Department of Transportation

Turboliner Modernization Project: Payment Verification

In the Turboliner Modernization Project, seven existing Amtrak trainsets, consisting of five cars each, were to be remanufactured by a contractor so that they could travel at higher speeds. We audited $14.1 million of the $41.7 million in payments made to the contractor as of June 30, 2002. We questioned $1.6 million of the payments made by the Department, mainly because certain costs claimed by the contractor were not documented and some of the work performed through change orders may have been included in the original project scope and, as a result, may have been covered by other payments that were previously made to the contractor. We recommended that the Department evaluate the validity of the questioned payments and recover any payments that could not be justified. We also recommended that the Department re-evaluate the validity of the payments not included in our sample and recover additional payments as appropriate. In addition, to provide better assurance that the costs claimed in long-term, high-risk contracts are documented and valid, we recommended that the Department perform interim audits of such contracts.

For a complete copy of Report 2002-S-15 click here.