conditions. That would appear to leave about $100 million in cost overruns that would be your office's responsibility. About $40 million, as I understand it-about $40 million in bids were above your estimates.

Haven't your estimates been consistently under reality? I mean, you cited the fact that the Washington market had been going crazy. I mean, don't we all know that? Why have your initial estimates been so far under the resulting costs?

Mr. HANTMAN. Again, as I indicated earlier, Mr. Obey, we have two cost estimating firms coming out doing the work, trying to reconcile it. I think there are issues at work here that nobody could have foreseen. I certainly was not happy with the estimate that has came in.

I talked to the firm as well, saying why did we, in fact, miss by such a wide margin? The issue with the difficulty of working on the Hill, the security certainly came into it, the issue of the fact that there is a saturated market. I don't think they had anticipated the fact that there are so many construction projects going on that contractors, who are viable contractors, had their pick, of those projects they care to bid on.

So an estimate is, in fact, just that. It is an estimate, the best knowledge of the professionals that we hired. We specifically went outside of our organization to do those estimates so that we could get people who are familiar with other projects going on in the

area.

Weather and timing is also important when you bid a project and what other projects are on the street being bid at that point in time. So clearly, when we both for our sequence 1 and sequence 2, we exceeded our estimates on both of those projects and on the expansion spaces we did so as well.

CVC CONSTRUCTION SCHEDULE

Mr. OBEY. When can we expect the Visitor Center and the House and Senate add-ons to be totally and completely finished?

Mr. HANTMAN. I think we have a board over here

Mr. OBEY. Let me explain what I mean by that.

Mr. HANTMAN. Okay.

Mr. OBEY. You have referred to a number of times to the project being substantially complete. I want to know what the difference is between "substantially" complete and "totally" complete. I want to know whether your estimate includes all of the life safety items, whether it would include all of the mechanical and electrical systems, air conditioning, heat, et cetera; would it include all of the visitors' support pieces like ticketing counters, cafeterias, gift shops exhibits? When is this actually going to be fully and totally complete?

Mr. HANTMAN. From a construction perspective, Mr. Obey, the dates that we are looking at over here, show us in an incremental way the food services section would be complete in March of 2006; the Great Hall in May of 2006; the orientation theaters in July; the east front plaza out to East Capitol Street by July; and the congressional auditorium by September of 2006. So everything under

Mr. OBEY. But you used a tricky phase. You said "from a construction standpoint." I am talking about from a user standpoint. Mr. HANTMAN. That is why I said it specifically that way, Mr. Obey. Because as you mentioned before, for instance the CAO has a budget of some $10 million to fit out some of these spaces.

Mr. OBEY. So what I want to know is not when will the last block be in the structure. I mean, I built a cottage a couple years ago. I didn't want to know when the structure would be completed. I wanted to know when the carpet would be in, the refrigerator would be in, the sinks would actually work, and when it was ready to open the door, turn the key and say folks, come on in, this baby is all done. How would those dates change if you put it to me that way?

Mr. HANTMAN. If you talk about, Mr. Obey, if you bought a house, you would buy your own furniture and bring it in after it was completed. The plumbing will work here, the life/safety systems will work. All the people will be able to come through and see the movie, go up into the Capitol, ride escalators, be screened appropriately, have lunch.

All of that will be ready by September 2006. But the furniture, fixtures, and equipment that the CAO will put in, he has not received the money for it yet. There are other dollars that are needed to fit out the gift shop. The dollars haven't been allocated.

Mr. OBEY. That is why I am trying to follow up on what Mr. LaHood was asking. He was telling you that one believes that this project is going to be ready by the middle of 2006.

I am trying to get an idea of when you think the last piece of furniture is to going to be in and the last lamp plug will go into the wall and when the center will be open for business. Any idea? Mr. HANTMAN. As soon as people get the funding to do it, Mr. Obey, they can do the projection and work side by side with us.

Mr. OBEY. So the responsible answer on your side of the table and ours is that you really don't know yet, right?

CVC VISITOR EXPERIENCE

Mr. HANTMAN. In terms of anything that-let us start talking about the visitor experience. You will be able to walk down the ramp from First Street. You will be able to be screened appropriately. You will be able to check your coat, if you want to check your coat. You will be able to come down the Great Hall, get information at the ticket booth. You will be able to see the orientation film as soon as we let the contract at the exhibition area, which we have not yet done. We have just gotten the authority to do that. We were going to try to make that same date with that piece of work. We are hopeful that we can get in that same time frame in the fall of 2006. All the escalators, all the stairs, all the restrooms, all the cafeterias, will all be up and functioning.

Mr. OBEY. I will bet you a quarter.

HOUSE OFFICE BUILDINGS MASTER PLAN

Chairman LEWIS. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Obey.

Mr. Hantman, you have just completed a House office building master plan. What major issues were identified in this process and

Mr. HANTMAN. Mr. Chairman, this is part of a larger program. There are two key elements in preparing our capital budget, the Capitol complex master plan and the facility condition assessments. The Capitol complex master plan identifies preservation and maintenance requirements for proposed new facilities, while the facility condition assessments talk about the kind of preservation and maintenance requirements we need for existing facilities. Based on the Capitol complex master plan and the FCAs, the concessions all propose that existing requirements feed into the Capitol improvement plan, which prioritizes and incorporates project needs over a 5-year program.

The master plan is a very interesting one-the one specifically related to the House office buildings we had a meeting with Chairman Young of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee on this several weeks ago-talks about shortcomings in terms of space needs for the House office buildings.

It talks about that over time, the responsibilities of Members of the House as well as the Senate have grown, and that the demands on the staffs have increased and that the space utilization for those staffs is not near what industry standards are.

