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Increased Cleaning of Glass Surfaces-All glass surfaces in public areas, including main entrance doors, courtyard doors, subway doors and inner building connecting doors which had previously been cleaned only in the morning are now being cleaned again in the early afternoon.

Exterior Window Cleaning-A contract has been awarded for the exterior cleaning of all windows in the Cannon, Longworth, and Rayburn. Work began on June 16, 2001 with all buildings scheduled for completion by July 13th. The cleaning of the Longworth windows was delayed due to activity associated with the completion of the new roof and fall protection system. Interior window cleaning in these buildings will be scheduled and completed in July. The Ford Building windows were cleaned under the cleaning contract for that building.

Senior Management Involvement Each assistant superintendent has been assigned overall responsibility for one of the main House Office Buildings. In addition, management staff has begun weekly walkarounds with members of the inspection and service officer staffs for training purposes.

Despite these initiatives, we have been unable to provide the level of day-time policing that is necessary to maintain a high level of cleanliness. The contractual services, previously described, have been procured with the funding provided. Our goal is to check the public restrooms every hour during the day. While we were unable to finalize the permanent contract earlier in this fiscal year, we anticipate obligating the full amount proposed for contracting these services in FY 2002. We are requesting that $350,000 of the FY 2001 funds be reprogrammed for a portion of the cost for the replacement of the Longworth Building revolving doors. This is necessary in order to meet Life Safety requirements for emergency egress of the building.

EMPLOYEE SHOWER FACILITIES

Mr. MORAN. When you close the O'Neill Building, you close down two of the only four showers available to employees. Members have a decent gym with shower facilities downstairs, but a lot of workers, staff people, they like to ride their bike, which we are trying to encourage, or many of them work long hours. They might like to get a jog in during the day. It is almost impossible to find a shower that is available. And the Pentagon has any number of showers available. And I think any large corporation would as well. And we suggest to corporations to have good, high quality human resource policies, but we do not do it ourselves. What are you going to do about that? Is there a way to address that?

Mr. HANTMAN. What I would like to do is a search of where it might be appropriate for shower rooms and make recommendations on the basis of those that may need replacing.

WASTE RECYCLING PROGRAM

Mr. MORAN. I think that would be an appropriate thing to look into.

And lastly, before I move on, this has been a recurrent problem, but a number of offices go dutifully about putting their trash in different bins so they can recycle. They put the bottles in one and paper, and so on and so forth, and they are very conscientious about it and then it is collected and then again and again we hear it is all for naught. It is a sham because it is all ultimately mixed in together. So it just makes the offices feel good that we are keeping the trash apart when ultimately it is all thrown in together. Is there any truth to that suspicion?

Mr. HANTMAN. There had been in the past. Bob, update us on the recycling program.

Mr. MILEY. I think we have made some progress since January on the recycling program with the upgrading of the program manager's position and assistant. We were two years trying to recruit

for that position. We were fortunate to hire a young lady, Mary Alice Baker, who was the recycling coordinator for the city of Pasadena, California, and a gentleman by the name of Calvin Durham, who came from the school system in Norfolk, Virginia. Those two have been on board since early January. They have made some modifications to the program.

We still have the same basic recycling program, but we have modified it somewhat to try to make it more user friendly. In doing that, we have done a much more intensive job of labeling containers, including a new color coding of labels for the containers. We have begun offering a variety of container sizes. Previous to this time you had to take what we offered you. Now we come to you and give you a choice of numerous containers.

We have been holding seminars since March 23. We began the new modified program and have been able to redistribute new containers to approximately 190 offices which consisted of about 4500 new recycling containers. This is ongoing.

Mr. MORAN. That is good. I think a lot of offices are conscientious. It is what happens to the trash afterwards.

Mr. MILEY. One other improvement that we think is significant progress was to form a separate recycling collection crew. We have taken recycling collection away from the custodial duties and we have a crew of 20 half-time people that now come through the offices from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. We are working with a smaller number of people, and it is much easier to train them. There is much more concern for the productivity. We also have put the people in recycling uniforms with recycling symbols to identify them as recycling collectors.

