[HN Gopher] Why construction projects always go over budget
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Why construction projects always go over budget
Author : throw0101b
Score : 160 points
Date : 2023-03-21 15:24 UTC (7 hours ago)
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| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| For the same reason they never go on time.
|
| Because for them to do so, every single thing needs to happen
| perfectly, while to be late of over budget, a single thing needs
| to go wrong.
|
| Over budgetting doesn't work because then your customers won't
| chose you when the bidding starts.
| daanlo wrote:
| A close relative is an architect. The way construction projects
| are managed is waterfall.
|
| It is made worse by the fact that you typically have 1) a large
| number of different expert firms involved, creating huge
| dependencies (imagine instead of FE & BE, having 8 different
| types of engineers, that can only work in a certain pre-defined
| order and have very limited availability (so if you are late and
| miss a slot, they may only be available again a few weeks or
| months later) 2) communication is either physical meeting of
| principles (bosses/managers) - rarely actual workers, email or
| paper print outs. It is not uncommon for on premise workers to
| work with month old plans that have since been changed.
|
| Buildings are one of the few purchasable objects that have gotten
| more expensive over the last decades (compared to pretty much
| every consumer goods item).
| oatmeal1 wrote:
| Funny enough, the cost overruns for the Big Dig weren't even the
| main problem. The main problem was that the solution of adding
| more roads to solve traffic issues was already known not to work
| because of induced demand.
|
| Traffic engineers have known this since one lane roads were
| expanded to two lane roads. The real question for this project is
| why a solution known not to work was chosen over solutions known
| to work.
| wfleming wrote:
| I think in at least some instances of projects like this, the
| goal is not really "traffic reduction", even if that's what
| officials publicly claim to sell it to the public. As you say,
| the phenomenon of induced demand is well known & presumably the
| people involved in driving these projects are aware of it.
|
| The goal is increased throughput/economic activity. If it takes
| X time to get a vehicle from A to B, and then you add lanes &
| demand goes up to keep X relatively constant, that can still be
| a net gain for community. It's about as equally frustrating for
| the folks sitting in traffic, but there's still _more vehicles
| getting from A to B_ because there 's more lanes, and more
| vehicles moving around can be good for the local economy.
| genocidicbunny wrote:
| There's also additional benefits from the fact that moving
| the highway underground made the area more desirable. There's
| no longer a massive concrete snake splitting downtown into
| pieces, and the area is cleaner and quieter due to moving all
| that car traffic underground.
| wfleming wrote:
| In the specific case of the big dig, absolutely! I moved to
| Cambridge right around when the dig was completed and saw
| those improvements accrue over the next few years. I had a
| bunch of friends eventually move to Southie & The
| Waterfront, which would have been unimaginable when I moved
| there. I also think the dig did make navigation around
| Boston easier, even if it didn't reduce overall traffic.
| oatmeal1 wrote:
| > The goal is increased throughput/economic activity.
|
| They've still chosen an incredibly stupid solution if that is
| their goal. Building more highway is the least efficient
| means of improving transit throughput.
| bluGill wrote:
| Projects don't always got over budget. However it is very easy to
| go over budget on little things.
|
| I've seen people build a house and the cost of construction was
| exact on budget, but the upgraded doors, lights, and similar
| small things made them $30,000 over budget. This is even though
| their contractor was constantly warning them that those upgrades
| were going to cost. The general contractor doesn't change any
| more $ to install upgraded fixtures, that money all to the
| manufactures of the doors, lights... (changing after they are
| installed costs money, but when it is time to order doors he is
| thinking oak, pine, or maple (minimal cost differences between
| them) and you decide to get the 6 panel door that will cost a lot
| more.
| nemo44x wrote:
| A lot of contractors don't include the actual doors, windows,
| fixtures, tile material, etc in their quotes for this reason.
| They include the labor and supporting structures but there's a
| huge difference between installing a crappy vinyl window VS a
| Marvin signature or a wood door VS a printed door filled with
| styrofoam.
| bluGill wrote:
| The contractors I know include everything in their bid. They
| build both custom homes and spec homes. The later are built
| and then turned over to a realtor to sell, and they need to
| know the cost of everything on the spec home to ensure they
| can make a profit in the market. Since they know the full
| costs they will give that to everyone and then point out how
| the upgrades are bringing the total cost up.
|
| Of course their price is for the doors/windows they use which
| are on the cheaper end. Not cheapest - warranty callbacks and
| installation costs often make something just above the
| cheapest the best deal. If the difference isn't very much
| they will install the big brand that everyone knows is good
| as well as the reputation of putting in the "the best" is
| worth the few dollars profit lost. Good contractors know all
| of this and how to find the best balance.
