116 



£xccvcive SuBiflury 



the future, as well as increased maintenance costs. Although some 

 mission-cntical facilities like the launch pads and the orbiter processing 

 facility used for the space shuttle are generally well maintained, the 

 eight centers gao visited all have detenorating facilities, such as leaking 

 roofs, peeling paint, and lesiking steam lines. 



For the most part, the actual expenditures for maintaining nasa's cen- 

 ters have been left to the discretion of the centers' directors. Histon- 

 cally, NASA's headquarters program offices and centers have not 

 conducted annual surveys to determine maintenance requirements and 

 allocated far fewer funds than the 2 to 4 percent of facilities' replace- 

 ment value that generally accepted maintenance guidelines dictate. 



Procedures for budgeting jmd accounting for maintenance resources at 

 some centers are inadequate. Centers have not based their maintenance 

 budgets on actual needs and have not accurately accounted for all main- 

 tenance expenditures. This inadequacy contributes to nasa's difficulties. 



Recognizing the need to improve its management of centers' facilities 

 maintenance, .nasa has recently taken steps to focus on the problems. 



Principal Findings 



NASA's Facilities Are 

 Deteriorating 



The condition of facilities vanes from center to center, nasa's practice of 

 defemng maintenance has resulted in severe deterioration of some facil- 

 ities. An example of deterioration is concrete falling from the roof of the 

 52-story building where the shuttle is joined with the external fuel tank 

 and solid rocket boosters, nasa installed netting beneath the roof deck to 

 catch the concrete, nasa has also experienced catastrophic breakdowns 

 of facilities due to insufficient or deferred maintenance. For example, a 

 cooling tower partially collapsed from the weight of ice that accumu- 

 lated because water valves were not functioning properly. Additional 

 problems include faulty winng (which caused a fire) in a mission control 

 building, leaking roofs, water seeping into electrical rooms, and a rup- 

 tured steam line. 



In fiscal year 1990, nasa contracted for an assessment of the condition 

 of its centers' facilities. The assessment rated the facilities "marginal" 

 overall, which corroborated gao's observations. 



