Science
March 7, 2008
By Jeffrey Mervis
After a decade of making their case to the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), scientists planning a major project for remote monitoring of the oceans thought they had cleared the final hurdle in December. That's when an external panel blessed the $331 million venture, called the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI), and told NSF officials "to enter into the detailed design and construction phase" to build it. "We were ready to go, and the reviewers agreed," says Steven Bohlen of the Consortium for Ocean Leadership in Washington, D.C., which is managing the project.
So Bohlen and his colleagues were shocked last month when NSF omitted building funds for OOI and two other long-running projects on the verge of construction--the $100 million National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) and the $123 million Alaska Region Research Vessel (ARRV)--from its 2009 budget request to Congress. It's part of a new policy aimed at eliminating cost overruns that occur after construction is under way. Those overruns have not only forced NSF to borrow from other accounts, but they can also lead to last-minute changes that weaken a project's scientific capabilities. Under the previous policy, a project was approved based chiefly on its scientific merit; it might be years before NSF arrived at a final price based on all relevant factors. Now, NSF is requiring a firm cost estimate before asking Congress for construction funds.
Scientists whose projects face delays of a year or more aren't pleased about the sudden policy shift. But they understand why NSF is asking them to go back to their calculators. "It's not good news for the science," says Terry Whitledge, director of the Institute of Marine Science at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, which manages the ARRV project for NSF. "But I think that NSF is probably doing the right thing in the current budget environment. And their message to all of us is clear: Don't come back to us down the road with a higher number."
The new rules mark the latest attempt by NSF, an agency known for its expertise in small science, to get a better handle on an expanding portfolio of large projects. The facilities can cost upward of $500 million to build and tens of millions of dollars a year to operate, a sizable commitment for a $6 billion agency. The policy affects four projects now in NSF's major research equipment and facilities construction account--including the Advanced Technology Solar Telescope in Hawaii, which is listed as a new start for 2009 although it is currently still in the design phase--as well as all future proposals.
The large-facilities account was created more than a decade ago to segregate big-ticket items such as ships and telescopes from the agency's bread-and-butter research and education programs. But the community was so unhappy with how NSF's oversight body, the National Science Board, approved and ranked projects that it complained to Congress, which ordered up a review by the National Academies' National Research Council. Its 2004 report recommended that the process be more rigorous and transparent (Science, 16 January 2004, p. 299). NSF Director Arden Bement says the agency has embraced those suggestions by setting up a new administrative office and monitoring each project more closely.
Even so, last month Bement went one step further. Although NSF has spent millions on each project to help scientists lay the groundwork, Bement says he won't ask for construction funds until each has passed a final project review that includes a firm cost estimate and a detailed analysis of environmental and regulatory issues. "It's a huge culture change for the foundation," says a White House official familiar with how NSF manages its large projects.
A more thorough vetting could shorten the actual construction time, Bement says, and reduce the chances that a project would need to be "descoped" to stay within its budget. He says the new rule also brings NSF practices closer to those at other federal agencies, such as the Department of Energy and NASA, which have more experience building and managing large scientific facilities and instruments.
NEON's checkered history highlights the problems Bement is trying to correct. NSF first requested money for NEON--some $12 million--in its 2001 budget request. Then-NSF Director Rita Colwell called it "a continental-scale research instrument consisting of 10 geographically distributed observatories, networked via state-of-the-art communications, for integrated studies to obtain a predictive understanding of the nation's environments." But the initial design was reworked substantially after scientists raised numerous objections. Last spring, the community came up with the current version, which features a network of 20 core sites and 40 "relocatable" sites. The core sites are expected to provide a 30-year longitudinal record of myriad factors, whereas the other sites will focus on narrower scientific questions and capture more transient environmental events.
Despite those ups and downs, its price tag never varied. David Schimel, who runs the Boulder, Colorado-based consortium responsible for building NEON, says the original $100 million figure announced in 2001 "was not based on anything." The new policy, he says, allows project leaders to do it right. "NSF has actually done us a huge favor by unshackling us from that $100 million estimate," he says. "Now we can start over and come up with a new, more realistic baseline. Needless to say, the new figure will be higher."
Just as important as the initial construction cost, says Schimel, is the estimated $30 million a year needed to operate and maintain the network. "That's the real constraint," he says. "We don't want to gut the community's research budget [at NSF] by building a facility that's too costly to operate." Project scientists are hoping to incorporate several features to reduce labor and maintenance costs in the final design, he says. Accordingly, NSF's 2009 budget request includes $26 million for NEON from its research account, in part to fund the additional work needed to come up with a more efficient design.
Project leaders for OOI, which is expected to cost $50 million annually to operate, say they made similar hard choices in preparing for the preliminary design review NSF conducted in December. The observatories will gather data on coastal, regional, and global scales, and the community has been ruthless in paring each system down to the bone, says Holly Given, the consortium's director of ocean-observing activities. For example, Bohlen notes that only three sites remain from an original plan for 10 blue-water autonomous buoy systems--in the Southern Ocean off the Chilean coast, the North Atlantic near Greenland, and the Gulf of Alaska in the northern Pacific. "As we refined our cost estimates, we had to scale back and concentrate on what was most important scientifically," he explains.
The cost of some components can't be nailed down until the plans are actually sent out for bids, Bohlen says. Referring to the five sets of seabed cables that will connect instruments continuously monitoring the Juan de Fuca Ridge off the coast of Washington state, he notes that "the market price for those materials and sensors, plus labor, can vary a lot." NSF is seeking $10.5 million in 2009 for OOI for continued planning.
Scientists involved in the Alaska research vessel are acutely aware of how the economy can wreak havoc on carefully laid scientific plans. Whitledge estimates that NSF's new policy will add 12 to 18 months to the project's scheduled solicitation of bids in 2010--at a price yet to be calculated. "Shipyard costs have been going up by 20% a year," Whitledge says, because of the rising cost of steel and other raw materials and industry's demand for new and refurbished exploration ships triggered by $100-per-barrel oil prices. A delay also means a longer wait for data on the impacts of climate change in the Arctic, he notes. The ship will replace the Alpha Helix, a 40-year-old research vessel that the university retired in 2004.
Bement doesn't pretend to have all the answers for managing large facilities. "I'm convinced that we can do a lot better," he told Representative Alan Mollohan (D-WV), chair of the House panel that sets NSF's budget, during a hearing last week on NSF's 2009 budget request. But the problem clearly has his full attention. When Mollohan asked about one project, Bement brushed aside the chair's suggestion that he turn to one of his aides for the details. That won't be necessary, Bement replied: "I know the answer. I get a report every month. And I read them."