| nemo44x wrote:
| The ones I work with are doing renovations for customers
| that aren't looking to sell a final product. Some things
| are based on a standard that can be upgraded (for instance,
| a deck is being quoted with pressure treated wood, but you
| can upgrade to Ipe for $x for example. Otherwise all of
| this would have to be selected before a quote is generated.
| So a ballpark/estimate is given that assumed certain things
| (like an Andersen 400 series window) but ultimately it's up
| to the customer to figure out if they want doors that cost
| $200 or $2000 inside, etc. and the quote is exclusive of
| them. This is usually detailed in the SoW as "customer
| supplied".
| kmod wrote:
| I'm curious about the higher level issues at play as well, which
| I'm just guessing about since I only have a lay understanding of
| the field
|
| Seems like there's probably a "winners curse" variant:
| conditioned on a bid being accepted, it is likely to be
| underestimated even if unconditioned there's an equal probability
| of under and over resonating
|
| Also seems like there's an incentive alignment problem as well:
| there's a clear benefit to bidding lower, and if the costs of
| underestimating are not born by the bidder then you would expect
| to see systematic underbidding even if we have on-average-
| accurate ways of estimating.
|
| These feel like important issues that are orthogonal to our
| ability to estimate things accurately and I wonder how much of
| the effect is from which type of cause (I wish the author had
| talked about this)
| jaclaz wrote:
| From experience, what you mention is part of the perverse
| effects of the bid mechanisms, but these have nothing to do
| with the initial underestimation and is comparatively minor in
| relevance.
|
| Something is designed (years time), then it is estimated (often
| wrongly, however it takes some time as well), then it is
| approved/funded (some more years).
|
| But, IF the design was valid AND the estimation was correct at
| the most you could adjust the total amount by
| inflation/increases of prices.
|
| So, pure theory, you calculate a cost of 100 units (million
| dollars, whatever), then, since a few years have passed you
| should add (say) 10% for inflation/price adjustment before
| proceeding to a public bid (but it is extremely rare that this
| is actually done).
|
| The construction firms/contractors will offer between 15% and
| 25% rebate, if the bid is (as often is) given at max rebate,
| the one with 25% rebate will get the job.
|
| Now, assuming that the estimation is perfectly accurate (it
| isn't at all) the winner is (on the first day) under for at
| least 20%, 10% (the price adjustment, if included) and another
| 10% (their profit), while the remaining 5% is debatable, in the
| sense that it is what is actually possible that one
| construction company can save when compared to another for a
| number of reasons (machinery, organization, whatever).
|
| So, from day one the winner has two possible ways out, the
| first is to actually optimize the work to recover this 20-25%
| (difficult) the second is to find errors in the project
| (relatively easy).
|
| But, once the project is analyzed, what is found is not just
| the "missing" 20 to 25% (which if spent would not make the
| project over budget) but more likely something like 100%.
|
| So, at the end of the day, you are going to spend 175 instead
| of 100, of which 15 is connected to the perversions of the
| bidding, but 60 is errors in the project or in its estimation.
| staunton wrote:
| You don't explain why the estimation itself (error of "60")
| is always an underestimate.
|
| The article does discuss this but your comment sounded to me
| like it was meant to be self-contained.
| acover wrote:
| There are governments that don't open bids that don't meet
| basic requirements to succeed.
| aurelianito wrote:
| I think that there are 2 foundationan problems that make complex
| projects over budget: 1. Stakeholders are incentivized to
| negotiate down the budget, skewing the result. 2. Breaking down a
| big task into smaller ones comes with the risk of missing some
| activities, but adding a nob-required subtask is almost
| imposible, also skewing the results.
|
| Estimates of big endevours must be made by comparison instead of
| breaking down the tasks to avoid the second issue. That's one of
| the little secrets that make poker planning succesfull.
| steve76 wrote:
| [dead]
| tuatoru wrote:
| See also Bent Flyvbjerg's[1] new book, _How Big Things Get Done_
| [2]. Recommended for everyone involved in projects.
|
| 1.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bent_Flyvbjerg#Megaproject_pla...
|
| 2. https://www.amazon.com/How-Big-Things-Get-Done-
| ebook/dp/B0BR...
| maCDzP wrote:
| Thank you for that recommendation. I didn't know Flyvbjerg had
| a new book.