Right now I think on a per staff member level there is something like 35 square foot per person. When you talk about industry standards you are talking about anywhere from 85 to 100 feet or more per person. So the question comes up in terms of-for instance, one of the first projects we are proposing being funded for 2006 is the design, the actual design of a garage opposite the Ford House Office Building.

One of the options for us is looking at the parking function in the Rayburn Building to see if, in fact, they want those to be converted into offices, hearings rooms, support facilities for the House. There is a real need, in the magnitude of 6- to 700,000 square feet, for the House to be able to accommodate its needs in a respectful way and a functional way.

So the master plan is beginning to point us in directions that say we have several options to take a look at how we can solve the needs specifically of the House. The overall master plan looks at the campus as a whole, what sites might be appropriate to be used, how traffic and transportation, all of these issues, feed into potential future budgets.

So the master plan is giving us the kind of tools where we will be able to sit down with appropriators, with the oversight committees, and talk about what the needs are, what the options are, and be able to intelligently discern what needs to happen going forward.

PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Chairman LEWIS. The Architect of the Capitol has had difficulties in project management for some time. În fact, the GAO has been directed to review the AOC's management processes and to make recommendations for improvements.

The Architect of the Capitol recently reported that over half of its current 61 construction projects over $250,000 are behind schedule; is that right? Why are so many projects behind schedule and

Mr. HANTMAN. I think one of the issues, Mr. Chairman, here is how a schedule is established and what measurements you use to talk about being behind schedule.

Many of the projects that we are talking about right now were initiated before we did our project management pilot program which started last September. We are reorganizing our groups to be able to have project managers and construction managers who all work together on a soup-to-nuts type of situation.

But very literally, Mr. Chairman, if we had established a project schedule and end date, and there is a weather delay on a project of a day, 2 days—a legitimate concern, a legitimate happening that is no fault necessarily of the contractor or of the government—that project shows up as being delayed because we had bad weather, they couldn't do the excavation, et cetera.

So what we are really doing is we are trying to the original report was a really very literal interpretation of classifying whether a project is on schedule or isn't. So there may be a cause of contractor negligence or government cause or modification to the contract. If there is a modification to the contract, and we are adding something to it which takes further time, is the project now behind schedule or is it a modified project?

I think what we need to do is come up with a methodology that measures schedule, so that we can effectively say you can call it behind schedule, if it rained for a week and they couldn't do any work. Therefore it is not a penalty to the contractor or necessarily to the government. So the definition of how we do this is important as well.

Our new project management organization has been in a pilot mode since September. It is working very well. We are looking very much forward to initiating this so that new projects coming down the road have the budgets and the project schedules established that take into account all the kinds of issues that we might run into here on Capitol Hill.

CONTRACT NEGLIGENCE

Chairman LEWIS. Of these 61 projects over $250,000 where there have been scheduling difficulties, has there been an instance in which a contractor was specifically negligent and there has been some adjustment as a result of scheduling delays or otherwise that may have cost us money?

Mr. HANTMAN. I could certainly go down that list of projects and get back to you for the record on specific projects that may have had that nature of delay, and others, and do an evaluation on that, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman LEWIS. Is the answer to that yes, there are specific cases of where there is contractor negligence, and, I suppose, contractor penalties, et cetera?

Mr. HANTMAN. I would assume. I don't know for a fact. I will check with my project managers and go down the list.

Chairman LEWIS. It is hard for me to assume you don't know

that.

CONTRACT SCHEDULE DELAYS

Chairman LEWIS. Does anyone here know that? Has there been negligence on the part of any contractor that caused scheduling delays.

Mr. HANTMAN. Bill Weidemeyer. Bill Weidemeyer is the head of our project management.

Chairman LEWIS. So you are the scheduling guy, right?

Mr. WEIDEMEYER. Yes.

Chairman LEWIS. Step right up. I am asking about the projects that are $250,000 or more, are there specific instances where scheduling has been delayed or otherwise caused cost overruns because of negligence? Have there been instances where a contractor was found to be negligent and thereby some penalty was paid?

Mr. WEIDEMEYER. Yes. There have been projects that we have had problems with a contractor that is on board.

Of the 61 projects that we reported, have we assessed liquidated damages of some sort? Probably not at this point. Liquidated damages are typically assessed near the end of a project. We have tried to push as hard as we possibly can. I would have to pull out the list of projects to review.

A fairly typical project that we are having problems on right now is the way-finding project; the signs that are being installed throughout the campus, in this very building, for example.

Chairman LEWIS. That helps one find their way.

Mr. WEIDEMEYER. It helps one to find their way, yes. We have had contractor-related problems. We have identified problems with the quality of the signs that are being installed. We have had the contractor on site for a period of time to install a large number of signs over the last 30 days.

We have initiated through our new organization a quality assurance program to bring to the attention of the contractor that there have been some problems with the signs. The contractor has in turn gone back to his production mode and identified where in the process the signs are where the problems are associated in the production line.

We have, again, at this point in the contract, we would not typically assess liquidated damages, because they would come at the end, after the contract expiration date. But what we have done to try to be proactive is we have initiated letters from our procurement office back to the contractor, putting him on formal notice that he is behind schedule and that we have identified the quality of problems associated with what he has delivered to date.

So we feel like what we are doing under the new pilot project management organization is trying to be very proactive in how we keep a project like that on schedule and within budget.

Chairman LEWIS. I don't really mean to push you to the wall, but I would appreciate some submission for the record. Mr. Obey and I have had interesting experiences dealing with architects who work around the building. There is an old saying that if you have been here long enough to not get lost in the Rayburn Building, you have been here too long.