usually it would take not more than a year before we would select an A & E. Then the A & E. would take approximately on a building of that size about 1 year to design. Mr. HYZER. In Los Angeles we are still in the 929 stage, which is the form the inspectors fill out with the basic data. I would say with a large facility of that type we are 2 years away from architect award. I do not have my schedule. I doubt if that has been scheduled out to that degree. Do you know, Dick? Mr. HARRIS. That is about right. Mr. HYZER. We have not selected a site yet. Mr. HENDRICKSON. The Congressman is asking about the length of time involved after the land has been purchased. Mr. HYZER. Normally the land is under control of the Bureau of Facilities before we award an A. & E. contract. The site may be selected a year or more ahead of that. Mr. WILSON. Then of course you are at the mercy of the the funding too. Mr. HYZER. Yes, sir. Mr. WILSON. You can only ask Congress for funds when you reach a certain point, I suppose, in the development. Mr. HYZER. Yes. Mr. WILSON. I think Mr. Brasco has a question about it. Mr. BRASCO. Over and above that, I understand that the new facility coming in Brooklyn, which you would consider a large facility, is somewhere in the area of $36 million or something like that for construction. Is there any target date for commencement of work? Mr. HENDRICKSON. If you do not want to be specific, yes. Just talking in general about any program, you have to get a certain place before we can program it all the way through. To say there is a program on this specific project at this time would be doubtful. Whenever we get certain things accomplished then we can program the whole thing out. Mr. BRASCO. You see, this is a part of an overall picture. Nothing is contemplated at this particular time in terms of scheduling other than the fact there is going to be that kind of installation in Brooklyn. Mr. HENDRICKSON. I do not know which one you are talking about. Mr. HYZER. As I recall, we do have a facility planned for Brooklyn. Perhaps Mr. Coffman knows. It has not been scheduled out as far as I know. Mr. O'MARRA. One of our problems, Congressman-you will recognize this-we are having difficulty putting together a site of the size required for that large facility in Brooklyn. Mr. BRASCO. My question was in terms of timing. I assume there can be no timing until you solve the problem you were talking about. Mr. O'MARRA. We are hopeful of having Brooklyn programed and funded for site and design in our fiscal 1970 program. We originally had it targeted for the tail end of fiscal 1969, but the site problem is such that we cannot control the site in fiscal 1969 and we will require the funds now in fiscal 1970 on the control of the site. As it was brought out, we really cannot award an A. & E. contract, even though in-house engineering work can be going on, and have him start work unless we can say it is definitely going to be on this specific site. Otherwise we are wasting A. & E. money. Mr. BRASCO. So there is no site? Mr. O'MARRA. There is no site at the present time, but we are working on lining up the site, and in many of these sites we run into problems that we have 70 or 80 or 100 parcels involved putting together the post office site, and we have to go through a long condemnation procedure, for example. We have to negotiate with each owner, the Justice Department requires that we enter into individual negotiation before we file condemnation. When we have this many people to negotiate with, this slows up your ability to go ahead. Mr. BRASCO. This is the problem. There is very little land available. I know. Mr. HYZER. To carry on from a scheduling point of view, we establish the site requirements and give them to Mr. O'Marra but Mr. BRASCO. Once the site is located you come in? Mr. HYZER. On a facility of this magnitude, we cannot go ahead with design until we know what the site is going to be. This would be wasted engineering efforts. Once he gives us a site then we can proceed with our design schedule. Mr. WILSON. I am sorry we get into these parochial matters. I brought it up first and I want to apologize. These are things we can probably check out with you directly. We are probably going to have to proceed with our other hearing. Would you like to wrap your presentation? Mr. PACKER. Yes, sir; I think I can in 5 minutes. Mr. WILSON. Proceed. Mr. PACKER. I think it is an interesting fact that the regional engineering branches in our postal regions have approximately 10 times as many projects as we do in headquarters and provide approximately the same amount of postal space per year as we do in headquarters. Therefore, it is quite natural that we should be concerned with an upgrading of their effectiveness and competence as we are concerned with our own Bureau. Under Mr. Hyzer's direction we have a small organization that is working toward an improvement of engineering functions which are primarily facilities and postal space oriented in the region. We are trying to achieve improved quality of architecture, better control of construction, better competence of these groups. We are not yet fully satisfied with the professionalism of these engineering groups at the present time. Improvement of regional competence will give us many benefits in the future, certainly a more favorable reaction from the public on completed post offices, higher standards of design and more economical maintenance, fewer litigations and misunderstandings and all the difficulties that you get into if you do not have the highest level of competence in the regions. And we are very concerned about the fact that the Congress has not permitted the regions to grow, and this has hurt engineering effectiveness in particular. I would like to conclude with just a few remarks as to what we see in the future. I think that would wind up our discussion of construction engineering. In the future we see progress in modular design for subsystems. By that I mean we will see modular design elements in air conditioning, heating, lighting, windows, floors, conveyors, structural elements, doors, traffic control, and so on. We will see more selective standardization of smaller office design. Better layouts, better use of space, more adaptability to change because need for change will be upon us much more so than in the past. We see better and closer relationships between research and construction engineering and between our bureaus and other bureaus in the Department that are involved in the facilities program. We certainly hope to see more effective regional engineering operations. We are looking forward to better management and better planning within our own Bureau and we are going to use systems engineering in construction more and more. Those are my projections, those are some of the objectives toward which we are working. These are the ways in which I see the problems and the hopes in construction engineering in our Bureau, Mr. Chairman, and I would like to reserve for some future time our further discussion of industrial engineering and research and development. Mr. WILSON. I want to thank you very much, Dr. Packer. I am very well aware of the outstanding job you and your associates are doing in the Bureau of Research and Engineering and the great contribution you have made to the modernization of our postal system. Too few people in our country are aware of the work that is actually being done in this field. We, as Members of Congress, get complaints from people about the deliveries of mail and so forth. I think the people get more for their money in the Post Office Department than any other branch of Government, but nevertheless, we have to make them aware of the scientific approach you gentlemen are taking, and what you are doing to help modernize the postal system. We are very happy for this opportunity to meet with you and hope perhaps next spring we can have you with us again to bring us up to date. I do not know how many changes there will be then. But, I hope you are all still with us and can come back so that we can proceed in an orderly fashion. Unless there are further questions or comments, we will adjourn this portion of the meeting. Thank you very much. (Whereupon, at 11:22 a.m., the committee adjourned the open session.) COORDINATED FEDERAL WAGE SYSTEM HEARINGS BEFORE THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON MANPOWER AND CIVIL SERVICE OF THE COMMITTEE ON POST OFFICE AND CIVIL SERVICE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES NINETIETH CONGRESS SECOND SESSION FEBRUARY 6, MARCH 27, AND APRIL 24, 1968 Serial No. 90-51 Printed for the use of the Committee on Post Office and Civil Service 96-372 U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE WASHINGTON: 1968 LAW LIBRARY DEC 4 1968 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA |