LANL Deputy Director for Operations Kelly Beierschmitt
By KIRSTEN LASKEY
Los Alamos Daily Post
kirsten@ladailypost.com
The effects COVID-19 is having on Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) will not be short lived, Los Alamos County Council learned during its regular meeting Tuesday night.
In fact, COVID-19 is planned to change laboratory operations long into the future.
LANL Deputy Director for Operations Kelly Beierschmitt reported on how LANL is responding to COVID-19 and adapting to the world that the pandemic has created.
He reported a COVID task force was formed in February “to protect our mission, our laboratory staff and our communities.” Additionally, a COVID Office of Research also was created “to support the broader community in modeling, therapeutic testing, equipment design, everything from mapping the genome that we were seeing in the COVID cases,” Beierschmitt said.
The onsite workforce at LANL also was greatly reduced. Beierschmitt said roughly 12,000 staff went to teleworking status in two weeks. During that same period, he said the onsite workforce was just 1,500. These were essential personnel, Beierschmitt said.
LANL took other measures as well during the proceeding months, he said. For instance, all staff and managers were trained, cleaning supplies were either purchased or produced on site and modeling was done on the spread of COVID in the community. Additionally, Beierschmitt said LANL reported its COVID-related activities to other national laboratory sites.
The on-site population at LANL grew at a slow and steady rate, he added, to ensure the protocols were protecting staff and the community. The workforce grew to 5,000 and then to 6,000. Beierschmitt said that well over 8,000 staff have been tested for COVID. The lab’s testing operations are done in an indoor drive through location. Initially, LANL tested 400 staff a week but now the goal is to test 1,000 staff members a week, he said.
“This couldn’t come at a better time given the community spread we’re seeing in Northern New Mexico in general,” Beierschmitt said.
The testing revealed, as of Tuesday night, that there are 220 confirmed cases of COVID, he said.
Some of these confirmed cases are individuals who are working at home and got a positive result, which they reported over LANL’s hotline, Beierschmitt said. Other confirmed cases were identified through the lab’s onsite testing.
If a positive result was confirmed onsite, Beierschmitt said the lab will do a “massive contract tracing.” Family members will be contacted, and the lab will interview every place the employee has been and how that person had been controlled.
The lab has tracked over 6,200 cases but the number is growing, he said.
“We have seen signification spikes of employees who have tested positive,” Beierschmitt said. “As a result of that we have tapped the brakes; we have reduced the onsite population (and) we have taken measures to do so in the past two weeks …”
Staffing levels are expected to go up and down until a vaccine is distributed, he said.
Once a vaccine is available, Beierschmitt said LANL has plans to receive the vaccine and do a drive-through treatment. Emergency responders and medical workers would receive the vaccine first and then mission critical employees would be treated next.
However, he said the plan to distribute the vaccine isn’t expected to be enacted until spring and that is being hopeful.
Surprisingly, there is an upside to COVID, Beierschmitt said.
“It has trained us to do work differently,” he said. “We were surprised that in some areas of the lab productively stayed the same or actually increased in the teleworking environment.”
Beierschmitt said employees don’t loose time in commuting back and forth from work or traveling between meetings.
This got LANL officials thinking, he said. A teleworking pilot was created and so far 1,290 lab employees have signed up for the pilot.
The plan is to have some employees predominately do telework. Beierschmitt said LANL is pursuing lease space to create teleworking hubs. The locations for these hubs are off the hill, although one is planned to be in Central Park Square and a third one will be in the Otowi building on the LANL campus, he said.
The idea is employees can reserve a space if they need a conference room, a meeting area or special support, Beierschmitt said.
The hubs could offer several benefits, he said. For instance, they would offer relief on the laboratory’s infrastructure requirements and could provide support to surrounding businesses. Beierschmitt pointed out the Central Park Square hub would have a high demand for local restaurants and coffee shops.
The laboratory has demands in other areas, too, he said.
“Being a large employer and continuing to grow we have many developers that come and visit us and they want to know what the development needs are for supporting Los Alamos National Laboratory and its workforce … what I’ve consistently told those developers is we need housing,” Beierschmitt said. “We need housing for our families to live in, we need good schools for those family to send their children to. We need a community that lets us attract and retain these staff members and I am not interested occupying a lot of additional office space inside Los Alamos County.”
While the lab doesn’t plan to expand into the County, he reported there is a lot of construction going on inside the lab site. Currently, there are two parking garages being built and three modular buildings and three cell towers have been constructed.
“That’s some real progress that we’ve made,” Beierschmitt said.
Roads have been repaved and electrical supply systems have been redone, he added.
One construction project that has been scrapped is a bridge that was proposed to be constructed across the Rio Grande to support lab commuters.
“Given our operational model … I’m convinced a bridge is no longer the right answer,” Beierschmitt said.
Instead, he said lab officials are working on a transportation study with New Mexico Department of Transportation and the Regional Transportation District (RTD). Beierschmitt said the hope is to figure out how to get more express bus routes to the laboratory and utilize RTD buses and get more drop off sites in the laboratory.
As far as schooling and childcare, Beierschmitt said the laboratory is trying to be as flexible as possible for workers who have young children who need to attend school or require day care. Additionally, he said the lab started a website to create staff availability to support the education community. This support could be a program in which scientists visit classrooms for a day, he said.
Beierschmitt said another issue the lab is trying to address is internet connectivity.
“We are trying to help organize around any effort that the state or community can do to help improve the connectivity and internet and we have invested some of our corporate dollars in Espanola to do that,” he said.
As far as gross receipt tax, Beierschmitt shared some good news.
“Our budgets continue to be strong; in fact, in next year’s budget it will even be stronger,” he said. “Anything can happen, of course, but current projections are that we would generate about $44 million, which is about $5 million more than we did this past year for Los Alamos County.”