing health of our deterrent. ms. budil: i agree wholeheartedly with james and tom. one of the best parts of the enterprise blueprint offered was the time we spent as a community coming to consensus of what is on that report. when you need is a shared commitment to the success of all the sites. i think that is an important place for us to be because they need is so large. at my site, we have three different categories of needs for infrastructure. first and foremost is the recapitalization of some of our scientific infrastructure. we have are largely just -- laser facility which is a high-tech place but it has been

operating for almost 15 years now. there is a need for an investment in sustainment of the facility, and we just recently received critical decisions zero mission need to do an energy upgrade to the laser where we will be able to increase the laser energy output from 2.2 megajoules to 2.6 megajoules, allowing us to push that facility and our ignition experiments to more high-yield regimes which are important for our support to the stockpile. to that facility routinely to do things like material testing and exposures, and to really study in depth the science of nuclear weapons. it really is an important day today contributors to our support for the stockpile. in the second category, i would put enabling infrastructure. so we have a lot of needs on our site, as an example, one of our line items was a power and cooling upgrade to our computing

facility so we could cite out cap a 10. that kind of infrastructure, while not glamorous, it is important to operating these big facilities and operating our sites in efficient and sustainable ways. for us, for those of you who have not visited livermore, it is a physically small site, we are one square mile and we have 9000 employees. that work force has grown by more than 50% in the last 10 years. we need office space and we can't g ppr way out of this problem. the average dpp scalability is too small for a site where the footprint is so small. we have been working with nnsa to get critical decisions zero for an investment in office space infrastructure so we can build up a little bit. and much more efficiently use our site, and bring our weapons program teams closer together so we can foster collaboration for

the important work we have to do going forward. it has been an interesting journey. we have been working closely on our infrastructure plans with our partners at the production sites. also trying to build out production develop and capabilities that allow us to study the science of production, and help bring new capabilities for production of polymers or explosives, and other key components, to aid this process of modernizing in the production facilities. mr. longenecker: thanks. we talked earlier today, and it is a great thing to celebrate 75 and 80 years at our facilities. the real celebrations we all want to have and you will hear this in the plants and sites tomorrow is where you and roger and eric and rich and kelly, when you commission those new facilities you are building now. that will be something to celebrate. dj, put that down for your list of champagne toasts for the future, if you would, please. let's go to operations.

as we expand operations to support the upgrades to our national security capabilities, what are your top issues you need to address? obviously, we have been doing the research, we just talked about operation -- infrastructure. but as we move more into operations for pits and lap's, what are the challenges you face, how are you using digital tools to ensure the strong safety and security performance and the performance of those new facilities? and overall, what keeps you up at night when you look at operations, moving into that phase, which is exciting and absolutely essential, but what are the things that keep you up at night to say these are really the things we have to address first and foremost to make a successful? tom, do you want to start? mr. mason: certainly our biggest challenge, now that we have -- at the event where we were celebrating, the first production unit, it was pointed

out that this is not a finish line. it's actually the starting line. we have got a lot of work ahead of us over the next couple years to build out the capability to get up to the 30 pits per year that teresa mentioned in her remarks. but we have to do that in an operating facility. and that is a challenge, because we want to continue producing pits, maintaining the competency to produce the pits, train people to be proficient in doing not. at the same time, we are ripping out obsolete hardware and bringing in new glove boxes. and in a nuclear facility that has been operating for decades, and does not necessarily have the best as built drawings, and occasionally when you open a valve, you find there is something sitting inside there

that has been around for a while . that's the quickest way to knock us off our pace in terms of the infrastructure build, an operational upset that would bring work to a halt. if it's not safe, we are not doing any work until we can remedy that situation. i think for us, the biggest operational challenge is actually the interleaving of the operations with the infrastructure work. we don't have the luxury of a greenfield location. there are other important missions in the pf for facility, in addition to pits they are ongoing as well. there is a horton surveillance work we have to do. there is the heat sources, and the areas mission, as well as r&d. it is a kind of unique challenge. and it is one that keeps me and actually a large number of other people up at night. mr. longenecker: james, do you

