120 HISTORY OF THE COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY 



So Colonel Gould went out to visit every NASA center in the 

 United States, and the Guaymas Mercury tracking station in Mexico. 

 He reflects: 



When I came back, I knew more about these facilities, about what was in the 

 program, than the witnesses who later testified on the programs at (NASA) 

 headquarters. 



Having had long experience with orderly planning methods in force 

 throughout the Department of the Army, being trained to observe 

 and ask the right questions about construction programs, and having 

 the advantage of his held investigations, Gould quickly spotted that 

 NASA construction and design procedures were in quite a mess. There 

 were 16 different facilities offices at the NASA headquarters, each going 

 its own way and each in charge of its own construction. Meanwhile, 

 out at the NASA centers, huge discrepancies were cropping up in the 

 budgeted costs for construction. For example, there were some similar 

 style buildings for which the cost figures were glaringly different. 

 Gould discovered that no installation had a master plan; they had "as 

 built" plans which showed where the buildings were, but lacked future 

 projections. As Gould reported, 



It was not unusual for NASA's construction projects to miss the mark by 100 

 percent in the amount authorized versus the actual cost. 



Gould made a number of recommendations which were incorpo- 

 rated in both the statute and the committee report. NASA was in- 

 structed in the statute to develop its own "uniform design criteria 

 and construction standards" and in 1963 the House succeeded in 

 beating back the NASA-Senate effort to insert weasel-worded loop- 

 holes like "to the fullest extent practicable" — as had been done in 

 the 1962 statute. The committee did not stop there, but continued to 

 ride herd on NASA management until NASA in 1965 finally published 

 its very own "Design Criteria and Construction Standards." Associate 

 Administrator Seamans in his introduction to the 1965 volume gave 

 due credit to the House Committee on Science and Astronautics for 

 having initiated the fight for these home-grown standards. Gould 

 also pointed out to the committee that NASA had two different 

 "pots" hidden in the authorization bill out of which they drew 

 facilities design money: (1) there was a separate overall lump sum 

 for that purpose, and (2) each construction project included some 

 design funds. On his field trips, Gould discovered that NASA's practice 

 was that "someone would make a thumbnail estimate of what a 

 facility would cost and put it in the budget, add a given percentage 

 to design it and a given percentage for contingencies and come to 

 Congress to ask for the money." To correct this haphazard practice, 



