Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Seaway: Assessing Risks and Measuring Performance Could Improve Maritime Transportation

The Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Seaway (Great Lakes-Seaway) system extends 2,300 miles from Duluth, Minnesota to the Atlantic Ocean and serves more than 100 ports in the United States and Canada. A series of 17 locks enables commercial vessels to navigate the system, with the majority under Canadian management. Two of the 17 locks-located in Massena, New York-are managed by the Department of Transportation's Great Lakes St. Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation (U.S. Seaway Corporation). The U.S. Seaway Corporation's stated mission is to improve the operation and maintenance of a safe, reliable, and efficient waterway and to improve regional economic and trade development by enhancing utilization of the entire Great Lakes Seaway system. In 2018, GAO reported that stakeholders GAO met with-including carriers, shippers, and port representatives-identified a range of challenges to using the Great Lakes-Seaway and noted that these challenges pose risks to the future use of the system. Specifically, stakeholders stated that the condition of lock and portside infrastructure and other challenges pose risks to the system's traditional uses-including the transport of bulk cargos such as iron ore, grain, and steel-and to emerging uses of the system-including the cruise industry and container market. GAO found that the cumulative effect of the challenges represents costs and system reliability risks to shippers that can erode the advantages that the system has traditionally offered over other transportation modes. Although U.S Seaway Corporation officials told GAO they are aware of system challenges cited by stakeholders, the Corporation has not fully assessed the extent to which the challenges pose risks to the use of the Great Lakes-Seaway. Officials from the U.S. Seaway Corporation told GAO that the Corporation has not fully assessed risks, in part, because the Corporation does not have a formal or standing process to monitor risks over time. As such, GAO concluded that without a formal assessment of risks, the U.S. Seaway Corporation lacks information on the cumulative effect of the challenges faced by users of the system, limiting its ability to inform its future actions to help address those challenges. GAO recommended that the U.S. Seaway Corporation establish a process to identify, analyze, and monitor risks to the system's use to inform future actions to address those risks. In March 2021, the Corporation established an internal risk management team and issued a risk management plan that was intended to provide a formal and consistent method to manage organizational and operational risks to help the corporation achieve its mission. The risk management plan established a process for the Corporation to (1) document and track risks that could affect its mission and operations; (2) prioritize risks based on their probable frequency of occurrence and severity of consequences; (3) develop appropriate mitigation measures to reduce the threats of specific risks; (4) monitor and identify risks on a quarterly basis through a risk management team comprised of senior management officials. By establishing this process to identify, analyze, and monitor the system's risks, the U.S. Seaway Corporation is better positioned to design future actions that it, and other stakeholders, could take to address those risks and improve efficiency and use of the system.

In fiscal year 2007 the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Army Corps) developed an asset renewal plan focused on improving the condition of the Soo Locks, which connect Lake Superior to the remainder of the U.S. Great Lakes and which serve as an important route for the U.S. steelmaking industry. In 2018, GAO reported that although the Army Corps received $86 million to implement its asset renewal plan and had spent about $53 million on 18 completed projects, it had not established specific operational goals or metrics to evaluate the outcome of its asset renewal efforts, in accordance with government internal control standards. Federal internal control standards state that agencies should define objectives clearly and in measurable terms so that performance toward achieving those objectives can be assessed. Army Corps officials told GAO that they had not established operational goals or measures specific to the Soo Locks because the Army Corps' project approval process involves prioritization based on risk rather than operational performance. While this process allowed the Army Corps to prioritize individual investment decisions according to risk, it did not define a specific measurable goal for the operational performance of the Soo Locks. Without goals and measures for the Soo Locks, the Army Corps lacked a key tool to assess whether the investments made in the locks have resulted in improved lock performance, such as reductions in outages and delays to its users. Therefore, GAO recommended that the Army Corps develop and adopt goals and measures to assess the performance of the Soo Locks and assess outcomes of asset renewal efforts. In 2020, GAO confirmed that the Army Corps had established performance goals and measures for the Soo Locks. Specifically, in 2019 the Army Corps completed an operational condition assessment through which it established a baseline for the goals and metrics it will use to measure Soo Locks improvement impacts starting in March 2020. The Army Corps established two goals for the Soo Locks: (1) to have no more than 10 unscheduled outage hours per year, and (2) for 100 percent of critical lock components to have a 'B' condition assessment rating or better. As a result of developing and implementing these performance goals and measures, the Army Corps will be in a better position to demonstrate outcomes of its asset renewal projects, including whether those projects improve the condition of lock components and the operational performance of the Soo Locks by reducing unscheduled outages for users.