NNSA—a separately organized agency within DOE—has primary responsibility for ensuring the safety, security, and reliability of the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile. NNSA carries out these activities at eight government-owned, contractor-operated sites: three national laboratories, four production plants, and one test site (see fig. 1). These sites, taken together, have been a significant component of U.S. national security since the 1940s. Contractors operate these sites under management and operations (M&O) contracts.the contractor with broad discretion in carrying out the mission of the particular contract, but grant the government the option to become much more directly involved in day-to-day M&O. Currently, NNSA’s workforce is made up of about 34,000 M&O contractor employees across the eight sites, and about 2,400 federal employees directly employed by NNSA in its Washington headquarters, at offices located at each of the eight sites, and at its Albuquerque, New Mexico, complex. Of the 71 EM and NNSA nonmajor projects we reviewed that were completed or ongoing for fiscal years 2008 to 2012, we were able to determine performance for 44 projects. Among these 44 projects, 21 have met or are expected to meet all three of their performance targets for the scope of work delivered, cost, and completion date, while 23 have not met or are not expected to meet one or more of their three targets. The remaining 27 of the 71 projects we reviewed had insufficiently documented performance targets or had modified scope targets, among other things, which prevented us from determining whether they met or were expected to meet their performance targets, according to our analysis of DOE data. Determining whether projects fully met or partially met performance targets was difficult because EM and NNSA did not always follow DOE requirements for documenting these targets. DOE has taken steps to ensure that EM and NNSA more clearly document performance targets for their projects, but some problems persist. Of the 71 nonmajor projects we reviewed, 44 projects—17 EM projects and 27 NNSA projects—had documented targets for scope, cost, and completion date, enabling us to determine their performance. Table 2 shows the expected or completed performance of these 44 EM and NNSA nonmajor projects. As the table shows, of the 44 projects for which we were able to determine performance, 21 projects met or are expected to meet their performance targets for scope, cost, and completion date. Specifically, 17 completed projects—5 EM and 12 NNSA projects—met all three of their performance targets. These projects included a $22 million EM project to expand an existing waste disposal facility at the Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee and a $469 million NNSA project to construct chemical, electrical, and other laboratories and workspaces at the Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico. In addition, as of August 29, 2012, 4 ongoing projects—1 EM and 3 NNSA projects—were expected to meet all three of their performance targets, according to DOE estimates. These projects included a $77 million EM project to construct two disposal units for storing waste at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina and a $199 million NNSA project to equip the Radiological Laboratory/Utility/ Office Building at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico to make it suitable for performing programmatic work. Table 2 also shows that 23 EM and NNSA projects did not meet or are not expected to meet one or more of their three performance targets. Of these 23 projects, 13 projects met or are expected to meet two of their three performance targets, and eight met or are expected to meet one of their three performance targets (see apps. II and III for more details). In addition, one project did not meet any of its performance targets. Specifically, EM’s project to decontaminate and decommission the Main Plant Process Building in West Valley, New York, did not complete all of its planned scope of work when it was completed in October 2011, almost 4 months after its completion date target and more than $50 million over its cost target of $46 million. EM cancelled the remaining project— Uranium-233 Disposition project, at the Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee—in December 2011 after spending approximately $225 million. (See apps. II and III for more details.) In assessing whether projects had achieved their scope, cost, and completion date targets, we followed DOE and Office of Management and Budget performance metrics.must be completed within their original scope target. For cost targets, For the scope, DOE states that projects Office of Management and Budget guidance and DOE performance metrics regard projects completed at less than 10 percent above their original cost targets as having achieved satisfactory performance. Regarding completion date, DOE’s performance metrics do not address targets for completion. However, because Office of Management and Budget guidance includes performance standards for project schedule, we considered projects to be on time if they were or are expected to be completed at less than 10 percent past their original completion date targets. We encountered two major problems in assessing the performance of the 44 projects described above, which made it more difficult for us and DOE to independently assess project performance. First, EM and NNSA did not consistently follow DOE requirements for documenting scope targets and tracking these targets using DOE’s performance database. Second, EM did not always establish credible completion date targets or conduct required independent reviews when it restructured its PBSs in 2010. Establishing a clearly defined target for scope is critical for an agency to accurately track and assess a project’s overall performance. In particular, a project’s scope of work directly affects estimates of the project’s cost and completion date. If the scope target is too broad or vaguely stated, it can be difficult to track whether or to what extent certain aspects of project scope were reduced or eliminated between CD-2 (when the baseline was established) and CD-4 (when the project was completed), potentially affecting cost and completion date targets. Accordingly, since 2003, DOE Order 413.3 has required that information on scope targets be documented in a project execution plan as part of CD-2. The current order also requires a project’s acquisition executive to sign a memorandum approving CD-2 that contains this information. In addition, the order requires that information on scope targets, as well as other critical performance information, be entered into DOE’s centralized database on project performance—the Project Assessment and Reporting System (PARS).OAPM, is used to track and report on project performance. This database, which is administered by However, EM and NNSA did not always follow the order’s requirement on documenting scope targets, and we encountered the following problems when we attempted to identify scope targets for EM and NNSA projects: Key project documents associated with CD-2 and identified in Order 413.3—project execution plans and CD-2 approval memorandums— often did not contain information on scope targets. Instead, we had to obtain and review a variety of other project documents to try and locate this information. For example, we obtained information on scope targets for several EM and NNSA projects from briefing slides (i.e., a PowerPoint presentation) prepared for a DOE advisory board involved in reviewing and approving projects. We also used independent project review reports, documents describing the functional and operational requirements of the projects, and contractor documents that provided detailed descriptions of a project’s scope of work, among other documents. (See app. I for more details on our scope and methodology.) The additional project documents that EM and NNSA provided to verify scope targets were often dated several months (or more) before or after the approval of CD-2. Because these documents were often not contemporaneous with the date when CD-2 was approved, we had difficulty determining whether any scope targets had changed during the interval. For example, we obtained information on scope targets for two EM projects from a project execution plan that was signed and dated almost 9 months after the CD-2 approval memorandum had been signed. (If documents were not dated within 1 year of CD-2 approval, we did not consider them sufficient and reliable for purposes of determining scope targets.) EM and NNSA often did not clearly or uniformly identify scope targets in their documents, instead providing this information in a variety of ways. For example, a NNSA project provided this information in briefing slides for a project advisory board under the headings “programmatic requirements summary” and “physical design summary.” In cases where we were unable to clearly identify scope targets, we relied on EM and NNSA officials to identify the information that they considered to represent scope targets. OAPM has encountered similar problems in trying to identify scope targets for projects at CD-2 and track how well completed projects had met these targets at CD-4. Specifically, OAPM officials told us that DOE program offices may have documented a project’s scope targets in a variety of project documents, such as a project execution plan or an acquisition strategy plan, rather than in an approval memorandum at CD- 2. As a result, OAPM officials said they occasionally must reconstruct a project’s scope targets from other contemporaneous planning documents near the time of the CD-2 approval. In a few instances, they said that no audit trail exists to compare scope targets established at CD-2 with the scope targets cited in a project’s CD-4 approval memorandum. In addition, an OAPM official told us that OAPM has not completed the process of locating and entering these data into PARS and continues to work with EM and NNSA to reconstruct project scope targets near the time of CD-2 approval. We found two problems with the performance baselines of many projects that EM restructured from its portfolio of PBS activities in 2009 and 2010. First, several projects did not have a credible completion date target.