{"id":169,"date":"2026-06-03T22:12:16","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T22:12:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/americanindustryreview.com\/?p=169"},"modified":"2026-06-03T22:12:16","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T22:12:16","slug":"tough-lessons-house-braces-for-rayburn-renovation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/americanindustryreview.com\/?p=169","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Tough lessons\u2019: House braces for Rayburn renovation"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

As one lengthy renovation on the Capitol campus comes to an end, another one is about to begin \u2014 and lawmakers are hoping it won\u2019t come with the same blown deadlines and cost overruns.<\/p>\n

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Members pressed Architect of the Capitol Thomas Austin on how to use lessons from the Cannon House Office Building renewal project to inform future renovations to the Rayburn Building at a House Administration Committee hearing Wednesday.<\/p>\n

The hearing comes amid ongoing warnings from Austin about the aging infrastructure of the Capitol complex and the risk of \u201ccatastrophic system failure.\u201d He stressed the need to act sooner rather than later to address Rayburn\u2019s issues \u2014 warning that the costs will only pile up the longer they wait.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Over the last 12 months alone, 16 major leaks affected six member suites, four committee office spaces, five member storage areas and two hallways, Austin said. These required \u201cmillions of dollars\u201d of remediation and repairs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAs these facilities age and kind of reach this tipping point, we start having an increasing number of failures,\u201d Austin said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, scaffolding from the exterior of the renovated Cannon Building has been removed and the long-awaited Cannon courtyard has opened up, marking the end of an era for many lawmakers and staff.\u00a0Disruptions from the Cannon project have been a thorny subject on the campus for more than a decade. Originally estimated at $750 million in 2009, the project will come in at $971 million when completed, Austin said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

House Administration Chair Bryan Steil, R-Wis., said the cost of Cannon will have some \u201ctough lessons\u201d that can be applied to Rayburn.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAs Congress debates future large-scale projects like this, my primary goal is to ensure that we are good stewards of taxpayer resources,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Austin said he anticipates renovations could begin on Rayburn in around eight years, with construction on swing space happening before then.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Rayburn houses \u201cnearly 200 member offices, committee hearing rooms, suites, SCIFs, three levels of parking and even a Capitol Police firing range,\u201d according to Steil \u2014 the largest of the congressional office buildings.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt certainly will be the largest renovation program this agency has ever taken on,\u201d Austin said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In Austin\u2019s eyes, the three biggest lessons learned from Cannon are that doing renovations in small phases is \u201cinefficient,\u201d construction needs to be separated from congressional operations as much as possible and there should be a higher bar for changing plans along the way.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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House appropriators approved a draft fiscal 2027 Legislative Branch appropriations bill last month with $689 million for the Architect of the Capitol, not including funding for office buildings on the Senate side, coming in $720 million below Austin\u2019s more than $1 billion request.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Congress should fully invest in the Rayburn project and heed the pleas from Austin, who has held the job since 2024, said House Administration ranking member Joseph D. Morelle, D-N.Y.<\/p>\n

\u201cAllowing the buildings we work in to deteriorate around us is a fitting illustration of the broader failure to strengthen and sustain\u201d Congress\u2019 Article 1 powers under the Constitution, he said. \u201cEven before the current architect\u2019s appointment, the agency had been sounding the alarm.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Aside from Morelle, no Democrats were present at Wednesday\u2019s hearing. While lawmakers at the hearing expressed support for the agency\u2019s work, Senate appropriators last month criticized Austin, saying the agency needs to improve its outreach to lawmakers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Temporary office locations, referred to as \u201cswing space,\u201d have been a source of contention between the AOC and lawmakers. After a swing space study initiated in 2024, Austin said his top recommendation is to construct a new facility for it, which could then be used as Congress sees fit, including as swing space for a future renovation of the aging Longworth House Office Building.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

When Steil asked why the nearby Library of Congress\u2019 Madison Building should not be used instead, Austin replied it \u201cwas never built for high occupancy office space\u201d and would require extensive reconstruction to fit the needs of a congressional office building.<\/p>\n

Austin has warned of the \u201ccatastrophic system failure\u201d that could occur the longer Rayburn renovations are delayed, which he defined as any failure of one building system that causes part of all of the building to become unusable. He pointed to the failure of an air handling unit in October, which he said led to 22 House office suites to be without air conditioning.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHad that happened in June or July or say January, when conditions were extreme, those offices \u2026 would have been unusable for that period of time, and we would have either had to mitigate it with expensive temporary fixes or we\u2019d have to relocate staff,\u201d Austin said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Austin said Rayburn will have some different challenges than Cannon, including asbestos, lead and differences in how the buildings are used. Rayburn has more hearing rooms and specialized facilities, he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Austin stressed that the longer Congress waits to take action, the worse the issues will get and the more expensive they will be to fix.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAs these system failures start increasing frequency and severity, that\u2019s going to start impacting members of Congress more and more,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Read more Bessent stays mum on \u2018anti-weaponization\u2019 fund at hearing<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As one lengthy renovation on the Capitol campus comes to an end, another one is about to begin \u2014 and lawmakers are hoping it won\u2019t come with the same blown deadlines and cost overruns. 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