Pessimistic Report Issued by GAO on SSC
The General Accounting Office has released a report that opponents of the Superconducting Super Collider will be citing for the rest of the year. In repeated criticisms about accounting practices, schedule and cost overruns, and possible downsizing of the detectors, the GAO paints what can only be described as a sobering future for the project. Although DOE takes strong issue with GAO (see FYI #28), this new report will make the annual task of securing an appropriation for the facility all the more difficult.
GAO examiners concluded that “analyses of the major subcontractors’ work in progress show that the SSC project is over budget and behind schedule.” They criticize the yet-to-be completed Cost and Schedule Control System, noting that it will not be fully functioning until at least this July. At GAO’s request, the Department of Energy analyzed subcontractors’ reports, and concluded that conventional construction (tunnels, etc.) is 19% behind schedule, and 51% over baseline cost. Using trend analyses, two “major magnet subcontractors predicted that their development contracts will have cost overruns of $53 million (25%) and $25 million (37%).”
DOE is employing a “build-to-cost strategy” to prevent overruns for the SSC’s two large detectors, costing around $1.1 billion. The SSC budget would provide $596 million of this amount, with the remainder to come from DOE’s High Energy Physics Program ($80 million), foreign funding ($329 million), the State of Texas ($35 million), and “to be determined” ($99 million.) There are varying degrees of optimism about the likelihood of obtaining this funding. If the necessary money is not secured, the detector collaborations are proposing to defer installation of some components, a strategy which could shutdown the entire SSC for up to 12 months. The GAO reports “the effects of [the above] cost-cutting on physics experiments, according to the SSC Laboratory’s Associate Director, Physics Research Division, is difficult to determine until the amount of required reduction is known. The effect of shutdowns is also unknown.” The DOE Project Director is also considering whether to defer construction of the one of the detectors, a move that many physicists fear might lead to its cancellation. The GAO concludes that “DOE’s use of a build-to-cost strategy to counter increased project costs could result in a major downsizing of the SSC if costs continue to increase.”
In concluding comments, the GAO states, “Early projections of the major subcontractors’ progress indicate that the cost growth could be substantial. To combat increased costs, DOE is pursuing a build-to-cost strategy, which appears to be merely deferring costs to a date after the completion of SSC construction. Therefore, we caution that completion of the SSC project may require more than the annual amounts provided for in the project’s funding profile or more than the $5.5 billion total that DOE recently reported to the Congress.”
