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reimbursement for travel or something like that,
which is what usually the finance office deals
with.

MS. DIMUZIO: The -- and that’s basically --
the contract is a cost reimbursement contract, so
basically -- I mean the invoice will be for those
costs of travel and -- and labor hours and that
type of thing. Acceptance of a technical document
that -- that comes in, that is handled a little
bit -- that would be separate from the actual
invoice because you could have an invoice for the
month of February where Sanford Cohen is billing
us for travel to this meeting and -- and labor
hours and stuff like that, yet there’s no
technical aspect to be reviewed.

DR. MELIUS: That I understand, but what if
it was, you know, a review of a site profile anda
report back to the Board on that, and they billed
us for 100 hours and we got a paragraph or what --
you know, whatever -- that wasn’t satisfactory and
-- I think that’s more than an issue of -- you
know, it’s the issue of whether the hours --
whether, you know -- not just whether the hours
meet the product, but is the product satisfactory

from what they were supposed to deliver.

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shouldn’t sign off on it and send it back. It
still needs to be brought, whatever it is, even if
the message is hey, Dr. Ziemer, here’s this next
invoice; I see nothing wrong with it, but you
should look at it. Hey, Dr. Ziemer, here is the
deliverable, the monthly progress report; I would
highlight this for your attention. That’s what I
see going on.

DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. It would be
appropriate to have a motion to authorize then, on
invoices, the Chair to act on behalf of the Board.

MR. ELLIOTT: Could you -- a suggestion.
Could you attend to both deliverables and the
invoicing process? In other words, a monthly
progress report is a deliverable, a -- the
database management piece is a deliverable, the --
you know, a report about site profiles that have
been reviewed is a deliverable, and we need
somebody delegated -- maybe it’s different people,
but we need a vote on both of those.

DR. ZIEMER: Before we take the action, let
me point out on a deliverable, I think the only
thing the Chair would do would be to confirm that
it has arrived in a timely fashion and therefore

an invoice might be paid. The acceptability of

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X thousand dollars for producing this site
profile. That’s just not the way this is going to
work -- I think. So again, we're just approving
do we -- do we agree that the number of hours
expended was within the scope of the contract and
allocated properly within the task itself.

DR. ZIEMER: Wanda?

MS. MUNN: Jim's comment helps me a little,
but one of the things that I needed to have
clarified is we’re talking about approval of all
invoices from our contractor. In other words,
there is not some cut-off level below which
charges would automatically be sent through.

There is -- we're talking about all costs from
them, that -- thank you.

DR. NETON: I just had one more thought on
this. I mean as John Mauro discussed earlier,
they will be providing progress reports as
required, and I think that is the -- that is the
point at which the Board can review those progress
reports and if -- if there is something going awry
there, then that’s the opportunity to feed back
and say we have a problem. But in the invoicing
area I really don’t think we have much control

other than, you know, reviewing work hours against

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DR. ZIEMER: A related question jumps into my
mind, as well, and that is do we put Jim Neton in
a precarious position since, in a sense, we’re
auditing the work that he is in charge of --

DR. NETON: I'd like to just --

DR. ZIEMER: -- and I don’t -- obviously we
have to have somebody in the Agency that’s the
point person. At the same time, I’m a little
concerned about how that looks, Jim.

DR. NETON: I appreciate that. I would say I
don’t think the way the billing works on this is
that you will actually receive an invoice that
says here are the work hours for this site profile
development that I’ve done. You're just going to
receive a monthly invoice for hours expended on
the tasks. So you’re not really approving the
quality of the work at that point. You’re just
saying do I believe that the work -- that they
expended this many hours, is it within the scope
of the task. If the Board has a problem with the
quality of the deliverables, that’s a different
issue that would be fed back to us and then we
would undergo nego-- you know, discussions with --
with the contractor. I don’t -- I don’t think,

you know, we’re going to get a bill saying here is

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to turn to and say you need to examine this; I
think there's a concern or an issue here. And
then it’s like raising an issue to your higher
level -- whoever gives you direction, and that’s
this body for us, so that person, on behalf of the
Board, needs to make a decision, do I take this to
the Board or I provide direct guidance back to the
technical monitor and procurement on how to handle
whatever the issue may be. Does that help in any
way?

DR. MELIUS: All this helps. I guess I’m
also concerned -- would be concerned with whoever
it is that that’s technical person that -- I don’t
think they should be turning down a -- if they
have a question about the voucher that comes in,
rather than sign it and send it on to us, I don’t
think they should sign it. I think they should
bring it to -- to Dr. Ziemer’s attention and the
Board’s attention and have us be the ones that
are, you know, reviewing that in a sense, and
rather than putting you in the position of
reviewing the auditor or --

MR. ELLIOTT: Absolutely, I’m sorry, I was
dwelling on the obverse side of that coin and on

the other side, the positive side, they still

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DR. MELIUS: I make a motion that we consider
Bethlehem Steel and Mallinckrodt for initial
review.

MR. ESPINOSA: Second.

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Motion has been made and
seconded to consider Bethlehem Steel and
Mallinckrodt for initial review. Discussion?

MR. PRESLEY: Question. Are you going to put
Weldon Springs into the Mallinckrodt -- is that
going in there?

DR. ZIEMER: That’s a separate profile, is it
not?