Mr. MORAN. We just want some truth in recycling is all. We spent an hour in the Appropriations Committee debating this one time, I remember, but you are going to always have people watching it, and I think our suspicions are oftentimes borne out.

Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman for yielding. Do we have an objective measurement of the amount of material that is recycled, glass, plastic, and paper, in particular, by poundage? In other words, one of the objective standards might be what we did 5 years ago and what we do now. I tell you my staff believes that we separate it and it gets put back together at the time that it is dumped. Mr. MILEY. We, again, still feel that there may have been an isolated case, but that is not happening. As far as quantities, we are recycling between 1,500 and 2,000 tons of material a year. We have calculated that we are recycling about 35 percent of our waste stream, which is equivalent to what the executive branch has established as a goal for the year 2005.

Our greater objective is to clean that waste stream up so that we get a higher rate of return for the product. Right now we are talking about waste streams, what we consider mixed paper, and the rate of contamination is such that we are getting very little dollars for it. Our biggest objective is to clean that waste stream so that we get a much higher return for it.

PAGE DORM OCCUPANCY

Mr. WAMP. A series of questions, and speak up down there. On this side, it is hard to hear. The assistant said late August for the page dorm and we heard early August.

Mr. TURNBULL. No, I said we will be ready for late August occupancy.

Mr. TRANDAHL. The move-in is set for the first week of August. And then people will actually occupy and live in the facility in late August.

Mr. WAMP. But there is not a disconnect between when you have the building ready and when you will occupy it?

Mr. TURNBULL. Absolutely not.

VISITOR CENTER TUNNEL TO LIBRARY

Mr. WAMP. The Visitor's Center site includes an underground connection to the Library of Congress or does not?

Mr. HANTMAN. No, it does not. When we met, the $265 million included the Visitor's Center per se and it included the shell area for expansion for the House and the Senate and the connections into the Capitol. We were authorized by the Preservation Commission to do construction documents for the library addition, that connection, and once the construction documents were finished and we got a number in on it, it would be determined whether or not—and we are estimating about $12 million-that that should be done or should not be done and what the source of the funding might be. Mr. WAMP. But it will be designed so that it could be done at that time without any interruption?

Mr. HANTMAN. Absolutely. It is basically an add to the construction documents. If we are so directed to build it, we will be able to include that.

VISITOR CENTER TIMELINE

Mr. WAMP. When is the estimated start time on the building of the Visitor's Center and completion?

Mr. HANTMAN. We are talking about going to bid the last quarter of this year and the completion would be in 2005. What we are saying is that for the 2005 Inaugural that this facility should be able to help facilitate that maybe in terms of screening, but we will still be doing finishing work in 2005 and it will be completed and opened in that year.

BOTANIC GARDEN CONTRACTOR

Mr. WAMP. Back to the Botanic Garden, has there been a conflict with the contractor not being willing to guarantee connections from the glass? Tell us about any refusal by the contractor to adhere to the contract documents or any aspects of construction that would be considered normal in the industry.

Mr. HANTMAN. There are some issues relative to the fabricator under the contractor working on the trusses and not fabricating the trusses the way the design was originally made. So there were some concerns about the strength of those trusses. That is one of the reasons in part of delaying the project. They went back and reengineered. They got their engineers in and came back.

Mr. TURNBULL. Continuing on what you said, we have hired an independent structural engineer to go back and review their certification that indeed it is totally fine. But it was an issue where they just took upon themselves to change the design.

Mr. WAMP. Bottom line, are you confident that upon completion, if there is an incident where structurally, in terms of the fasteners or the stability of the entire system above people, that people will be held accountable?

Mr. TURNBULL. Absolutely. Absolutely, Mr. Wamp.

Mr. WAMP. You do not anticipate a problem now that they redesigned it, reengineered it and remanufactured it?

