GAO Urges Commerce to Tighten Oversight of Concrete Masonry Program
A new Government Accountability Office report reveals that the Department of Commerce lacks written procedures to oversee the $27 million Concrete Masonry Checkoff program, creating governance risks for key industrial base and research initiatives.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has cited the U.S. Department of Commerce for lacking formal written oversight procedures for the Concrete Masonry Checkoff (CMC) program. Established under the Concrete Masonry Products Research, Education, and Promotion Act of 2018, the program enables approximately 260 domestic producers to pool assessment funds for industry-wide research, workforce training, and market expansion. Between 2023 and 2025, the CMC Board collected over $27.2 million in mandatory assessments and expended $15 million across 17 national and 69 regional initiatives.
Although Commerce consulted with the U.S. Department of Agriculture to structure its monitoring mechanisms, GAO found that the agency has not documented standard operating procedures for reviewing and approving annual program objectives or key performance metrics. Currently, the CMC Board tracks progress across six core focus areas using 27 distinct output metrics, such as integrating concrete masonry design into university engineering curricula. While the board has met or exceeded five goals and made progress on ten others, Commerce’s informal approval process increases the risk of inconsistent enforcement, regulatory drift, and loss of institutional knowledge during leadership transitions.
For defense acquisition, civil works, and infrastructure leaders, the health and standardization of the domestic concrete masonry industrial base are vital. Concrete masonry units form a foundational building block for defense installations, military construction projects, base hardening, and resilient infrastructure nationwide. Effective federal stewardship of industry research and educational metrics directly influences the availability of skilled engineering talent, material resilience standards, and technological advancements across the construction supply chain. Inadequate oversight of checkoff investments risks diluting the impact of critical research intended to modernize domestic material capabilities.
GAO recommended that the Department of Commerce draft and implement formalized written procedures for evaluating the CMC Board’s annual metrics and strategic goals. GAO emphasized that Commerce can execute these governance enhancements using existing operational resources, providing a low-effort control improvement to ensure statutory compliance. The CMC Board is slated to publish its first independent effectiveness evaluation in early 2027, making standardized federal oversight critical prior to the release of program impact assessments. (Source: GAO Reports)
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