Integrating “only” government-wide practices will not help keep nuclear weapons infrastructure projects on time and on budget, the head of the National Nuclear Security Administration said in a letter published Tuesday.
“We strongly believe that the incorporation of government best practices alone will not fundamentally change our ability to integrate the program and project cost and schedule results required to meet the urgent national security requirements placed on our enterprise,” Jill Hruby, head of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), said in a letter to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) about a report published Tuesday.
Even so, Hruby said she agreed with the report’s recommendations. Her letter was appended to a GAO report released Tuesday and titled “Actions Needed to Improve Integration of Production Modernization Programs and Projects.”
GAO found that NNSA’s production modernization effort, which consists of eight programs all managed by separate offices, has “insufficient” schedule requirements and cost estimates, as it does not incorporate all 10 “best practices” for developing program schedules and all 12 steps for developing cost estimates. Both sets of steps are published by the GAO.
Among the NNSA’s largest production infrastructure projects is construction of plutonium pit factories at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, the first of which was supposed to start manufacturing nuclear warhead first-stage cores this spring.
Another is the Uranium Processing Facility at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., the next-generation factory for nuclear weapon secondary stages. Both it, and the pit plants, are behind schedule and over budget, compared with estimates the NNSA offered when seeking funding for the programs.
The GAO recommended in a draft report on the NNSA that to improve its integration of production modernization programs, the agency must adhere to GAO schedule requirements and cost estimating requirements.
Hruby said that while NNSA concurs with these recommendations, the “most serious” challenges in production modernization are in active management, decisive decision making, partnership, and prioritization of goals.
“[These challenges] would not be reflected in a review focused on adherence to best practices, but NNSA’s programs and projects are doing this every day,” Hruby said. “We encourage GAO to acknowledge this reality.”
