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ARCHITECT OF THE CAPITOL

CYCLICAL MAINTENANCE AND BUILDING RENOVATIONS (Excludes New Facilities, Security, & Technology/Management Systems)

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Capitol Dome - $42.5 M

** West Refrigeration Plant Expansion - $40.2 M & Constitution Ave. Tunnel Repair - $9.0 M.

ARCHITECT OF THE CAPITOL
BENCHMARK DATA

Fiscal Year 2002 Funding Levels

Current Facility Replacement Value

AOC Benchmark

(Based on Universities of Illinois, Michigan, & Stanford and the Army Corps of Engineers)

Army Corps of Engineers (Budget Objective)

$3,811,000,000

ANNUAL RENEWAL

PERCENTAGE

1.7

1.75

University Federal Research Cost Recovery (OMB A-21)

2.0

Conservative Commercial Depreciation at 40 Years (IRS will accept a faster depreciation rate)

2.5

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FY 2002 Capitol Request

2.0

(Request $102,601,000 Less $25,175,000 Related to Technology/Management Systems, Security, and New Facilities)

VISITOR'S CENTER

Mr. TAYLOR. We will probably recess about 5 minutes and go and vote. Mr. Moran do you have any comments?

Mr. MORAN. No, that is fine. I am happy to go right into questions. Thank you.

Mr. TAYLOR. Good. We will go first to the Visitor's Center, because that has already been discussed with others here today.

The committee understands that you recently asked the companies of Gilbane & Hanscomb to provide independent estimates of the costs of the Visitor's Center based upon 50 percent construction drawings. What are the estimates and do their estimates exceed the original estimate of $265 million for the Center? Are there specific items that are causing the estimated cost of the Center to increase?

Mr. HANTMAN. Mr. Chairman, this is part of our philosophy of doing a belt-and-suspenders approach to this project. We want to make sure that we are in good shape and do not rely on one estimate. We took an independent estimate in addition to the Gilbane estimate, and what we are doing is reconciling the differences between those two estimates.

Some things have been included on one side that were not included on the other. Some things should not have been included at all in the scope of work, and we are currently reconciling both of those estimates and numbers. As the reconciliation goes forward, it is showing us that we are basically within the $265 million budg

et.

We are quite satisfied-we are very confident that these numbers are going to be worked out to be 265 and we will get the systems and the base building pretty much where we want it to be.

PAGE DORM

Mr. TAYLOR. We will have some more questions on that in a minute, but I will move on to the page dorm because I want to get to several things before we have to go vote.

How is the page dorm construction progressing?

Mr. TURNBULL. It is coming along very well. We are 85 percent complete right now. We had one issue with the District of Columbia, with the water pipes that have broken in the streets, which not only concerned us, but the neighborhood in general. We contacted WASA and we were able to expedite them coming out.

We were concerned that the lack of water was a major issue for us. We solved that. That is under way and we see no additional problems keeping us from having the pages' dorm ready for occupancy.

O'NEILL BUILDING

Mr. TAYLOR. What are we going to do with the O'Neill Building? Do you have any thoughts about that?

Mr. HANTMAN. The O'Neill Building was basically designed as a hotel, as you know. The loading is low, 40 pounds per square foot. The floor plate is not appropriate for many of the uses of the Congress. Our sense is, once the building is vacated, we are getting estimates right now to do a study for demolition. Once we get that

coming back to this committee to ask for funds to demolish the building.

CANNON GARAGE

Mr. TAYLOR. On the renovation of the Cannon garage, that was in the Emergency Supplemental Appropriation Act of 2000. What is the status of the project? Do you anticipate meeting the January 2002 completion date?

Mr. TURNBULL. Yes, we do. That piece of the parking is closing of the garage itself. The actual project takes about a year. The actual part, the impacts to the garage would be from July to January 2nd; and at this point in time, they are mobilizing and getting on the site to complete the project. We anticipate no problems.