|
| For other HN readers interested in the topic I can recommend "
| The Oxford Handbook of Megaproject Management". Bent Flyvbjerg
| is the editor of the book I believe.
| boboroshi wrote:
| There is also an element of how government purchases services
| from vendors. There is some weird setup where an honest estimate
| often will not be awarded the contract, as it is too high. A
| vendor will intentionally bid low, and then change order the job
| to way over the "honest estimate" price.
|
| Vendors need to be rated and penalized for this kind of bait and
| switch, but unfortunately there is no downside to low ball the
| bid, and they often win and continue to win contracts.
| [deleted]
| sheepybloke wrote:
| Exactly. There was some talk of this on some government
| aviation projects where our company was generally outbid by
| competitors who would allegedly low-ball the development costs,
| then when the project inevitably ran out of money, just request
| more from the government. It was really frustrating to our PMs
| who tried to bid honestly and lost a lot of business because of
| it.
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| Yes, and for public projects this is often mandated by the
| 'lowest bid' laws.
|
| > Vendors need to be rated and penalized for this kind of bait
| and switch
|
| That wouldn't make the process more transparent or honest, it
| would just drive up the starting price.
| Arrath wrote:
| > Yes, and for public projects this is often mandated by the
| 'lowest bid' laws.
|
| Thankfully we're seeing a rise in multi-point bid comparison.
| Judgement criteria like "40% price, 30% Proposal Quality, 30%
| Prior History"
| shagmin wrote:
| It comes across as exactly more transparent and honest to me.
| The bait and switch is dishonest and this incentives against
| that. If the starting price is closer to the final price
| that's a better outcome and more transparent.
| Justsignedup wrote:
| "Nobody wants to go and say that the uncertainty cost is 100% of
| the project cost"
|
| As a software engineer, I completely agree. This is why we do
| Agile (and friends), so estimates are just weeks out. But what do
| you do when you need to plan a decade-long project? Software
| industries avoid those, so I guess we're fortunate.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| Agile is often zero help.
|
| Imagine you're starting from scratch. You want create a company
| that will make a fancy new database. You need to know things
| like how many people you'll need to hire, how much those people
| will cost, and some idea of how long a viable project will
| take.
|
| There's no scrum team yet, as you haven't hired them. You still
| need to generate some sort of answer.
| stagger87 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterfall_model
| icedchai wrote:
| Plenty of companies do fake agile where they want an estimate
| of the complete project before its even fully scoped. Often,
| that estimate is made up by someone who has no idea about
| software engineering, like sales or the CEO. Then the sprints
| are made to "conform" to the estimate. Eventually someone
| figures out the original estimate was completely wrong and
| someone else wonders why the project is "late." Often,
| something have baked is delivered, "meeting the deadline" is
| celebrated, then another X weeks is spent "fixing bugs."
| legitster wrote:
| "Fake agile" is so pervasive at this point. It's just
| waterfall, but without having to bother planning out the
| other end of the waterfall and hiding it all behind scrum.
| fwlr wrote:
| This line jumped out at me: "Anyone who's ever guesstimated the
| cost of anything knows to tack on an extra 15% for caution".
| Struck me as amusing given that conservative estimating in
| software uses a factor of Pi, not 1.15.
| cduzz wrote:
| There was an article on slate.com about this same issue [1] where
| the tl;dr is government organizations outsource project
| management and any other expertise required to run a large scale
| (or small scale!) infrastructure project.
|
| If the organization that needs a thing done has no idea how to do
| the thing, it's unsurprising they do it poorly.
|
| [1] https://slate.com/business/2023/02/subway-costs-us-europe-
| pu...
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| I worked in state government and saw this all the time. Small
| projects were done in house but above a certain size they were
| always contracted out. I don't know if this was political
| (general privatization push) or practical (we don't have the in
| house expertise).
| Arrath wrote:
| I've often seen the lack in in-house expertise bite the
| owning entities very early in the process: "Oh god even the
| lowest bid came in 20% above the Engineer's Estimate!"
|
| Because the engineer(s) doing the estimate in-house didn't
| have enough broad experience in the various disciplines to
| accurately price the project to begin with, it was allocated
| less funding than necessary when it was put out to bid and
| the entire process starts out too lean for the needs of the
| project.
| vkou wrote:
| It could even be both political and practical, without a
| sinister motive.
|
| (We have no inhouse experience to run a large project, so
| we're not going to risk mucking everything up in a high-
| stakes large project (which would be political suicide), so
| we never build up the inhouse experience to run a large
| project...)