want to go next? mr. peery: the things that keep me up at night are the maintenance of these facilities. i will give a couple examples. a critical facility for qualifying hard signal nuclear weapons, we lost a safety rod and it started to leak. fortunately we saw it. it was not an immediate issue for the safety but we had to replace the rod, and there was only one spare pair we are down to know safety rods. now we are going to build up some new ones. but that kept the reactor down for a year. those are the things that happen when you are dealing with a nuclear facility. it is typically at least a year. with our mesa facility, a tool that is really critical to making these special transistors for nuclear weapons systems also went down for three months. fortunately we built up enough, i guess capacity and reserves, to effectively continue, so we did not lose anything on the

live extension programs. but if it had happened at a different time, we would have. those are the things that are operational and producing product, but also have safety implications. ms. budil: we have been embarked on a multiyear effort to rethink how we do work. really to try to find a way to be much more efficient and move much more quickly to meet the demand a that was mentioned earlier. so we have tried to go back to basics in this process. there are a few prime directives we have to follow. you have to be safe, secure, good stewards of the taxpayer dollar, we have to be highly transparent to the government. we have been working with our teams to try to find ways to meet those objectives, and then remove barriers that don't materially add, don't necessarily make us materially more safe or secure, don't

really help us execute these programs or manage the risks that are attentive with the type of work we do, that get us focused on that delivery commitments. we have a lot of new workforce, they have lots of ideas. it has been a way to engage them and to rethink how we do our operations and our facilities. i think that's really important. and companion piece to that has been modernizing our business systems. we have a lot of home built business systems. many where their requirements were written by physicists. they were all terrible. not because the people who built them were not competent and capable people, but because we have this byzantine set of requirements for them that was highly optimized to 20 years ago. we have been working to bring in more commercial products and really have modern infrastructure to enable business and operations at the laboratory. the last piece, we have been working with our colleagues at

nnsa to streamline our contract to understand where authorities can be delegated, where requirements in the contract can be streamlined, so that we can focus on delivering at pace on our mission. and that has been a really productive effort. we have made a lot of great changes to our contract to simplify it and streamline it, make it more accessible. i look for to continuing that work with our colleagues at an nsa. mr. longenecker: and it is clear, you have worked hard -- work hard on this. but getting as close to aligned with our nnsa client on objectives and implementation. i know it always takes longer than we would like, but as far as delegation,, we are all working on the same problem. that is a tribute to all of our end and essay counterparts out there, both in quarters and in the field. let's go to the last one. and we will have a wrap up at the end of all this. people strategy.

as i said earlier, it is the attracting and retaining the workforce of the future that makes this all work. the markets changed over the past few years post-covid. i know it is still challenging in a lot of ways, different ways then it was four, five years ago with a lot of competition from other high-tech industries. what are your main initiatives to assure we are developing the workforce of the future i'm above engineers, scientists, and a sufficient numbers of the high-quality craft workers. and what helped you, they were very helpful in helping us balance our benefits and pay and things like that. what do you need is the next step in that to make sure national security enterprise is the employer of choice for people? ms. budil: most important thing we have to offer our employees is the incredible mission that we support.

the number one thing that attracts people into our environment is the opportunity to do this incredible science and technology work, in support of really critical national missions. the national commitment to the work that we do, the clear guidance on the nuclear deterrent, the pace of work that is making it an interactive environment to work on the work we have done with nnsa to really improve our salary and benefits practice -- package has been very helpful. our lab sits very proximate to the silicon valley, and to a lot a very high tech employers. so there is always naturally a flow in and out of the laboratory due to that. the cost of living is very high in our area. but we have been able to make substantial progress. it changes the calculus for employees. they want to stay and support the mission. we are not going to pay the way google pays, that's fine, because we offer other things. but we have to offer a fair

compensation package to make things work. the last piece is focusing on the employee experience. all of these new employees need to learn about us, about what we do and why it is important, about the kinds of missions we support and the kinds of opportunities they have to build a career in our environment. we have put a huge effort on teaching people about the mission and being much more purposeful and how we talk about our work, and engage with all of these new employees so that from early in their career, they really feel a part of the work we do and they understand this bigger picture of what we are trying to accomplish. mr. longenecker: thank you. tom? mr. mason: our focus has been shifting away from the rapid growth that we experienced and the addition of new staff to more attention and development of the staff that we have. our peak hiring year was 2023. we hired about 2500 new staff. that's a lot. but the numbers have been coming

