In Atlanta, an electrical problem in a "Buss Duct" has caused the Sam Nunn Atlanta Federal Center to be closed for at least a week. 5,000 federal employees work at the center.
While many might view this as another example of The Infrastructure Crisis in the USA, it may also be another example of mismanagement at the General Service Administration (GSA), landlord for the complex.
The GSA has had many scandals and has been the subject of several Congressional Hearings, including an August 1, 2012 hearing titled "GSA: A Review of Agency Mismanagement and Wasteful Spending - Part 2". That hearing followed an $823,000 GSA employee conference in Las Vegas and a one-day-long $250,000 GSA employee conference in Crystal City, Virginia.
The closed Atlanta complex is named for Samuel Augustus "Sam" Nunn, Jr., who served for 24 years as a United States Senator from Georgia and whose daughter is the current Democratic Party nominee for a Georgia Senate seat.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by frojack on Monday July 28 2014, @09:00PM
This kind of reaching is usually reserved for Republicans, its a surprise to see it posted here, where liberals can do no wrong.
A problem with the electrical system that shut down air conditioning in mid summer in Atlanta hardly needs to be tagged with who the building was named after, and who is running for that person's seat and every other remotely attached scandal or incident of notoriety of an agency that handles property for the government nation wide.
You handle more buildings than any other entity in the US, you are bound to have some problems in some of them from time to time.
The only way this story makes it into SN is by trying desperately to make it a political issue. Shame on the submitter. Shame on the editor. Come on people, we're better than this.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1) by Arik on Monday July 28 2014, @10:01PM
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday July 28 2014, @10:13PM
Yes. Same thing.
Buss is the preferred spelling used by journalism majors (and nobody else).
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday July 28 2014, @11:38PM
To harp on a specific point: The $1 million or so in frivolous GSA spending from 2 years ago (by someone who was fired shortly after the story came out about said frivolous spending). Actually, I'm not even fully convinced it was completely frivolous - I could imagine an agency-wide get-together might be beneficial for sharing knowledge and building better working relationships between employees who don't regularly see each other. And I've worked for corporations who felt the same way and would pay for similar sorts of retreats and meetings. And if I were trying to get thousands of people together for a conference, I'd at least consider Vegas, since it has plenty of nice hotel facilities at low prices.
To put that in perspective, the total amount of cash put into the GSA from 2012 to 2014 is approximately 75,000 times the amount spent on Vegas parties. So yes, that $1 million is a problem, but it also represents 0.001% of the amount of money we're talking about here, and it's pretty likely that the remaining 99.998% of the money is going to what the GSA is supposed to be doing (if there was a bigger problem, you can be reasonably certain that Fox News would be talking about it for weeks with whatever evidence they could get their hands on).
I think what screws people up about federal agencies is simply how mind-bogglingly huge the numbers all are. For example, let's say I surveyed everyone who is a beneficiary of Social Security and asked them if they had any kind of problem with the program, and got 100,000 people with legitimate complaints. That sounds like a huge number and a really massive problem, until you realize that it represents approximately 0.2% of 55 million Social Security beneficiaries, which means that 99.8% of the time they get it right, a better track record than most organizations.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by scruffybeard on Tuesday July 29 2014, @12:56PM
I understand your point about the mind-boggling numbers in the Federal government, however the Las Vegas convention scandal was not about the fact that they held a convention, but that the contracts for the hotel, food, and entertainment were not properly bid, and were in clear violation of Federal rules for events of this nature. The cost for their annual convention had quadrupled in a span of a few years, and by all accounts, excessive for what needed to be accomplished. So while the overall percentage spent may not be that high, it is still important that this kind of behavior is dealt with so that others don't think that this the way that the business of the government should be conducted.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday July 29 2014, @01:12PM
Don't get me wrong: When somebody screws up big time or is getting corrupt in government, I firmly agree that people should be disciplined, demoted, and fired if needed. And indeed that happened in this case.
