Completing construction of the consolidated Department of Homeland Security (DHS) headquarters will save $1.2 billion over 30 years, says a report issued this week by Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), ranking member on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

Congressional reductions in funding the consolidated headquarters since it was first proposed in 2006 have delayed completion by 10 years and increased costs by $1.1 billion, says the report, DHS Headquarters Consolidations at St. Elizabeths: Better Results for Less Money, which was prepared by the committee Democratic staff.

Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), ranking member, Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee
Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), ranking member, Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee

The report says the cost increases have been due largely to inflationary costs in the construction industry and the loss of efficiencies stemming from work that could have been done simultaneously.

Funding for the remodeling and construction at St. Elizabeths is contained in both DHS and General Services Administration accounts. For FY ’17, Senate appropriators provided the $225.6 million requested by DHS while House appropriators only recommended $99.6 million, the report says. Neither committee included the $266.6 million sought by GSA for the work, it adds.

The report says that absent full funding in FY ’17, the headquarters consolidation project will be further delayed and costs will increase. The delay in completion would be one-year and DHS costs would increase by $42.8 million and GSA’s by $27 million, it says.

Carper said that completing the St. Elizabeths project makes fiscal and management sense.

“The headquarters consolidation project at St. Elizabeths is crucial to the success of the department and to realizing the unified, cohesive DHS envisioned by Congress when it created the department 14 years ago,” Carper said in a statement. “”Bringing together key leadership and agency personnel in one, centralized location is critical to supporting DHS’s mission, reducing management challenges, and making the department’s operations more efficient.”

Under the current revised plan, the headquarters consolidation is estimated to cost $3.7 billion and be complete by 2021. So far, Congress has provided $2.3 billion of the funding to complete the work.