BWX Technologies Reviews

Limited or no access to the internet or personal cell phones. Slow to adopt new technologies. Lots of red tape and self-inflicted regulations slow progress and implementation. Potential exists for exposure to chemicals or radiation in some areas (however, risk is very low). Security force is heavily armed. DOE Security clearance required for all positions. Currently, clearance processing time is 12+ months for new applicants. It can take several years to fill a vacancy. Many areas are understaffed. Draconian maternal/paternal leave policy. New mothers must use short term disability or extend with FMLA (if eligible). New fathers either have to use vacation or FMLA (if eligible). No sick leave. Employees will come to work ill or use vacation. Unpredictable overtime. Management is not consistent when applying company policy. Differences are noticeable between groups and affect scenarios such as triggers for disciplinary action. Management places high value on internal job hopping for career advancement, encouraging a broad but shallow knowledge base. It takes a seemingly inordinate amount of time to accomplish some tasks. At many stages, there is only one individual able to move the process along and you are competing against their other priorities. Roles are not well defined for nonstandard work or jobs that require participation by several groups. Many individuals are not readily willing to take on unfamiliar tasks. Progress towards resolution can be slow and delay the project. First shift starts early. Some employees arrive at 5am to begin their shift and end the day around 1:30pm. Accomplishing some tasks in the afternoon can be a challenge. Mandatory unpaid 30 min lunch break. Knowledge transfer is a weakness. New employees are often given cognizance over an area with little to no preparation or training and are expected to make high consequence decisions while learning on the fly. BWXT had a substantial layoff in the 1990s. Folks that continued on are now approaching retirement leaving an experience gap in their wake. A majority of the workforce has < 15 years experience in a culture that relied upon historical knowledge in their decision making. Tools are not yet in place to ease this transition.

BWXT makes all of their money on charging hours to the tax payers. I am not sure how they get away with it but they do. Brand new massive vertical machining centers, that us manual clamps, manual alignment, manual tool changes, manual clamps, cardboard chip shields, slowest speeds and feeds possible, smallest tools possible. When you get paid by the hour, why be efficient? Completely ridiculous! I came to BWXT Lynchburg as an experienced professional, having worked for a few major industrial power generation manufacturers, I thought this would be an easy transition. All I can say, is if you have not worked at a national lab, or shipyard, you will be sorely disappointed. Layers of useless bureaucracy, ineffective systems, work-around on top of work-around. Most of this is designed so nobody has any responsibility or reason to do their work. Some of the other sites, in Ohio and Indiana seem a little more realistic, but not NOG Lynchburg. There is no logic to this operation, everything is manual and inefficient as possible. Workers are trained internally and not given any training or information beyond the bare minimum they need to know. This is intentional. I had a 20 year experienced, ultrasonic testing inspector tell me he did not know what a decibel was. The lead engineer explained to me how we bought a bag of rivets, for $300, then managed to spend $60K of the taxpayer’s money, to inspect them, BWXT does not see a problem with this. I also remember management openly laughing when someone suggested using AQAP techniques, why use the quality system used by 98% of manufactures when you can use a 40 year old quality system? Managers use threats, false timeliness, intimidation to get workers to perform, since many others do not have the option of leaving, they put up with it. Managers have no respect in this organization, I believe I was threatened with mandatory overtime at least once a month during my tenure there. Overall my work and an engineer was boring, mundane, and could have been handled by any administrative person with basic technical knowledge. I had applied for another position within the company but was blocked by my manager, Leaving BWXT was the only way to get out of that prison. There are a lot of good people here, they pay well, but if you want to change or improve anything, forget about it.