| mym1990 wrote:
| _that's the engineer, and engineers are notoriously not good at
| estimating costs._
|
| Newsflash: neither is anyone else on your team if the project has
| any kind of reasonable complexity.
| edhelas wrote:
| > I purchased the M1 Mac Mini way back in 2021.
|
| Wow much time ago.
|
| Seriously ?
| 5tefan wrote:
| Winning the project with a very cheap offer and making money with
| exessive claim management. The customer can't leave the contract
| and at some point has to deal with it and we're over budget...
| eterevsky wrote:
| Gotthard Tunnel which was (and possibly still is) the longest and
| deepest tunnel, was finished on time and within budget.
| uoaei wrote:
| During my time living in Europe, I noticed that while larger
| construction efforts took months (since they kinda have to),
| smaller day-scale projects easily took inside of a day, whereas
| similar scale projects in the US stretch for weeks.
|
| My friends who work construction in the US say that contractors
| routinely do a job wrong the first time, throw some apprentice
| under the bus regarding the "mistake", and ask for more money to
| re-do it. It's a common way of milking contracts and happens
| everywhere all the time. Their experiences are in large (hotels,
| hospitals, every school in a certain district, etc.) contracts,
| not the domain of your neighborhood general contractor.
|
| I can't speak to the relative prevalence in Europe but
| anecdotally I was always pleasantly surprised by how quickly
| those jobs got finished.
|
| One notable exception is the new housing being thrown up quickly
| in metro areas of the US. Sometimes they still progress in fits
| and starts but sometimes they go up super quick too.
| evilantnie wrote:
| This sounds weird to me, I've paid for quite a few large
| construction projects and they are always fixed-bid contracts.
| I've never borne the cost of a mistake made by contractors.
| Everything that has additional cost is strictly controlled by
| change order requests, to the point of being extremely
| annoying. Maybe it's personal preference for fixed-bid
| contracts, but I've never heard of a large hotel, hospital, or
| other large contract be time-and-material based.
| uoaei wrote:
| I am not well-versed in this field so I may have
| misinterpreted and they may have been talking about
| subcontractors. The friends I refer to work at one of those
| large consulting firms and they are complaining about the
| people they pay, not those who pay them.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Our small Maine city recently replaced an entire bridge in a
| couple days, https://verandaplan.org/
|
| It worked great. They shut down the road for a couple hours,
| literally moved the newly built bridge from beside the road into
| place, and then were ready for rush hour in a couple days. I had
| a friend who worked the project.
|
| America can build great things if we were willing, but the past
| 70 years has seen strong anti-government rhetoric (weirdly after
| the most successful big government projects seen probably in our
| history) has helped hollow out local governments and remove any
| chance they had to cultivate internal talent that could get more
| efficient at doing things.
|
| Imagine having the pay of a local grocer, the turnover of Amazon
| warehousing, and the public animosity of Google and Facebook
| combined, with an entire TV channel watched by 60 million daily
| screaming that your very existence hurts the country, and plenty
| of grandmas taking that to heart. Government is overtly attacked
| every single day. Is it any wonder it often struggles?
| mym1990 wrote:
| The time it took to place the bridge has almost no indication
| of whether this project was on time or on budget.
|
| This bridge project started December 2017! So 5+ years of work
| for a weekend of final execution. On top of this, while the
| bridge may be in a small city in Maine, the initiative is run
| by the Maine DOT, which is likely substantially larger as an
| organization.
| echelon wrote:
| The best construction hustle I've ever seen is Georgia's
| relatively recent repair of a bridge over I-85.
|
| I-85 is an interstate highway serving a central economic
| corridor through Atlanta. A portion of the bridge collapsed
| when a homeless person lit a fire next to highly flammable
| plastics stored under the bridge, which later grew into a
| bridge-melting inferno.
|
| The state of Georgia provided incentives for contractors to
| finish the project early due to the incredible economic
| damage it was causing. The loss of the bridge took out all
| travel on I-85 - it was a devastating and crippling loss that
| gave many Atlanta area knowledge workers their first taste of
| "work from home" (or five hour commutes).
|
| The incentives provided absolutely made the contractors
| hustle. There was work ongoing 24/7 for the entire period,
| and they completed ahead of time and budget. I don't think
| I've ever witnessed something happen so fast.
|
| It was a marvelous feat, and it's too bad we don't see more
| like it. It's what happens when the correct incentives and
| pressures are put in place.
|
| https://transportationops.org/case-studies/i-85-bridge-
| colla...
