As others have mentioned, the procurement process at Fermilab is awful. If you are a contractor, be prepared for a painfully long roller-coaster ride that can take anywhere between 4-6 weeks. As someone who has relied on contractors a lot at Fermilab, I have witnessed them getting frustrated and some even quitting before their start date as a result of our strict but poorly managed procurement process.
For example, there are strict rules about not allowing contractors to communicate with anyone at Fermilab until the PO is approved (although this is not always explained to them). However, because we're so busy, we often forget to inform the vendor that the PO has been approved, thus delaying progress on contractor communication and onboarding. Many times, we will also forget to inform our own hiring manager that the PO has been approved. This means hiring managers remain under the impression that they still cannot communicate with the contractor. As a result, we often receive complaints from vendors when their contractor's emails go unanswered even though they should be. In one recent situation, the PO had been approved for over a week, but because we failed to inform the hiring manager about this, they were still not responding to the contractor's emails in preparation for his first day. Then, they unwisely chose not to inform anyone so he could get the assistance he needed even after he followed up multiple times. By the time our team found out what happened, it was too late. To make matters worse, no one apologized to the contractor for their mistake. Even when the hiring manager was told to reach out to him and respond to his emails, she dragged her feet for days. As a result of these miscommunication issues, we were behind on our end with getting him set up in our system which also delayed his start date. Needless to say, the contractor quit in frustration shortly after this incident. It's a shame this company does not acknowledge how problematic their entire procurement process is.
