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NASA plans to invest billions of dollars in the coming years to explore space, and conduct aeronautics research, among other things. We designated NASA’s acquisition management as high-risk in 1990 in view of NASA’s history of persistent cost growth and schedule delays in the majority of its major projects. We have identified management weaknesses that have exacerbated the inherent technical and engineering risks faced by NASA’s largest projects.

In more recent years, we found that NASA had taken steps to improve its management of its major projects—those projects and programs with an estimated life-cycle cost over $250 million. However, we reported in May 2018 that the cost and schedule performance of NASA’s portfolio of major projects deteriorated. One of NASA’s largest projects, the James Webb Space Telescope, has experienced delays of 81 months and cost growth of 95 percent since 2009.

In 2018, we found that additional cost and schedule growth is likely for the portfolio. Many major projects, including some of the most expensive ones, are in the phase of their life cycles when cost and schedule growth is most likely. Further, NASA faces significant challenges largely driven by the need to improve the completeness and reliability of its cost and schedule estimates, update cost and schedule estimates as new risks emerge, and ensure that programmatic decisions are not increasing risks to projects.
 

• In our May 2018 assessment of major projects, we were unable to determine the cost performance for NASA’s portfolio of major projects for the first time because NASA lacked a current cost estimate for its Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (Orion)—one of the largest projects in the portfolio. In addition, the approved cost estimate for the Space Network Ground Segment Sustainment project underestimated the expected life-cycle cost because it did not include the full scope of the project’s effort.
  
  Further, we reported in July 2018 that the Commercial Crew Program did not provide Congress with the results of its schedule analysis showing a risk of schedule delays beyond what each of its two contractors’ had previously provided. As a result, Congress does not have complete information for decision-making regarding U.S. access to the International Space Station.
• NASA has not taken action on several recommendations we made related to understanding the long-term costs of its human exploration programs. For example, two human spaceflight programs—Exploration Ground Systems (EGS) and Space Launch System (SLS)—do not have a cost and schedule baseline that covers activities beyond the first planned flight. In addition, the third program—Orion—does not have a baseline beyond the second planned flight. As a result, NASA is now committing itself to spend billions of dollars for missions that do not have a cost and schedule baseline against which to assess progress.
• NASA leadership has approved programmatic decisions that compounded technical challenges. These decisions included establishing insufficient cost and schedule reserves, operating under aggressive schedules, and not following best practices for establishing reliable cost and schedule baselines for some of its most expensive major projects, including Orion, SLS, and the James Webb Space Telescope. As a result, these programs have been at risk of cost growth and schedule delays since NASA approved their baselines.
  
  Further, the Mars 2020 project experienced cost growth stemming from technical challenges on a technology demonstration instrument designed to convert carbon dioxide to oxygen. NASA approved the project to proceed through its preliminary design review without maturing a critical technology for this instrument. In our prior work on best practices for systems entering product development, we have found that such decisions can increase risk for these systems.

• NASA has not always followed best practices in areas such as estimating costs and schedules and earned value management, and projects are reluctant to update their cost and schedule estimates as new risks emerge. For example, NASA partially agreed with our July 2016 recommendation that the Orion program should update its joint cost and schedule confidence analysis—a point-in-time estimate that, among other things, includes all cost and schedule elements, and incorporates and quantifies known risks that support each program’s cost and schedule baseline. In January 2018, however, NASA officials stated that they have no plans to update this analysis. An updated analysis would be beneficial given numerous conditions and risks have changed since the analysis was completed, including delays to its first planned flight.
• In our May 2018 assessment of major projects, we found that several NASA major projects experienced workforce challenges, including not having enough staff or staff with the right skills. NASA has also identified capability gaps in areas such as scheduling, earned value management, and cost estimating, and has efforts underway to try to improve capacity in these areas.

Since we initially designated this area as high-risk, we have made numerous recommendations. As of December 2018, 15 recommendations related to this high-risk area remain open. Of the 9 recommendations we have made since the last high-risk update in February 2017, 6 remain open.

NASA should take action in the following areas to reduce acquisition risk to its portfolio of major projects and demonstrate progress.

• Increase transparency of project costs and decline to approve cost and schedule baselines or programmatic decisions that increase risk to projects. This includes not approving project cost and schedule baselines that do not meet best practices and that do not have adequate cost and schedule reserves.
• Implement recommendations related to the long-term costs of its human exploration programs. This will be especially important for NASA to determine the affordability of its portfolio, especially now that it plans to begin developing other large, complex projects.
• Build capacity by ensuring that NASA’s workforce has the right skills to develop project cost and schedule estimates that meet best practices.
• Ensure that NASA updates project cost and schedule estimates as risks change.
• Implement the new corrective action plan and track progress against it. Continue to develop and refine outcome metrics for the human spaceflight portfolio analysis and planning effort to provide better metrics to assess improvements in program outcomes.
• In conjunction with its new corrective action plan, institute a program for monitoring and independently validating the effectiveness and sustainability of corrective measures.

Congressional Actions Needed

In October 2017, we raised a matter for Congressional consideration that Congress should consider requiring the NASA Administrator to direct the Exploration Systems Development organization within the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate to establish separate cost and schedule baselines for work required to support Space Launch System and Exploration Ground Systems for the second combined exploration mission and establish separate cost and schedule baselines for each additional capability that encompass all life-cycle costs, to include operations and sustainment. We made this a matter for Congressional consideration because NASA has not acted on our May 2014 recommendation to establish baselines for these programs or for capabilities beyond NASA’s first test flight, and does not have plans to do either.
 

Recommended Links

• National Defense and Space System Acquisitions