| symfoniq wrote:
| Incentives, better than anything else, explain how the
| world actually works.
| echelon wrote:
| 1000%. It's all about creating and aligning incentives.
|
| Government gets this sometimes - subsidy for the things
| it cares about. Food, energy, defense. Those are all
| pretty solid, even if some of the vendors aren't the
| greatest. The sheer scale of the investment means we'll
| be okay. Too big to fail.
|
| Often these big budget items get bloated by congressional
| sway pulling work into disparate districts as job
| programs. Or locked away in under-performing incumbents
| (Lockheed / Boeing vs SpaceX), but if we expose the
| system to more evolutionary pressure and competition, it
| might thrive.
|
| SpaceX is an example of the RFP process turned on its
| head. Designing ahead of time for an understood public
| demand, in a bloated industry, in a way that serves both
| the public and private sector. A solution where the
| private sector needs serve to justify the cutting of
| costs and hone the product into a shape that is
| undeniably cost attractive and competitive.
|
| The things the government subsidizes that don't compete
| or aren't forced to stay lean - education,
| transportation, infrastructure, healthcare - tend to
| bloat up and soak up all the money they can as well as
| underperform on all of our expectations.
|
| Maybe the solution is to stop paying the current service
| providers and hire new ones that service private
| industry. They'll already be in a shape to optimize for
| costs and fend with competition.
| viewtransform wrote:
| There's also the MacArthur Maze collapse in the Bay area
| 2007 [1] The overpass collapsed on April 29th. They had it
| reopened to traffic 26 days later. This was American
| leadership, project management and engineering at it's
| finest [2].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacArthur_Maze#2007_I-580
| _East...
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TKjwblp1XI
| geenew wrote:
| It has a bearing on the cost associated with road closures,
| which can't be insignificant.
|
| Anyway, some quick looking found:
|
| > Gov. Janet Mills toured the Veranda Street site of the new
| bridge being installed along Interstate 295 in Portland on
| Saturday afternoon and said she was pleased with the rapid
| progress of the project.
|
| > "I'm thrilled with the technology, thrilled that it's going
| on time and on budget," Mills said. "Three days' time, and
| this bridge will be done. It's amazing. It's like giant Legos
| going together."
|
| https://www.pressherald.com/2022/04/23/i-295-bridge-
| replacem...
|
| which seems like enough to go on to presume it's at least
| close to being on budget.
| mym1990 wrote:
| You can always say you are on time and on budget as long as
| extensions come your way. My point was not saying that this
| project was not on time or on budget, it was mainly to
| illustrate that the 3 days of work that locals saw was
| based on 5 years of research and preparation. I recently
| read 'Built: The Hidden Stories Behind our Structures' by
| Roma Agrawal and it would be fairly rudimentary for a
| structural engineer, but for the average passerby it was a
| very interesting read on some of the structures that we use
| every day! (and how some of them are miserable failures
| haha)
| panny wrote:
| >TV channel watched by 60 million daily screaming that your
| very existence hurts the country
|
| Yet the TV channel is controlled by the council on foreign
| relations, like all tv channels, and says exactly what the
| government directs them to.
|
| https://mronline.org/2017/07/23/the-american-empire-and-its-...
| notjoemama wrote:
| Sigh...
|
| > with an entire TV channel watched by 60 million daily
| screaming that your very existence hurts the country, and
| plenty of grandmas taking that to heart
|
| Just say the name next time, I think it's obvious whom you are
| referring to. It's also obvious replies to your assertions are
| off topic in part because of this part of your reply.
|
| So here's my list of what the article suggests cause large
| construction projects to go over budget.
|
| > SUMMARY: > It's a tale as old as civil engineering: A
| megaproject is sold to the public as a grand solution to a
| serious problem. Planning and design get underway, permits
| issued, budgets allocated (that took a lot longer than we
| expect), construction starts, and then there are more problems!
| Work is delayed, expenses balloon, and when all the dust
| settles, it's a lot less clear whether the project's benefits
| were really worth the costs.
|
| > REASONS: > underestimation > limit in design prevents
| accurate overall estimation > subcontracting availability >
| subcontracting sufficiency > subcontracting estimation (bids) >
| missed pre-construction costs > inflation of labor and
| materials > course correcting takes longer on big projects >
| stakeholder compromises > not taking exploratory work into
| account > opportunistic greed > ...but that's not nearly as
| common as: "just too darned optimistic and short-sighted"
|
| The suggested solution from the source, as the author points
| out, is to spend more time in design and planning.
