Federal Research

The Superconducting Super Collider project, estimated to cost $8.25 billion and to be completed over a 10-year period ending in 1999, is designed to produce intense proton collisions, thereby providing insights into the fundamental components of matter. In April 1992 testimony (GAO/T-RCED-92-48), GAO indicated that the Department of Energy (DOE) lacked an integrated system for monitoring cost and schedule performance. DOE argued that GAO's testimony relied on 1990 audit work and did not accurately reflect present conditions. This report provides information on (1) the time frame and the basis of GAO's data that supported the April 1992 testimony and (2) the status of both GAO's review and DOE's system for managing the Superconducting Super Collider's cost and schedule.

GAO found that: (1) it based its April 1992 testimony on ongoing audit work that it started in December 1991; (2) DOE and its prime contractor still have not fully implemented a cost and schedule control system for the DOE SSC project; (3) without the complete system, the contractor lacks sufficient information to make a meaningful trend analysis of the project's overall costs and schedule, preventing DOE from making timely assessments of the project's problems and taking corrective action to reduce costs and time delays; and (4) although DOE and the prime contractor have made progress, the first meaningful trend analysis will not be available before June 1993.