MR. ELLIOTT: That is a separate profile.

DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Is the Board ready
to vote on this motion? It appears to be so. All
in favor of those two, Bethlehem Steel and
Mallinckrodt Chemical, for initial audits, say
aye.

(Affirmative responses)

Any opposed?

(No responses)

Any abstentions?

(No responses)

Motion carries. Thank you.

While we are on the issue of our audit

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any of the deliverable reports, in my mind, is a
Board action. So I would not speak for the Board
on the adequacy or quality of a deliverable beyond
affirming that it has arrived on time.

DR. MELIUS: Yeah, I agree with that, and I
think that we may want to, at some point, specify
actions for specific types of deliverables, some
of which may very be appropriate that just the
Chair sign off on, others that, you know, it may
be a subcommittee, the Board, what-- however we,
you know, designate. And I think if we did it

specifically, I think it’s more helpful for

everybody, but -- in the process and that may take
us a little bit -- while into the next meeting
before we can do that. I think we can certainly

do the vouchers today, and if there's other
deliverables that are going to need to be signed
off on before the conference call or the next
meetings, then we ought to cover those, also.

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. So the Chair would -- oh,
Wanda, a comment?

DR. NETON: I might want to make one comment
before the motion is raised. The contract itself
calls for simultaneous delivery of the

deliverables to both the Board -- Dr. Ziemer --

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the contract.

MR. ELLIOTT: Let me speak a little bit to
this, as well. You know, the way I see this
working is -- Jim right now is assigned as the
technical monitor and we may in fact make a change
in that and assign somebody else. I think it’s
appropriate to do so, given his work load and Dr.
Ziemer’s comment. I don’t want any perception
that, you know, Jim, who is the scientific --
science administrator of the program and, you
know, the basis of his work being audited, and is
sitting in a position of control of your audit.
But the way I see this works, whoever’s assigned
as the technical monitor is just the first eyes
that, after procurement looks at these things --
whether it’s an invoice or it’s a deliverable, the
technical monitor is going to be the first set of
eyes, besides Martha’s, to look at these. And I’m
asking that person to see if there’s anything that
looks untowards there, anything that should be
brought to the attention of whoever this body
delegates the next authority to. So if that’s --
if that’s your Chair, we need that -- you know, a
vote to make that happen, that delegation of

authority, so that the technical monitor knows who

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MS. DIMUZIO: No, and that’s what I clarified
with -- with Flo, that -- since the finance office
hasn’t scheduled it for payment, it can be pulled
back. We would develop -- with the contracts
office we would develop language in a cover letter
that would be sent with the invoice -- the copy of
an invoice to Dr. Ziemer, sort of explaining the
process. The finance office would be aware of the
process and we could pull it back. So no, that --
that shouldn’‘t be an issue.

DR. MELIUS: Just my recollection of back
when I used to deal with this and these issues was
that once the technical person signed off --
you're signing off on the technical merits of what
was -- had been -- of the deliverable, and then
what the finance office dealt with was that it met
the contractual. And by Jim signing it, or
whoever the project officer -- I mean I just -- I
mean my concern was what I said, the implications
that somehow we were approving it technically --
in our -- I think a lot of -- if we’re going to
have an issue, I suspect it’s going to be as to
whether something had been completed
satisfactorily in a technical sense, not over, you

know, how much somebody was paid or the

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Dr. Ziemer does have a problem with the invoice,
then we could pull it back and there’s no payment
to the contractor. So that was the recommendation
of the contracting office.

MR. ELLIOTT: Martha, but we would -- if
there’s a problem with an invoice, in Dr. Ziemer’s
viewpoint, it would require at that point a full
session of the Board in closed session to discuss
it. Correct?

MS. DIMUZIO: That's correct, yes.

DR. ZIEMER: Are the invoices the only item
that we can address on that issue today? I mean
are there other sort of mechanical things like
invoices that require Board action?

MS. DIMUZIO: No, I really -- I don’t think
so. I think that’s really -- as far as the
administrative aspects of the contract, that’s
really the only...

DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Jim?

DR. MELIUS: Are there implications -- should
the dispute arise over paying a invoice as to
whether something's been completed satisfactorily,
are there implications from the fact that Jim
Neton or whoever the project officer is signed off

on it already?

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contract, let me ask at this point, do we have any
material at this point, information -- I don’t
know if it would be Martha or someone on the legal
staff -- as to those issues that we would need to
approve dealing with procedural matters such as
invoice approvals and so on? Do we have that
information today that -- are there things we
could act on?

MS. DIMUZIO: (Off microphone) Yes,
(Inaudible), I spoke with (Inaudible) --

THE COURT REPORTER: That mike’s not on.

MS. DIMUZIO: I spoke with Flo Black, who’s
the contracting specialist on the task, this
morning and the recommendation that she’s made is
that the invoices would come in to NIOSH -- well,
actually they go to the contracting office first
for them to review, and then they come to the
project officer, who is Jim, for the project. And
what we could do is we could have Jim sign it.
Then it goes to our finance office, but the
finance office has -- holds it essentially for 30
days, so during that time frame we could send it
to Dr. Ziemer and ask him if he’s okay with it,
and if he can approve it in that 30 days, then

there’s no delay in the contractor being paid. EE

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