Case Study 25: From James Webb Telescope, GAO-16-112, December 17, 2015

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is one of NASA’s most complex and expensive projects, at an anticipated cost of $8.8 billion. With significant integration and testing scheduled in the remaining years until the planned launch date, the JWST project would need to continue to address many challenges and identify problems, many likely to be revealed during its rigorous testing to come. The continued success of JWST hinged on NASA’s ability to anticipate, identify, and respond to these challenges in a timely and cost-effective manner to meet its commitments.

The JWST project was meeting its schedule commitments, but it would soon face some of its most challenging integration and testing. JWST had almost 9 months of schedule reserve—down more than 2 months since GAO’s last report in December 2014—but still above its schedule plan and the Goddard Space Flight Center requirement. However, as GAO also found in December 2014, all JWST elements and major subsystems continued to remain within weeks of becoming the critical path—the schedule with the least amount of schedule reserve—for the overall project. Given their proximity to the critical path, the use of additional reserve on any element or major subsystem may have reduced the overall project schedule reserve.

Before the planned launch in October 2018, the project had to complete five major integration and test events, three of which had not yet begun. Integration and testing is when problems are often identified and schedules tend to slip. At the same time, the project had to also address over 100 technical risks and ensure that potential areas for mission failure were fully tested and understood.

Based on analysis of James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) contractor EVM data over 17 months, GAO found that some of the data used to conduct the analyses were unreliable. First, we found that both Northrop Grumman and Harris were reporting optimistic EACs that did not align with their historical EVM performance and fell outside the low end of our independent EAC range. Second, GAO found various anomalies in contractor EVM data for both contractors that they had not identified throughout the 17-month period we examined. The anomalies included unexplained entries for negative values of work performed (meaning that work was unaccomplished or taken away rather than accomplished during the reporting period), work tasks performed but not scheduled, or actual costs incurred with no work performed. For Northrop Grumman, many were relatively small in value ranging from a few thousand to tens of thousands of dollars.

GAO recommended that to resolve contractor data reliability issues and ensure that the project obtained reliable data to inform its analyses and overall cost position, the NASA Administrator direct JWST project officials to require the contractors to identify, explain, and document all anomalies in contractor-delivered monthly earned value management reports. In February 2016, NASA issued letters to the contractors requiring them to explain all anomalies in the contractor earned value management reports.

GAO reported its findings on December 17, 2015 in James Webb Telescope, Project on Track but May Benefit from Improved Contractor Data to Better Understand Costs, GAO-16-112.