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United Nations: Renovation Still Scheduled for Completion in 2013, but Risk to Its Schedule and Cost Remain

GAO-09-870R Published: Jul 30, 2009. Publicly Released: Jul 30, 2009.
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Highlights

In 2008, the United Nations (UN) began construction associated with its Capital Master Plan (CMP) to renovate its headquarters complex in New York City. As the UN's host country and largest contributor, the United States has a substantial interest in the success of the CMP. In this requested update, GAO reviewed the following key areas: schedule, cost, funding, risk management, procurement, and oversight. To perform this work, GAO reviewed UN documents and met with officials from the CMP office and other UN departments. GAO also reviewed select CMP schedules to assess the extent to which they met best practices for scheduling contained in GAO's Cost Estimating and Assessment Guide. To assess oversight and monitoring, GAO reviewed UN documents and oversight reports and interviewed officials from the UN's Office of Internal Oversight Services and officials from the U.S. Department of State (State).

Recommendations

Recommendations for Executive Action

Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Department of State We recommend that the Secretary of State should work with other member states to direct the CMP office to implement the best practices for scheduling contained in our Cost Estimating and Assessment Guide, to the extent practical for the CMP.
Closed – Implemented
In 2009, we reported that the United Nations (UN) began construction associated with its Capital Master Plan (CMP) to renovate its headquarters complex in New York City. We found that the CMP integrated master schedule and a subschedule met, to some extent, most of the best practices for scheduling contained in "GAO Cost Estimating and Assessment Guide: Best Practices for Developing and Managing Capital Program Costs." In particular, among other issues, CMP officials had not performed a schedule risk analysis to quantify the potential impact on meeting the project's completion date. As the schedule affects project costs--costs generally increase the longer a project takes--assessing...

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Topics

Best practicesBudget obligationsBudgetingContractsCost analysisCost controlFacility constructionFacility repairsFunds managementInternational relationsProcurementProcurement evaluationProcurement planningRisk assessmentRisk managementSchedule slippagesStrategic planningConstruction contractsCost estimates