down this year, depending on what happens with the budget, it will be more like 1200. our normal turnover is about 800 to 900. we are not quite at a steady state but we are getting there. the hiring is tapering. so we brought in a lot of new people, a net growth of about 5000 over the last five years or so. they are enthusiastic, they are smart, they have skills that are going to be very valuable to our mission. and what we don't want to have happen is just as they are getting to a point of proficiency, which takes a couple of years at least in our business, that they go off somewhere else. as was mentioned, i think we have made progress in terms of our compensation and benefits, and that was really critical couple years ago, in particular when there was a lot of turnover across the economy.

people were experiencing inflation and hopping jobs to try to counteract that. we are not in a bad spot there. i think where we need to be focusing though is maybe not so much the kind of monetary and benefit side of the equation, but more the job satisfaction. as kim said, our mission is a big source of job satisfaction. people want to do something that matters. so we have got that one. i think where we still have work to do is some of our, although we talk a little bit about infrastructure and a lot of the infrastructure investments are focused on what you might call the hard infrastructure, the scientific facilities and the nuclear facilities, production and so forth, we have a lot people at loss almost who are working in pretty crappy

conditions. doubled and tripled in offices where they can't read emails because it is so decrepit. obviously, you have got to have the production infrastructure. you have to have the scientific infrastructure. but we also need to give people decent spaces in which to do their jobs, that are sort of a 21st century work environment. i think the other thing where we can do better as some of the things that kim talked about in terms of streamlining how we do our work can have a huge influence on how satisfied people are. no one wants to spend hours a day doing things that they feel like are not adding any value to this mission that is so important. and it is a tremendous source of frustration for staff when they see their time getting burned away doing things that are not meaningfully advancing the mission. although we have made a lot of

progress on that front, i think there is a lot more that we could do. the ways we do things, largely built up during a time frame when there was not that kind of geopolitical urgency driving delivery that we have right now. and it was ok for things to have long timelines because it was a slowly evolving geopolitical environment. so we need to go faster to respond to the moment. but i believe in figuring out ways to go faster, removing low value added work will have a huge positive impact on our ability to retain employees. they join our institutions to get a job done. if they feel like they can get that job done, it will be hard to pry them loose. if they feel like they are running into dead ends and they are always getting know, send me another rock, and they will not stick around. then we will have to start that recruiting and training and proficiency process all over

again. it takes time and it costs money. mr. peery: this is a good news story. three years ago, i told you about double-digit attrition at the laboratory is basically three years in and you were out. we had more than 60% of our workforce was less than five years, it that kind of model just does not work for a national lab. by the time they are getting proficient in their skills, they are leaving. he worked with nnsa, we made a big deal who worked with nnsa to get our salaries aligned with what the market would provide. worked on benefits. i will talk about one in a minutes. back to the work to implement trying to move some of these death by a thousand cuts that are happening, and how difficult

it was to get things done at the laboratory. and i'm happy to say now, our attrition numbers are less than they were pre-covid. and in hot fields, like you would never believe people with ai experience would be willing to even work for market conditions, we can negotiate with nnsa, our attrition number is less than 1%. and they get to work on machine learning and ai to actually help with nuclear deterrence. we've got things like creating bots that are design experts, working at making everything procurement to training more efficient for engineers and scientists. the one thing that blew us away that nnsa allowed to negotiate our benefits is two floating holidays. i thought, that's great. always like to have a couple extra days off.

