National Parks

One of the major organizational units of the National Park Service is the Denver Service Center, which supports construction activities throughout the park system. The Center works with individual parks in planning, designing, and building projects, which range from rehabilitating historic structures to building new visitor centers to repairing and replacing utility systems. Parks are expected to use the Center's services for projects costing more than $250,000, although exceptions are granted if the parks have the expertise needed for the projects and they receive approval from Park Service headquarters. In response to congressional concerns about the quality of services provided by the Center, GAO surveyed park managers on the quality and the timeliness of those services. This report also (1) describes how the Park Service sets priorities for funding construction projects and how the priorities may be modified during congressional consideration of the Park Service's annual appropriations requests, (2) describes the process the Park Service uses to develop cost estimates for projects, and (3) provides information on the makeup of projects' contingency and supervision funds.

GAO found that: (1) park managers were generally satisfied with the Center's service quality and timeliness for projects completed during fiscal year (FY) 1991 through FY 1993; (2) reported problems did not appear to be systemic, since they varied among the construction projects and park units; (3) park managers' decisions not to use the Center's services were generally not based on concerns about the quality of those services; (4) NPS sets construction priorities through a bottom-up decision making process with input from individual park units; (5) NPS is planning to revise its priority-setting process, since the current process is not based on objective criteria; (6) Congress often funds construction projects in addition to those on the NPS priority list, and also provides funding levels far above those requested by NPS; (7) the gap between NPS budget requests and appropriations is narrowing because of annual limits on discretionary spending; (8) although the Center develops and refines cost estimates prior to funding requests, congressionally designated projects are often funded before they are planned and designed; (9) contingency and project supervision costs are usually included in project cost estimates; and (10) historically, contingencies and project supervision have accounted for 16 percent and 15 percent, respectively, of a project's cost, but there are no standards for reasonable contingency or supervision costs.