|
| ref: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/megaprojects-and-
| risk/7...
|
| As far as software, that suggests waterfall like planning could
| give you a better estimation on total project expenditure. But
| delivery has won that battle, I think. Maybe as our industry
| contracts (layoffs and svb) we'll see a push towards that kind
| of project estimation too?
| tormeh wrote:
| More time in design and planning? That phase can already
| often take a decade. I realize most of that is probably
| political horsetrading around which backyard is going to be
| torn up and which budget the money will come from, but long
| planning phases are already a problem.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| Anti-government rhetoric? In New York State, construction
| projects have been notoriously delayed and gone over budget
| ever since the days of Boss Tweed, which historians have
| generally linked to corruption and graft.
| rayiner wrote:
| It's bizarre to point to criticism of the government to justify
| the failures of the government. What exactly are people
| supposed to do in response to public services that are over
| budget and don't serve their needs?
|
| Surely the solution to criticism of government inefficiency is
| for government to operate well. If visiting San Francisco was
| like going to Tokyo or Copenhagen--clean, efficient, convenient
| --Fox News would lose credibility. At some point, people in
| Missouri would point to San Francisco and be like "that's
| great, why don't we do that here?"
| enraged_camel wrote:
| >> It's bizarre to point to criticism of the government to
| justify the failures of the government.
|
| This is precisely the conservative game plan though: starve
| the government of funds, force it to outsource as much as
| possible to the private sector, then when projects end up
| delayed and overbudget (or failing), point to lack of
| government efficiency and competence to justify further
| funding cuts.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast
|
| This has been happening since basically the Reagan era.
|
| >> Surely the solution to criticism of government
| inefficiency is for government to operate well.
|
| No organization can operate well if it doesn't have necessary
| levels of funding, and the government is no exception. Said
| lack of funding is the primary cause of the inefficiencies,
| which often times manifest as lack of inhouse expertise that
| can provide strict analysis of and oversight for projects
| outsourced to the private sector.
| surement wrote:
| > Said lack of funding is the primary cause of the
| inefficiencies
|
| No, the primary cause is politicians promising things that
| sound good so that they'll get reelected, because that's
| the number one thing they care about, not efficiency. On
| the other hand a private company will only build something
| that makes economical sense.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Do you think the complaints about government come unfairly out
| of the blue while it busily provides efficient and timely
| service with a friendly smile to its constituents?
| jacobr1 wrote:
| The point isn't the government services are currently high
| quality. The point is that the current environment foster low
| quality service. In some cases voting in politicians that
| drove top-down management changes would help. And that would
| require the populace to value such changes. We might need to
| structure the incentives for government employees,
| contractors, or the regulatory environment to better align
| with delivering good service. That might mean more pay, which
| means either higher taxes or strong prioritization of
| efforts. We can't do that intelligently if nobody cares, or
| is skilled enough to drive these large institutions. Because
| it is hard. We almost certainly are using the wrong
| tradeoffs: some things privatized and outsourced should be
| done by government agencies. Some functions should be
| privatized or just regulated on the open market. Some things
| are better handled at regional levels that today are handled
| at local or national levels. The mix of tradeoffs is wrong.
| Incremental work to fix this requires a society-wide
| agreement to make progress. Not necessarily agreement on any
| particular (and even when there is agreement, we are going to
| get it wrong a bunch) but agreement on the project of
| bettering our society and social collaboration. That seems
| like it is missing and thus progress is made only in fits in
| starts, in a hostile environment. A hard-one deregulation
| here, a new bill to fund a project there, contested on ll
| sides, and undermined before the initiatives get started.
| rjbwork wrote:
| No. However, consider that since the 40's there has been a
| concerted effort by a variety of actors, such as Rothbard and
| other people backed by institutes such as the Volker fund,
| the AEI, Federalist Society, Murdochs, etc. to sap both the
| perceived effectiveness of government and the _actual_
| effectiveness of government.
|
| "Government doesn't work - elect me and I'll prove it!"
| [deleted]
| notch898a wrote:
| No criticism of the ineffectiveness of government is
| complete until we've blamed Rothbard.
| rconti wrote:
| I guess the better question is, are the complaints limited to
| those that provide a poor service? Or are they fairly evenly
| distributed regardless of how good or bad the government in
| question performs?
| analog31 wrote:
| It could be that the two things -- complaints and actual
| service delivered -- are unrelated.
| vanattab wrote:
| Meanwhile in the the real world complaints about service
| and the quality of said service do tend to correlate.
