Board Report: 2014-IT-B-002 February 7, 2014
Overall, we observed that the Board is following a structured approach to planning the relocation of the data center, and Board staff is actively engaged in the planning and decisionmaking for the project. The Board has executed an MOU with FRB Richmond for the build-out of the new data center and is maintaining a project management team and oversight group to monitor progress and risks. The project manager is monitoring the project, and the project team maintains a risk register to identify and document risks that may affect the project. In addition, the Executive Oversight Group is providing senior-level guidance and consultation to ensure that the Board's strategic objectives are being met.
We identified two areas for which additional actions by the Board are needed to keep the project progressing to meet requirements and schedule. First, the Board has not reevaluated the overall funding for relocating the data center since initially approving the consultant's cost projection of $201.5 million as the overall budget for the project. This figure was an initial estimate of project costs based on rough order of magnitude (ROM) pricing used to analyze alternatives, rather than a detailed budget for the project. To ensure adequate funding for all phases of the project, we believe that the budget should be reevaluated, taking into consideration the design changes that have occurred.
Second, the construction phase of the data center relocation project has an aggressive schedule with several identified risk areas. Because the data center currently resides in the Martin Building, the data center construction project must be completed within a certain time frame for the Martin Building renovation to proceed as scheduled. Any changes to the proposed data center construction schedule may affect the Martin Building renovation schedule. We believe that the Board should analyze possible approaches for responding to potential delays that could affect the Martin Building renovation project.