and turned out that was a huge deal to our employees. because they got to take those days off. maybe it was their birthday. at sandia, and a lot of the holidays we grouped together to give people off during the christmas break, things like martin luther king day, various things like that they got to take off. it was the most popular thing we did with regard to benefits. the numbers are looking really good. the mission is exciting as ever. a lot of new tools coming into play in how we do our work. it is an exciting place and we are not having trouble keeping people, at least at this point in time. mr. longenecker: good response. tom, you raised a good point. we are all faced with up to half of our workforce has been here less than five years. that idea of bringing someone in that says, this procedure does not add to safety and security, why am i doing it? it doesn't even apply to my project. i think that idea that you have endorsed the past several years of getting it down to risk base, what is the risk of this

operation or this r&d, and what requirements applies of people buy in? not only will they not follow the requirement, they will find someplace else to work where they don't have to do these nonsensical things when they come to work. i would say you have all seen, and i think we have, with the folks at headquarters that we have had the dialogue with some of the other folks, to talk about that. how do we apply them? how do we apply the right parts of the orders or commercial standards wherever we can? i think that is a journey we have gone on, and i think the progress you have made in that, and congratulations, it's something that probably, we are just scratching the surface of getting down to where we have the right standards for each mission and project. ms. budil: i think it's important to remember we have done a lot of work with nnsa to

streamline requirements. we have also been introspective and look inside our own institutions. i would say eight times out of 10, when someone tells you we have to do this because there is a d.o.e. order, ask them what order it is. because there isn't one. because there isn't. one we have the same problem inside our institutions where people are earnestly trying to reduce risk or manage something in the right way. so we are taking this message very seriously and trying to clean our own house as well. mr. longenecker: this is not unique to national security, but it is also true in commercial nuclear, somebody comes to work everyday and they have 110 things that are important, or 110 orders they have to meet or requirements. working with them to understand what the top four or five of the high-risk items that they absolutely must take care of first and foremost is something you have done a good job. and kudos on doing that. as we streamline that, that will energize people that will get more work done safer and keep these people around. because they sure are bright,

these young kids we are hiring. they are really our future. all right, in closing, transitions are a good thing. an opportunity always for us, because the new administrator, the new secretary, the new congress will ask all of you, ok, this is an important issue. i support it. what do you need from me? for the last of the topics, what things do you need to ensure the long-term success and accelerate the national security mission? tom, can i start with you? mr. mason: to be honest, the biggest thing is just the recognition and the articulation of the fact that it is important work. certainly with a new team coming in, we will be looking to them to articulate what their priorities are, as is always the case for the transition.

i'm sure there will be changes. we don't yet know what they are. but if we have a clear articulation that yes, this matters, yes, i'm willing to lean in to be successful, there will be a question of resources. the blueprint is a great thing. but it also comes with a price tag. that is going to be a heavy lift. we will be looking to see the actions of congress to support it or not, and that naturally the administration takes. if i look at the broader international landscape, it is hard for me to imagine a scenario where someone says this whole deterrence thing probably is not so important, after all,

things are breaking our way on the international scene, and i am glad these other actors are being cooperative and not seeking to undermine. maybe it will happen, but i think it is unlikely. >> i agree with everything tom said. the funding is a heavy lift, and it is essential if we are going to get our facilities back in the shape they need to be to support the programs. we also made a lot of progress to unleash the enhanced mission delivery initiative. we've still got a ways to go. i would suggest we've got contingency in the program because of a lot of hard work, but also trying to get the model right with regard to reviewing and reporting, but we've got

work to go. we have shown with a couple demonstrators -- i cannot go into details here -- that we can go incredibly fast if we get this right between the federal oversight, project management. i would just say we need to keep on that path. >> i agree. we have built a good platform. people are starting to believe that we will clear barriers and obstacles to allow people to go faster. we are beginning to embrace that and work in different ways across the enterprise. i am hopeful that we will be able to use that platform and continue the process to really lean in and accelerate. i think we do have examples of areas where changes in how we operate can make a big difference. you mentioned osha, so using

osha standards for construction is sensible. it lowers costs, opens the contractor pool. having that more broadly adopted, i think there are several things like that where we have ideas for streamlining the regulatory environment in ways that really will enable mission delivery in a much more expeditious manner while still ensuring we do this work in the safe and secure and responsible manner that we have to in our business. i think there is a big opportunity there. i will put in one last plug for what i think is a real opportunity. we have been exploring different ways to work with the private sector, and i think the opportunity for us to learn how to build those kinds of partnerships, public-private partnerships, and different areas of our missions is another place where i would like to see us lean forward and think differently about risk and really embrace the opportunity

