Work in several areas has moved forward since the Subcommittee’s October 18 CVC hearing, but additional delays have occurred, and AOC’s construction management contractor has identified several concerns about the project schedule. AOC has been addressing previously identified schedule-related problems. According to the October 2005 schedule prepared by AOC’s sequence 2 construction management contractor, the base CVC project can open to the public in December 2006, and the House and Senate expansion spaces will be finished by the end of February 2007. The contractor’s October schedule indicates that, with some exceptions, construction work on the base CVC project will be essentially complete by September 15, 2006, and the remaining work will be completed by December 8, 2006. This remaining work includes testing, balancing, and commissioning the HVAC system; testing and inspecting the fire protection system; completing punch-list items; and preparing for operations. For the East Front, the October schedule shows construction work, such as the roof restoration, finish work, and elevator/escalator installation, completed after September 15, 2006. The October schedule also shows other construction work, such as the installation of ceiling panels in the orientation lobby and painting in the atria, extending after September 15, 2006. AOC expects all this construction work to be done and the base CVC project to be ready for operations between September 15, 2006, and mid-December 2006, enabling the facility to open to the public in mid-December. Additionally, under the October project schedule, the House and Senate expansion spaces will be completed in December 2006, and the testing, balancing, and commissioning of the HVAC system and the testing of the fire protection system will be finished by February 26, 2007. According to AOC’s sequence 2 and construction management contractors, it is not yet clear whether the expansion space construction work will have progressed far enough to omit the temporary fire safety measures once considered necessary to open the CVC to the public. They said they are still analyzing the work associated with the areas where the base project and the expansion spaces come together to determine whether and how the need for temporary fire safety measures can be minimized or eliminated. Since the Subcommittee’s October 18 CVC hearing, construction work has continued on the CVC, the East Front, the plaza, the House and Senate expansion spaces, and the House connector and utility tunnels. For example, the installation of wall stone has continued in the auditorium, the orientation theaters, and the upper west lobby. Mechanical, electrical, and plumbing work has also been proceeding in the CVC. Overall, however, construction work, especially stonework, has taken longer than scheduled. Between the Subcommittee’s October 18 hearing and November 10, the sequence 2 contractor completed 8 of the 16 activities that we and AOC have been tracking for the Subcommittee, but only 3 of these activities were completed by the target dates shown in the contractor’s September 2005 schedule. (See app. I.) Delays have also occurred in interior stonework and in work on the East Front, the utility tunnel, and the penthouse’s mechanical systems. For example, according to AOC’s construction management contractor, similar to what happened in September, the sequence 2 contractor lost about 10 out of 21 possible workdays, both on critical interior stonework and on the utility tunnel. According to the construction management contractor, the stonework was delayed by the slow and late delivery of stone, a lack of critical pieces of stone, the need to address problems arising from sequence 1 work, and a shortage of stone masons. During October, the installation of wall stone in the great hall and exhibit gallery was especially impeded because the stone supplier failed to meet scheduled delivery dates and the sequence 2 contractor received less than 20 percent of the stone the supplier had agreed to provide. Moreover, according to the sequence 2 contractor, during several preceding months, deliveries of stone were only about half as large as expected. Additionally, the contractor said, the delivered stone was not in the appropriate sequence and did not cover complete areas. To help mitigate these problems, during October, the sequence 2 contractor transferred stone masons from areas such as the exhibit gallery, for which no wall stone was available, to the auditorium, for which wall stone was available. AOC’s construction management contractor cited other delays in October, especially in the utility tunnel and in the exhibit gallery. For instance, work on First Street for the utility tunnel was delayed by unforeseen site conditions, rain, and the need to do unanticipated work. However, the construction management contractor said that steps have been taken to mitigate the impact of the delays, including the sequence 2 contractor’s hiring of another subcontractor and the installation of piping in the tunnel. In the view of the construction management contractor and the sequence 2 contractor, these steps will enable the CVC’s air-handling units to start up in February 