Repair and Alteration of the General Accounting Office Building

GAO discussed its prospectus for repairs and alteration of its headquarters building. GAO noted that: (1) the prospectus covered completion of the heating, ventilating, and air-conditioning system, replacement of associated ceilings, lights, partitions, flooring and electrical repairs, asbestos removal, and upgraded electrical and telecommunications equipment and cabling systems; (2) it could not perform any renovation or normal maintenance work above the drop-ceiling or properly heat and air condition the building because of the asbestos ductwork; (3) it needed to modify its physical space, increase the air-conditioning capacity, and upgrade the electrical system beyond the original 1974 plan to accommodate emerging office technology; (4) to facilitate the construction process, it planned to move two agencies presently housed in the GAO building into other facilities and consolidate about 1,100 audit site personnel presently housed in host agency space; (5) without the proposed repairs, the building would become untenantable, the asbestos products would present a clearly unacceptable health hazard, and it would need an equivalent amount of leased or newly constructed space; and (6) the estimated 30-year, present-value life-cycle cost to construct a new building would total about $379.4 million, the repair and alteration option would cost about $333.6 million, and the leasing costs would cost about $537.4 million.