we have when we bring those capabilities together. mr. longenecker: thank you all. we do have about 10 minutes for questions. i have microphones on both sides of the room. anyone have a question? i am having a challenge looking into the lights. i apologize. there you are. >> hi. kim, you have a new mission in your super blog. it will have a new security profile, and there was just an announcement in the federal register about environmental impact analysis for that. can you tell us why that is not being done in pf4? ms. budil: we are doing a supplement to our sitewide environment a linpack statement,

which we just completed, to change the site posture to enable us to change the way we manage the material we already have on site. the intent is not to increase the amount of material we have on site, but because our material limits are so low, it is very difficult to do operations in the superblock, because you have to move -- every time you have to do and no operation, you have to move to real. this is a way to streamline operations. we lower the categorization of the superblock, we de-inventory the facility. very small scale work making targets for jasper gascon experiments. we are not changing the kind of work we are doing. it is a material management shift that will make the facility much more efficient and cost-effective to operate. >> my name is brenda dillard.

i am president of a university, so i work with more than 100 universities across the country. i also work with ms technology out of hope. -- out of oak ridge. we are in the digital transformation. tom, we are happy to know how far you are going along. but my question to you guys is how do we, from an essay -- from an nsa as well as all the production facilities and lab, how do we get in this fight in setting up the ultra tag, making sure the security measures are in place? it is not just bringing indoors, next generation, but it is all of that. how did those systems work with some of our legacy systems that

we have at some of our production facilities? how do we make all of that happened? -- happen? thank you. >> i think they should ask laura tomorrow. [laughter] >> i would just say that this is not her first rodeo at doing this. i think she is the best one to answer. >> iac one in the back -- i see one in the back. >> shelley musk with inside defense. you were talking about spare parts and needing maintenance sustainment. your funding comes from congress. those are typically not the most high-profile budget items. how are you making sure that you are going to get the funding you

need for those stairs or maintenance and sustain operations at facilities? >> partly just by saying over and over again we really need this. we certainly have been articulating those needs. i think those messages have been received. part of the reason we are in a bit of a pickle now is for many years, the funds were not fully spent. that does create a healthy degree of skepticism. do you really need the money when there is money left on the table? i would say we cross that threshold several years ago. as we were ramping up, we kind of hit our pace then began executing, and that is when we sort of hit the wall. it is just a fact of life that it is easy -- easier to

articulate the case for a shiny new thing that is going to give you a qualitative capability. it is hard to get people excited to say in order to do the things i did last year next year, i'm going to need some more money. the class runs are breaking and we don't have any spares, or whatever it may be. that is just a story we have to keep telling. and as i said, the thing that for me makes a pretty compelling argument is the fact that these facilities that we are relying on, that we are now having to extend longer because it is going to take longer to get their replacements, they are in service of our on alert torrents every day. we all do the annual assessment letter and i look at the facilities that are required to do the analysis that supports that. it has a direct effect in terms of our on alert deterrent.

i think if we keep explaining that to anyone who will listen, then hopefully we will make the case. >> adding on to tom, i learned in year two of this job that the only thing anyone reads that i write is the annual assessment letter. i took this year the risk of moving all of my facility issues to page two. i think a lot of people read it because we've gotten a lot of questions on how we are going to keep it alive, so it is working. >> i agree wholeheartedly with tom. we have to keep explain to people why this is necessary, and part of that is showing what is in those buckets of money. when we talk about maintaining these facilities, what does that mean? the number of subsystems in a facility like the national ignition facility is incredible. it is easy to say a big number and see if i give you less, is it really ok? but if you go subsystem by

subsystem, it becomes clear where the shortfalls are. i think that transparency helps people understand how seriously we take these budget exercises. mr. longenecker: all right, we are at the end of our time, and i realize we are standing between you and the cocktail party, but let me wrap this up by thanking the panelists for being here with us today. let's give a round of applause. [applause] and before they get away, really thank them for the most important thing, doing this very difficult job and what they do each and every day to protect our national security, so thank