Mr. TURNBULL. Absolutely. Absolutely.

MAINTENANCE AND REPAIRS

Mr. WAMP. We talked about salary and workforce and we talked about people not being at work. What technology is the Superintendent's office using to increase the efficiency of regular repairs? It seems like there is a division of labor. One group comes and they can't do it, and they go back and another group comes.

It seems like a lot of parts of the House operations are very hightech and others seem to not be high-tech at all. What percent of your workforce actually uses technology-Computers, e-mail, web forms to increase efficiency of your operations?

Mr. MILEY. Well, every one of our shops have e-mail systems. Not every employee is on the e-mail subscriber list; certainly every shop, every foreman, every assistant foreman has that capability. We have work order systems. We are presently implementing a CAFM system, which will actually computerize all of the accounting and building automation systems. The Computer Aided Facilities Management system is what CAFM stands for. And as a part of that, it will have a work order system built into it. It will have a financial management system tied in with it.

Mr. WAMP. Have you thought about having some kind of response team that can actually deal with a problem like other law enforcement organizations do? There are problems of critical importance around here. We had construction in Cannon between the fourth and fifth floor and for weeks on end it was all curtained off but nothing was going on in there and it seemed like it was at a standstill for a long period of time. I wonder why you can't be more battle ready to go out with a response team and their focus is to get it fixed and get out of the way. It just really sounds like inordinate delays with construction and maintenance and repairs around the Capitol.

Mr. MILEY. Two issues that I think relate to that. One is that we have just recently assigned each of our top management officials, each of the assistant superintendents, the responsibility for each of the buildings. I have four assistants and each one of those have responsibility for total operation and maintenance of that building. So they are looking much more closely at a particular building. I think that will help part of what you indicated. We also have most recently gone to a multicraft mechanic position. We have a new crew of what we call multicraft mechanics so that we are

There is an awful lot of work that is general. When they come up, if they need to fix your air conditioning thermostat and at the same time you have some light bulbs out or a dripping faucet at the sink, one person can do all of those tasks. So yes, we are heading in that direction.

CANNON ELEVATORS

Mr. WAMP. We are approaching a point where the Cannon elevators are broken more than they are in operation. It is unbelievable. When are we going to get new elevators in Cannon?

Mr. MILEY. We have specifications being prepared right now. We have funding for the renovation of those elevators and those specifications should be on the street I think within the next month or two with actual renovation to begin late this year.

Mr. WAMP. For all the elevators in Cannon?

Mr. MILEY. We will do three the first year-the three worst ones the first year, four the next year, and so forth over the next 2 to 3 years.

MANAGER ACCOUNTABILITY

Mr. WAMP. Final question, the Superintendent's office, how do you annually hold managers accountable for their performance? What kind of built-in standards do you have in the Superintendent's office to ensure that Members get great response from the Superintendent's office, not just mediocre response?

Mr. MILEY. We are just putting in place a program through our Human Resources Division that will evaluate managers on a yearly basis. That is brand-new to the entire Architect's organization and is being implemented right now.

Mr. WAMP. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

VISITOR CENTER CONTRACT

Mr. TAYLOR. I wanted to ask the question that you just mentioned. When did you say we are letting the contract on the Visitor's Center?

Mr. HANTMAN. The last quarter of this year.

Mr. TAYLOR. Now, it is my understanding the plans slipped from September to December. What are we going to be doing without plans?

Ms. POOLE. From September until about springtime of next year we are going to be doing what we call enabling projects and those are projects such as preservation, movement of utilities, utility lines before we actually start digging, relocation of some of the major telecom lines that are coming into our hub rooms here at the Capitol building, and the installation of a temporary physical access point so that when we do start getting on the East Front, visitors will then be provided with a different access to the building. All of that is going to be done between December and April. Late in the fall of this year, November, December time frame, we are going to go out with a full contract which will actually be the construction of the Visitor's Center itself and that contract is scheduled to be awarded some time in April.

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