Navy Maintenance

Cost Growth and Schedule Overrun Problems Continue at the Shipyards Gao ID: NSIAD-90-144 July 24, 1990

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Navy's costs to overhaul and repair ships at public and private shipyards, focusing on the: (1) extent of cost growth and schedule overruns at both public and private shipyards; and (2) causes of the increases.

GAO found that: (1) contract costs increased from $2.8 billion to $3.7 billion between 1985 and 1988; (2) at private shipyards, cost growth averaged 31 percent and schedule overruns averaged 43 days; (3) at public shipyards, cost growth averaged 3 percent and schedule overruns averaged 81 days; (4) at private shipyards, inadequate and late government-furnished information and materials were among the major causes of contract cost growth and schedule overruns on 23 contracts; (5) government-caused delays and disruptions to contractors also result in cost growth and schedule overruns; (6) when a public shipyard becomes overloaded and has insufficient workers to properly execute the work load, cost growth and schedule overruns result; (7) public shipyards cited poorly defined work packages and poorly prepared drawings and specifications as causes for cost growth and schedule overruns; and (8) making major alterations on ships as quickly as possible was more important than the additional costs that resulted from poorly defined work packages.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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