Mr. TAYLOR. We are anticipating a penalty if it is not followed through, somewhat like the ones we did with contractors. I know that there are things that come in and interfere; but on these three questions you all are very confident that all these things are going to happen and you feel sure about it?

Mr. TURNBULL. Yes, sir.

UNFUNDED POSITIONS

Mr. TAYLOR. All right. You have asked for funding of $3.4 million for 48 unfunded positions.

I understand that your agency lapsed $8 million in fiscal year 2000. How much do you expect to lapse this fiscal year? Are you having a difficult time recruiting and retaining adequate staff?

Mr. HANTMAN. Mr. Chairman, we do not expect to lapse this year at all. We got back on track in March of this year.

We had some difficulties in hiring people early on. We have hired, to date, 188 people in the agency, and part of the good news of that hiring and filling of jobs is that some 75 of those positions are internal. We have the idea of morale and having people have career paths and moving up in the organization is a very positive one. But because some of those jobs were not brought on at the beginning of the year-as you know, we had a continuing resolution as well-and some of those jobs, 75 jobs, need to be back-filled themselves.

Some of those dollars will not be spent on personnel issues. In fact, one of the things that we are planning to do, that I have just signed, Mr. Chairman, to come to you on, is a reprogramming of some of those dollars to do one of the emergency projects that I think we can do. And one of those emergency programs would be the revolving door replacement in the Longworth. That is a $950,000 request for reprogramming that will be coming here so that we can effectively use those dollars.

Mr. TAYLOR. I think we only have one vote. We will recess, go vote and come back.

[Recess.]

VISITOR CENTER COST ESTIMATES

I would like to go back to the Visitor's Center and the cost estimates. What were the estimates or what are the estimates that you put together?

Mr. HANTMAN. There was about a $20 million spread, as I recall, between the estimates, one of them in the range of $260 million and change and another was probably 280 and something. Part of the issues that we are going through-I'm sorry, I have been corrected, 282 and 300.

So the scope is being checked into, what in fact was the scope and whether the systems that were being estimated in fact are the systems that we want.

As part of the reanalysis of this, the reengineering of it, we are looking at the mechanical systems, and what was in the spec of the mechanical system was a system that was difficult to maintain and very expensive. Our people are getting in and saying we want this mechanical system that is less expensive but easier to maintain. It is that type of analysis that is going back and forth to bring the reconciliation of these two estimates back into one. And our best estimation is that reconciliation is not complete, but the numbers are between 260 and 265.

Mr. TAYLOR. How do you get there from $282 and $300? I had been in building years and years ago and did not even know what I was doing, and I never could bring it down to $260. I am still thinking if you had an estimate of $282 and $300, and you make some quality decisions, you can impact the price but you cannot impact it that much, unless you were using gold doors in the beginning.

Mr. HANTMAN. There is a certain amount of reengineering that is done. Let me introduce Peter May, who is very involved in that process, and maybe you could talk, Peter, about the issues that caused the gap between the two estimates.

Mr. MAY. The first estimates for the project at 50 percent were ranges 280 to 300 million. What we did first was make sure that what was in those estimates was actually in the project. At 50 percent documents, there is not a full picture of exactly what is in the project and some of that is left to the estimators to fill in the picture. That is why we wound up with the 280 to 300.

The first thing we did was go back and make sure that what they were estimating really was in the project, and in doing that, the estimates are now ranging from 260 to 282 million, I believe. And even within that 282 million, there is still further reconciliation between the two estimates that have to be done and a number of items such as the ones that Mr. Hantman cited, where we have differences between one system and another which provide the same level of service, we simply have to make sure that we are choosing the one that is more affordable. And we should be able to-we have already identified about $20 million within that 280 figure to be able to bring it down to 260.

Mr. TAYLOR. We want to choose the one that is more affordable, but it has to be of a standard and quality or like quality. Otherwise you are just pushing the cost into early maintenance.

Mr. MAY. That is true.

Mr. TAYLOR. And you do not want to do that. The reason we are

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