AOC and the CVC team have continued to refine the project’s schedule since the November hearing and have made substantive progress in addressing the issues that we and the Subcommittee have raised, particularly concerning the base project’s schedule. For example, the CVC team reviewed the sequence and duration of the activities scheduled for interior stonework, finish work, and work associated with the base project’s fire protection system, including the acceptance testing to be done by AOC’s Fire Marshal Division. To reflect the results of its review, the team revised the project’s December 2005 and January 2006 schedules, and in collaboration with the team that is planning for CVC operations, enhanced the manner in which the operations activities are incorporated into the project’s master schedule. AOC and its contractors’ staff who are involved in planning for CVC operations agree that the January 2006 schedule identifies the related construction and operations activities. The CVC team has not yet fully reassessed the schedule for the expansion spaces and has not yet reached agreement with the Chief Fire Marshal on the requirements for acceptance testing of those spaces. Finally, the CVC team has continued to meet weekly to identify risks facing the project and to discuss mitigation strategies and actions. As of February 1, 2006, the team had identified 62 risks and developed mitigation strategies for all but 1, which had just been identified. The plans vary in their level of detail and stage of implementation. According to AOC’s December 2005 and January 2006 schedules, the CVC base project will be ready to open to the public with a temporary certificate of occupancy on February 13, 2007, and the House and Senate expansion spaces will be ready on April 24, 2007. To allow for possible delays and start-up time for operations, AOC has proposed an April 2007 opening date for the base project and a May 2007 occupancy date for the expansion spaces. By the April opening date for the base project, AOC believes, all construction work in the CVC and East Front will be completed, but the CVC’s occupancy at any one time will be temporarily limited to 3,500, compared with about 4,200, the normal anticipated occupancy level. This temporary limit will be necessary because the “horizontal exits,” or passages, through the expansion spaces, which the life safety code requires for exiting the base CVC project, will not be available until later. These horizontal exits cannot be used until the fire alarm system in the expansion spaces has been fully tested and accepted—work that is not slated to be completed until after the base CVC is scheduled to open. Some additional work will likely be required to provide temporary emergency exit routes from the CVC, but the CVC team does not believe that this work or its costs should be substantial. Mr. Chairman, a brief explanation of AOC’s rationale for proposing a CVC opening with a temporary cap on visitor occupancy may be helpful at this point. The current project schedule calls for completing the construction of both the CVC and the expansion spaces before December 31, 2006, but would delay the start of acceptance testing the portions of the fire alarm system in the expansion spaces until such testing for the base CVC project is completed in February 2007. AOC is planning this approach because it believes that starting the acceptance testing for the expansion spaces earlier would prolong the completion of the acceptance testing in the base project and thereby delay the base project’s opening to the public. More specifically, the fire protection devices for the atriums, which are a part of the horizontal exits ultimately required by code for full occupancy of the base project, would undergo acceptance testing with the expansion spaces, rather than with the base CVC project. To accommodate this change, AOC shifted the finish work in the atriums from the base CVC schedule to the expansion space schedule, and is planning to conduct the acceptance testing for the atriums and the expansion spaces at the same time, after the acceptance testing for the base CVC project is done. Until the acceptance testing for the expansion spaces has been completed, AOC’s Chief Fire Marshal has said that the expansion spaces, including the exits through the atriums, cannot be used as emergency exit routes, and therefore AOC must take measures to provide temporary emergency exit routes from the base CVC project and reduce the number of occupants who can be in the base project until the exit routes are available. Our work to date in monitoring the CVC project and the results of our recently completed risk assessment of the project’s schedule point to later opening dates than the schedule indicates. Although the schedule for the base project goes a long way toward responding to our concerns about the amount of time previously provided for a number of activities and extends their duration, CVC team managers and members we interviewed believe that certain work will take longer to complete than the revised schedule allows. For example, they believe that interior stonework and finish work for the base project and the East Front are likely