My point is that just because you've proven 10 people in an agency are corrupt doesn't say anything at all about the other ~65,000 people who work for it, and that when you look at the overall track record it is quite good. And if you want to see a track record that's not good, compare any US federal agency you like with an equivalent agency in, say, Greece or Italy.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 29 2014, @01:40PM
Let me put this into different terms. Lets say I make boxes. I sell 100million boxes the size of a car. (yeah me!). I sell them for 500 dollars. It costs me 50 bucks to deal with 1 return. Now I have a 1% return rate. Thats not bad at all. Lets even say it is 4% bellow industry average. I still have LARGE problem. What do I do with 1 million boxes and the 50 million dollar writedown in profits? Dont think so? MS did this with the 360. They had a 30% fail rate. They had warehouses full of the things.
You are playing with numbers and you know it. Doing the way you are doing it lets others get away with other things. Because its 'not as bad'. Do you really want a gov that is 'not as bad as'?
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday July 29 2014, @04:14PM
Yes, it's a problem. Yes, you should address it. But it's also true that your company is doing pretty well, with $50,000 million coming in the door with which to pay the $50 million in returns and plenty left over to pay for dealing with the returned boxes, so concluding that your company sucks at its job would be very incorrect.
I of course strive for perfection in government, as in everything else. I also know that we're all human, screw-ups happen, and that really really good is what is nearly always achievable in a human system. For example, the closest thing the world has to a perfect software shop [fastcompany.com] still has only 99.99% bug-free code.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by MrGuy on Monday July 28 2014, @09:03PM
I thought the wording seemed awfully familiar, so I checked...
Someone with the same username (McGruber) submitted the same article with a VERY similar summary to Slashdot (several sentences of the summary, including the speculation of GSA mismanagement, is identical in both places and does not appear to be from TSA). http://yro.slashdot.org/story/14/07/26/2031255/bad-buss-duct-causes-week-long-closure-of-5000-employee-federal-complex [slashdot.org]
I don't generally mind the fact that we overlap with "that other place" in terms of stories, but are we OK with the same individual submitting effectively the same story in both places? I'm slightly uncomfortable that it appears to a casual reader that SoylentNews basically plagarized SlashDot here.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 28 2014, @09:16PM
> are we OK with the same individual submitting effectively the same story in both places?
Yes. This issue has been hashed out before.
(1) It isn't like the story was "stolen" from there, it was the same submitter.
(2) Even if it were "stolen" it is no big deal. All these technews sites have a common story pool and there is tons of duplication. If it isn't with slash it is with ten other technews sites.
What matters is the quality of discussion.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday July 28 2014, @09:38PM
Heh, good catch.
Better to have the same guy submitting it than two different guys I suppose.
But the story is strictly a local issue, and i don't see how it makes it into SN or /. without pointing the finger of political blame.
The complex was built in the 60s, but incorporated an old department store built in 1924. So its not surprising that the 9th largest building in the country is going to have some problems over its life span.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by mrider on Monday July 28 2014, @09:42PM
Too bad (s)he didn't catch on that it's "bus duct" and not "buss duct" while at the other site. :)
Doctor: "Do you hear voices?"
Me: "Only when my bluetooth is charged."
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 28 2014, @10:35PM
I think buss is actually correct because they're talking about the electrical buss, aka a large electrical conductor. I don't know why they don't just call it an electrical conduit or a wire duct, but I haven't really dealt with large facility electrical systems and that parlance before.
(Score: 2, Informative) by NoMaster on Tuesday July 29 2014, @12:45AM
A lot of people seem to think that "buss" is an incorrect spelling derived from Bussmann (now Cooper Bussmann) fuses. Or that it's simply incorrect because "buss" meant "kiss" in an archaic language and the term has lingered on in North American useage, while "bus" is correct because it so obviously derives from the word "omnibus".
Which is post-facto bullshit, since the term "buss" for a mechanical or electrical power distribution shaft or rail predates the Bussman company by a good 30 or 40 years, was in common use in several languages across the major European industrialised countries at the time, and likely comes to English from a totally different route (Germanic -> northern European -> English, probably via Scots Gaelic) than the term "bus" (based on "omnibus", which came to English as a French term based on Latin).
And yes, I did post a similar explanation on The Other Site...
