BWX Technologies Reviews

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.

Training: Initial in-doc training was great. Came in as a manager was also transitioning in (this happens a lot, don't expect to work for the manager that interviews you) I was not assigned a co-worker to assist me in learning the position or given any direction as to what to do with my position. Left to figure it out on my own, which I'm a good worker I can do that, but it would have been nice to know what I should have been doing. Co-workers tried to assist with helping but had outstanding tasks of their own. At one point two months into my taking on the position my manager and manager's manager called me into their office and had a interrogation style questioning on what my job was. I was left thinking I might get fired and shouldn't they at this point be telling me what my position was. With little or no understanding of what the position was, I was tasked by management to re-write the procedures that affected a lot of different groups. This task was instructed to be done myself but fortunately for me my coworkers assisted greatly because they knew that undertaking this task was huge. Also tasked with being the primary point of contact for the customer about four months in. Most of the tasks that I was given were management's tasks. I understand delegating to employees but I feel there has to be some kind of learning curve. Interview: Job Recs were very high level as well as interviews. Standard questions were asked, and when you ask for further information on the positions not much is given. I went into this position thinking that it would be technical based on the background that I had and described in my interview, but found that I was more of a paper pusher/signature checker. I came from a system administrator background and thought this position would be more of a step a head in that field but it was not. I have also been told that others applied and interviewed for positions and ended up in different positions then what they were hired for. Within my group there were 7 people who left or moved to another job in 7 months. That is a pretty outrageous turnover that was not looked into . When I left the exit interview did not ask why I was leaving, It couldnt be the company could it? DO NOT take a relocation benefit. when it states that you are to pay back 100% it is more like 160% of what you received. I am not another "angry employee" I had worked in a similar industry for the past ten years. I know how this place could have worked and assumed that it would be similar to the past experiences I had. I am writing to inform because the company did not seem to care why employees are leaving. They just know that the newer generation of workers are not staying with the company and don't understand why. I'm sure I could go on and on as to why not to walk in the door but hopefully this helps some. This company needs to come up to the standards of 2019 quick or it is not going to make it. ~deuces