to take longer. According to our risk analysis, which reflects the CVC team’s input and assumes that AOC will successfully address the challenges it faces, the CVC is more likely to be ready for opening with a temporary certificate of occupancy between late April and mid-May 2007 than in February, as indicated in AOC’s current schedule. AOC is now proposing an April 2007 opening date to provide time for possible construction slippages and operations preparation. The additional time AOC says is necessary for operations preparation after construction completion would mean that the CVC would be ready for opening with a temporary cap on visitor occupancy by about the end of May 2007, according to our analysis. Similarly, our analysis suggests that the House and Senate expansion spaces are more likely to be ready in mid August or early September 2007 than in April or May 2007. We believe the later time frames are more likely because (1) AOC has scheduled the acceptance testing of the expansion spaces after the acceptance testing of the base project and, according to our work, the base project testing will take longer than scheduled and (2) AOC’s Chief Fire Marshal believes that the acceptance testing of the expansion spaces will take longer than scheduled. We have discussed the results of our analysis with AOC, and it continues to believe that it will be able to meet its April and May 2007 time frames for the CVC and the expansion spaces, respectively. Furthermore, AOC said that it and the CVC team will continuously review the schedule to identify opportunities for improvement. For example, AOC pointed out that it may be able to have the acceptance testing of the expansion spaces done in segments so that Members and staff will not have to wait for the entire facility to be tested before they can occupy their space. AOC also believes it may be able to revise the scheduling of some East Front mechanical work to save time. We agree that AOC should continuously look for ways to improve the schedule and that improvements may be possible. However, we also believe that AOC will be challenged to meet even the later opening dates we have identified given the problems, challenges, risks, and uncertainties the project faces. A discussion of these follows: Delivery of stone and pace of stone installation remain critical. Although the CVC team has made progress in installing interior wall and floor stone, work on the wall stone has fallen behind schedule in several areas, and the project still faces significant challenges, risks, and uncertainties in this area. These include whether sufficient quantities of the appropriate wall stone will be received in time and whether the pace of installation will be sufficient to complete this work as scheduled. According to information provided by the sequence 2 contractor on February 10, the wall stone supplier still had a 20-truckload backlog and was not shipping wall stone at the scheduled rate, resulting in a delivery shortfall of about 6,000 cubic feet. According to AOC’s construction management contractor, stone supply is not affecting interior wall stone installation because a large quantity of stone is currently on site; however, the contractor is concerned about the ability of the stone supplier to meet current and future requirements that include stone for the East Front, adequate stone to maintain productivity, and the 20-truckload backlog. The pace of installation is also an issue. The sequence 2 contractor has recently increased the number of stone masons working on the project and has begun meeting the installation targets in its work plan. However, if the wall stone installation targets are not achieved, whether because the masons are less productive than planned or work spaces are not ready for stonework to begin, completion delays are likely. The sequence 2 contractor has already encountered work spaces in the service level, the orientation lobby, and the East Front that were not available for stonework because concrete was out of tolerance or masonry walls were not ready for wall stone to be hung. Finally, the sequence 2 contractor still needs to install about 120,000 square feet of floor stone in the CVC and could have problems meeting the scheduled completion dates if not enough masons are available, the amount of floor space available is insufficient because other finish work is not done, or other trades are working in the areas where floor stone is to be laid. As of February 10, AOC had not received a floor stone installation plan requested from the sequence 2 contractor, but the sequence 2 contractor said that it intends to finish the plan soon. Stacking of trades could delay completion. Continued delays, particularly in wall stone installation, could adversely affect the sequence 2 contractor’s ability to accomplish all of the required finish work on schedule. The sequence 2 contractor has been making progress relative to its current plan for installing wall stone in the auditorium and the orientation lobby, but according to the current project schedule, wall stone installation is delayed in other areas, such as the East Front, the great hall, and the orientation theaters’ exterior walls.