2006 rather than in March 2006, as indicated in the October schedule. In the exhibit gallery, besides the delay in wall stone installation, the construction management contractor identified several problems, including delays in drawings for marble and finishes and concerns about the acceptability of the gallery’s fire suppression system, that could further delay work in the exhibit gallery. The sequence 2 contractor resequenced activities involved in testing, balancing, and commissioning the HVAC system and made other schedule changes that had the net effect of moving the base project’s completion date forward 3 days. While the resequencing will result in a loss of 10 workdays for the HVAC activities, according to the contractor’s revised schedule, the other changes have advanced the base project’s scheduled completion date to December 8, 2006, rather than December 11, 2006, as indicated in the September schedule. AOC’s construction management contractor reports that it, the sequence 2 contractor, and AOC’s commissioning contractor have generally agreed on the revised schedule for testing, balancing, and commissioning the HVAC system. However, AOC’s Fire Marshal Division has not yet agreed on the schedule for those activities that relate to the CVC’s fire protection system, such as testing and inspecting the smoke control system, the fire alarm system, and stair pressurization. On October 31, the division provided its comments on the revised schedule for the fire protection system. The division’s Deputy Fire Marshal expressed several significant concerns about the schedule. AOC and its construction management contractor expect to complete their reviews of this part of the schedule and resolve the Fire Marshal Division’s concerns by December 31, 2005. The construction management contractor has identified 14 critical activity paths in the October schedule that will extend the base project’s completion date beyond AOC’s September 15, 2006, target date if expected lost time cannot be recovered or further delays cannot be prevented. Eleven of the 14 critical activity paths in the October schedule were also identified in the September schedule. For 4 of these 11 paths, such as the auditorium wall stone installation and the orientation theater millwork, the completion dates showed improvement compared with the September schedule, but for the other 7 paths, such as the utility tunnel and the exhibit gallery stonework, the completion dates slipped. The 3 paths newly identified in October are elevator installation, exhibit gallery steel framing, and 10- and 12-inch water line installation, each of which could delay the project if expected lost time cannot be recovered. In addition, our analysis of productivity data for interior wall stone installation, coupled with the sequence 2 contractor’s analysis of stone deliveries, indicates that AOC is not likely to meet its September 15, 2006, target date for completing the base project’s construction without significant increases in the pace of wall stone deliveries and installation. That is, without more stone masons and/or more work hours, more stone delivered more quickly, and faster stone installation, AOC is unlikely to meet its target schedule. The sequence 2 contractor believes that stone masons will be able to install more wall stone per day in some areas, such as the exhibit gallery, because the work is not as difficult as in the great hall or orientation theaters. However, the pace of this installation remains uncertain, in our view. Furthermore, given the project’s experiences to date with the number of stone masons, the quantity of stone deliveries, and the pace of installation, AOC’s construction management contractor notes that the completion of wall stone installation could extend up to several months beyond the July 2006 date shown in the project schedule without more work hours, higher productivity, and sufficient stone. The pace of wall stone installation is especially important because it affects the timing of other critical work necessary for the project’s completion, such as the ceiling’s installation and the HVAC system’s testing, balancing, and commissioning. The stone supply problem is the subject of litigation between the sequence 2 contractor and its subcontractors, and the sequence 2 contractor has been working to resolve the problem. However, at this time, it is not clear how or when this issue will be resolved. Most of the activities we have been discussing, such as the wall stone installation, fire safety inspections, and House connector tunnel construction, are among the activities that we previously identified as likely having optimistic durations, suggesting that those activities could take longer to complete than shown in the project schedule. These activities served as the basis for our September 15 recommendation that AOC rigorously evaluate the durations for the activities shown in the project schedule. Last week, AOC’s construction management contractor finished evaluating these durations and the logic for what it considered the most critical activities, such as wall stone installation, and discussed the impact of delays and sequence 2 contract changes on the project schedule.