October 12, 2014

GAO Praises NNSA For Increasing Federal Oversight on UPF Project

By ExchangeMonitor

The National Nuclear Security Administration has beefed up federal oversight of the Uranium Processing Facility project in the wake of a space/fit issue that added $540 million to the projected cost of the now-scaled-back facility, the Government Accountability Office said in a report released Friday. The project was criticized for inadequate federal oversight, but the GAO said that NNSA has increased federal staffing levels for the UPF project office from nine full-time equivalents in 2012 to more than 50 FTEs in January 2014. “According to NNSA, these additional staff enabled NNSA to conduct more robust oversight of the contractor’s design efforts than was previously possible,” the GAO said, noting that the contractor also took steps to better integrate work from four subcontractors performing design and engineering work on parts of the facility.

The NNSA has decided to scale back the project, moving away from a “big box” approach to a strategy utilizing some existing facilities and construction of smaller buildings. The GAO said that lessons learned from the project and its space/fit issue could be applicable to future NNSA work and applauded an effort by the NNSA to spread the lessons learned across the complex. That included a briefing this summer by the UPF Federal Project Director to other NNSA project management officials. “The sharing of lessons learned is an important element of NNSA’s and DOE’s efforts to better inform and improve their management of other capital acquisition projects,” the GAO said. “Documenting the lessons learned as a result of the UPF space/fit issue may help prevent other costly setbacks from occurring on these other projects.”

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