| bsder wrote:
| And sometimes it's intentional: Take the DMV in Texas.
|
| Texas specifically _shut down_ DMV offices in some of the
| most populated areas. Yeah, that 's going to make the DMV
| suck in those areas. Of course, they left open then ones
| in the more rural areas, and those DMVs are going to be
| quite pleasant.
| analog31 wrote:
| was that to make it harder to register to vote?
| hising wrote:
| Laughing out loud as a Software Engineer, since our projects
| always is on budget.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| It would be interesting to compare prices of privately funded
| projects vs publicly funded ones, both in terms of cost, over-
| budget amounts and time needed to complete the project.
|
| I see many public locations, where a short street or even a
| walkway is closed for months, because they need to repave
| literally 20-30 square meters of a walkway, while companies such
| as Hofer (Aldi) manage to repave their parking yard in a few
| days, while keeping half of it still open for customers.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| There's lots of stupid rules around sidewalks and lane
| striping. You need to do an ADA evaluation, remediate any
| findings, etc.
|
| A project in my city that resulted in adding a textured
| crosswalk pad, new stripes and a beg button cost $1.4M and took
| 3 years.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| A few years ago, my daughter (a young person) ended up in a
| wheelchair and/or on crutches for several weeks while
| recovering from surgery. It is moments like that when you
| realize that the scope of beneficiaries of the ADA is: _all
| of us_
|
| Put differently, if you live long enough, you can pretty much
| guarantee that you will benefit from the facilities the ADA
| requires at least once (and possibly for a more extended
| period than my daughter did).
|
| It all looks like extra cost for little benefit until you can
| see it through the eyes of someone who actually needs this
| stuff, at which point it becomes at least a valuable and at
| best a life-enabling set of features.
|
| And the chances are good that you will be one of the people,
| assuming you live a long and healthy life.
| hinkley wrote:
| Just move a cart around and have a little bit of
| imagination.
| ahoy wrote:
| My dad's been physically disabled my entire life. Those
| "stupid" ADA rules make it possible for him to navigate
| public spaces
| ikiris wrote:
| How dare those projects be forced to _checks notes_
| accommodate disabled people.
|
| Sometimes the comments on this site are just insufferable.
| briandear wrote:
| However there should be a balance. Look at parking lots --
| the ratio of disabled spaces to standard spaces is not the
| same ratio as disabled people to non-disabled people.
|
| And sometimes it's ridiculous: drive through ATMs with
| braille for instance. Private motel swimming pools
| requiring wheelchair lifts. That extreme additional cost
| means that many motels just won't have a swimming pool at
| all -- so everyone is worse off. But you can't charge
| disabled people a swimming pool surcharge since that
| discriminatory. So it raises costs for everyone. By the
| way, I am referring to private building codes, not
| taxpayer-funded projects like sidewalks.
| lukas099 wrote:
| It probably costs _less_ to have drive through ATMs with
| braille, because they can reuse the braille signage from
| the non-drive through ATMs.
| hinkley wrote:
| Do you suppose that perhaps disabled people take longer
| to shop?
|
| Certainly you've heard of Little's Law if you hang out in
| HN?
| asdff wrote:
| Other things that can add cost fast are having too many
| elevators. I've been in 4 story buildings with 4 separate
| elevator shafts before that didn't have nearly the
| population or staff to ever get more than two moving at
| once. That just means higher rent to make a return on
| those 4 shafts mandated by some ordinance, which probably
| hurts you especially if you can't work and are living
| cheaply on disability. A lot of ordinances have been
| written with no understanding of how it would look in
| practice or the costs to implement them in the market and
| what that will mean for people who have to rent these
| units.
| asdff wrote:
| There's nuance you are missing here. Have you ever been in
| LA county where 50 years ago city planners made terrible
| choises regarding sidewalk trees? Basically the sidewalks
| today look like a cardiogram on some stretches. To the
| point where they are totally impassable for disabled
| people, and the city is often sued by disabled people due
| to these sidewalks.
|
| Why haven't they been fixed? Why does the city continue to
| be cruel to disabled people year in and out, content to
| absorb the lawsuits from the few with means to bring them
| up? It's probably a simple case of those lawsuits being a
| lot cheaper than actually fixing the sidewalk to the
| standards the sidewalk is supposed to be fixed. This is an
| example of a regulation that was meant to help people
| (building nice sidewalks with various characteristics), but
| in the end the regulation was written with no understanding
| of the cost of these changes, or how they might stack up
| against the cost of doing nothing at all, so its an example
| of a bad regulation that should be changed so it can
| actually help people.