Live free or fuck off and take your naïve Libertarian fantasies with you...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 28 2014, @11:26PM
> Too bad (s)he didn't catch on that it's "bus duct" and not "buss duct" while at the other site. :)
Buss duct is correct. [ccmillwright.com]
(Score: 2) by mrider on Tuesday July 29 2014, @02:05AM
Apparently the people that manufacture "Bus Duct" [eaton.com] disagree with the people that install it.
Doctor: "Do you hear voices?"
Me: "Only when my bluetooth is charged."
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday July 29 2014, @12:00PM
That's just illiteracy on the part of a contractor who should know better, or far more likely, just a typo. Doesn't mean very much.
Does your computer have a PCI Buss or a PCI Bus? Its exactly the same situation.
In the history of engineering I've never seen a Buss only Bus. power distribution bus, ISA bus, bus and tag IBM connectors, unibus and qbus, etc. A bus is a topology so it doesn't matter much if its power or signal, or even fluid (although they tend to call those manifolds just to confuse things), all that matters is how its wired up.
One odd exception I've seen in engineering is a compressed air bus in a factory tends to get weird names, air system, stuff like that.
(Score: 2) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Monday July 28 2014, @10:03PM
What on earth is a "buss duct"?
Is it one of these?
https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090929073219AAozd9W [yahoo.com]
"Bus Duct" is a form of rigid electrical conductor with a grounded metallic housing. It is manufactured in fixed lengths and assembled by bolting the ends together. It is commonly used in both light manufacturing (eg, automotive manufacturing facilities) and high-rise buildings.
The most common bus duct (also known as busway) is a three-phase low voltage (typically 480v) product.
Apparently you put these in them:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Busbar [wikipedia.org]
Well, I learned something, anyway, so the power outage wasn't a total loss.
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
(Score: 2, Funny) by Buck Feta on Monday July 28 2014, @10:27PM
> What on earth is a "buss duct"?
Apparently it's a fancy name for a thermal exhaust port [wikia.com].
- fractious political commentary goes here -
(Score: 2) by mrider on Tuesday July 29 2014, @02:37AM
"Bus Duct" (with one "s") (see one manufacturer's home page) [eaton.com] is an alternative way to distribute electricity (alternative to "wire"). The idea is that you have an enclosed container with isolated electrically conductive bars (or bus bars) as opposed to running wire. This has a number of advantages:
We'll probably never hear what actually went wrong, although it would be interesting to find out. Bus is HIGHLY reliable. I would expect that there was some sort of work or changes in the building not too far in the past. Otherwise, it wouldn't be surprising to see the bus duct in use 50 years from now.
Doctor: "Do you hear voices?"
Me: "Only when my bluetooth is charged."
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday July 29 2014, @11:52AM
"Bus is HIGHLY reliable."
But when you do manage to break it, its an unholy nightmare to track. Shorts are actually pretty convenient because you can see the damage, the problem is finding opens.
Its like ripping out and reinstalling HVAC ducts to find a lost kitten. Its about that much work.
I've never worked in a CO or data center using this tech but everyone likes to talk about it. Obviously 48VDC conductors are a bit larger than 440-3ph conductors for the same power level. I mostly worked in small long distance facilities (like less than an acre) so its possible this stuff is all over local loop serving centers (the building your home phone is probably hooked up to unless there's a SLC hut but I digress)
(Score: 2) by mrider on Tuesday July 29 2014, @01:29PM
Yeah. Finding intermittent opens are even more fun, because they can be at any joint. But that's pretty uncommon.
Doctor: "Do you hear voices?"
Me: "Only when my bluetooth is charged."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 28 2014, @10:33PM
This story is no surprise after having seen first hand how inefficient government facilities managers are. Nowadays the feds have a no in-house staff who can fix buildings on short notice (probably to please Republicans who want to shrink the gov). Instead they rely on contractors, with the associated red tape and delays. Contracts often go to minority- or female-owned companies, regardless of quality, because those contracts require less paperwork (that policy may please certain Democrats).
A post above mentioned that old buildings often have problems. That's true, but a for-profit business would not have let an electrical problem interrupt the work of 5,000 of their own people for a whole week.
Maybe some of the staff could have worked from home, but their IT department & VPN were probably not up to the task...