|
|||||
|
|||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||
 |
 |
    |
|
|
|||
 |
|
||
|
|||
|
|
|
|
||||||||
|
New Contracts Could Speed Russian CW Destruction By Jon Fox, Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — U.S. Defense Department officials expect a crucial contract at a U.S.-funded Russian chemical weapons destruction facility to be awarded in early July, allowing the behind-schedule project to progress (see GSN, June 2). Construction of the primary destruction building at the sprawling Shchuchye complex is roughly one year behind schedule and has been hindered by difficulties working with Russian subcontractors, according to a report from the Government Accountability Office released last month. The project, supported almost entirely by U.S. Cooperative Threat Reduction funding, has also been stalled by a labyrinthine Russian bureaucracy and the remote nature of the site east of the Ural mountains, according to Paul Boren, head of the Defense Department’s Treaty and Threat Reduction Office. A U.S.-funded building at the heart of the complex – a destruction facility where nerve agents will be removed from munitions and encased in a type of asphalt – has been dragged behind schedule by an inability to get a reasonable bid from Russian subcontractors, Boren said Wednesday during a panel discussion at the Washington offices of the Monterey Institute of International Studies (see GSN, Jan. 17). The “hiccup” involves what Boren called the “systemization” of the plant. The chemical weapons are destroyed in an automated process operated by a computer system. However, getting a Russian subcontractor to install that system and link the automated elements together has been difficult. One firm had requested roughly $300 million, more than six times what U.S. officials believe the work to be worth, Boren said. He said he expects an acceptable bid to be presented within weeks. In 2005, the Defense Department estimated that that the facility would be completed and transferred to Russian control by 2009 at a total cost of just more than $1 billion. In March, however, officials said the failure to award the contract for the central destruction facility had hampered their ability to estimate both the date of completion and the cost, according to the GAO report. The Defense Department is still trying to hold the line at $1 billion and is talking with Russian officials about ways to cut costs, Boren said. The project was halted in 2000 when Congress demanded that Russia inject a certain amount of funding into the site, Boren said. Moscow has since committed funds, he said, but Russian government opacity has made difficult to know how much. When GAO officials traveled to the Russian site in February, they found the complex about 40 percent complete. Initial target dates had projected the building to be more than half done by that point. The exterior of Building 101, the crucial destruction building, was complete at the time of the GAO trip, but the U.S. contractor had still not selected a Russian company to complete the rest of facility. Parsons Global Services, the U.S. firm leading the project, had hoped to have that contract awarded by June 2005. U.S. contractors and the Defense Department have been compelled to navigate a Russian bureaucracy that seems to be constantly in flux, according to Boren. “Bureaucracies spring up and change all the time in Russia,” he said. In one case documented by the GAO, a new Russian regulatory agency appeared at the site in November 2005 with a list of additional project requirements. However, the existence of Rostekhnadzor, the agency performing the surprise audit, was unknown to both Defense Department officials and Russian officials at Shchuchye, Boren said. Foreign workers are required to temporarily leave Russia every six months to renew their visas, a bureaucratic hoop that has added $3 million in costs as of November 2005, auditors found. Recently, however, the Defense Department has noticed an improvement in the speed of those renewals, the GAO report states. Work was also delayed in early 2004 when a reorganization of the Russian government temporarily eliminated the office in charge of waiving import taxes on the heavy equipment used for construction. For six months all equipment shipped from the United States was stopped and construction fell three months behind schedule, the GAO reported. Government auditors also said the U.S. firm leading the project has had a hard time getting its accounting experts go to Shchuchye. A mandatory accounting system provides U.S. officials with early warnings of schedule delays and cost spikes, but Parsons employees familiar with it have been reluctant to travel to the swampy and often frigid Russian site. “When you work overseas at a remote site in a swamp, you want to get out of there,” Boren said, adding that even “the people who live in Shchuchye want to get out of there.”
| ||||||||||
Back to top