| mhalle wrote:
| "Stupid rules" for one person are what enable another person
| to live an independent life. The Americans with Disabilities
| (ADA) act has been law since 1990 and codifies mobility and
| access as civil rights in the US.
|
| ADA does add to the costs of projects, but so does, say,
| safety code compliance. It's the law, and it exists for a
| good reason.
|
| As for the example of a minor accessibility project costing
| $1.4M and taking 3 years, I would suggest that there is
| probably more to the story that helps explain the cost or the
| time.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > ADA does add to the costs of projects
|
| Not in the long run.
|
| ADA just forces better designs. Retrofits are costly.
|
| > As for the example of a minor accessibility project
| costing $1.4M and taking 3 years, I would suggest that
| there is probably more to the story that helps explain the
| cost or the time.
|
| Committees, political turf wars, getting funding for the
| project through grants (that are complicated to apply for,
| that's why you need a dedicated bureaucrat to do it!). Then
| there's union rules since construction workers from the
| city are government employees.
|
| That's half a million in employee's salaries right there
| and not a single concrete steps has been taken yet!
| LanceH wrote:
| > ADA does add to the costs of projects
|
| I'm not going to argue that it isn't necessary or right.
| But it absolutely costs more. A bathroom stall, for
| example, literally takes up more space, and that costs. A
| ramp and stairs takes up more space, materials and time
| and that costs.
|
| There are things which are right to do, but disingenuous
| arguments to support them aren't helpful.
| VHRanger wrote:
| Permitting process hell is the explanation.
| asdff wrote:
| IMO ADA is probably a net harm at this point. When I look
| at the sidewalks here in socal, where 50 years ago they
| planted these rooty trees that make the region look like a
| tony hawk game today versus something you'd be able to get
| a wheelchair across, I'm starting to suspect its all
| ironically ADA's fault. They put the costs to meet their
| criteria so high that cities find it a better bet to just
| absorb lawsuits and not do anything than to actually make
| their cities manageable for disabled people. We need a more
| practical ada, that isn't nearly so costly to implement, so
| cities don't find it financially sensible to just sit on
| their hands forever.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| I bet closing the sidewalk for longer is much worse for
| disabled people.
| starkparker wrote:
| Replacing curb ramps can mean relocating the curb cut,
| which can mean relocating the underground sensor loops.
|
| Adding a beg button can mean upgrading or replacing the
| signal control module, which could mean replacing the
| housing if it's not large enough for the new module.
| (Audible-tactile buttons and controllers themselves cost
| $5-6k each, just for parts.)
|
| Aside from that, the issue with ADA compliance costs isn't
| when a municipality or DOT pays for them. It's when they
| remove the crosswalk entirely because they decide
| compliance isn't affordable enough.
| coryrc wrote:
| The allowed slope for a ramp according ADA 1.5-3%. The
| recommended slope for drainage is 3-6%. Better hope you're
| really fucking precise.
|
| Oh, your road itself is at a slope greater than 3%? Oops,
| you can't legally do it!
|
| It's okay to have standards. It's not okay if they're
| bullshit.
| jaclaz wrote:
| You sure?
|
| ADA ramp max slope should be 1:12, i.e. 8.33% which is
| (IMHO) reasonable.
|
| https://www.ada-compliance.com/ada-compliance/ada-ramp
| Loughla wrote:
| Don't make things up.
|
| Recommended slope for drainage on concrete and asphalt is
| .25-.5:12, or 1/4" to 1/2" over 1' of length.
|
| Recommended slope for wheelchair ramps are 1-1.5:12, or
| 1" to 1.5" over 1' of length.
| bombcar wrote:
| The rules are fine, the stupidity is latent and revealed:
|
| 1. New construction must meet ADA requirements. 2. Old
| construction can remain. 3. Repairing broken old
| construction requires meeting ADA requirements.
|
| So between 2 and 3 you end up with broken old construction
| that cannot be repaired to "what it was" because repairs
| must meet ADA requirements.
|
| Each step makes sense on its own, but combined they result
| in something worse (in particular) even though overall it
| works out better.
| thaeli wrote:
| The local maximum of "fix it but don't improve it" is a
| problem, and the requirement for major reconstruction to
| be done to current codes is foundational to almost all
| building codes. Note that small repairs and routine
| maintenance don't activate this requirement - it's
| activated when major work is being done, and there is a
| percentage of total project cost cap to the requirements.
|
| If the new local maximum is "well, we won't fix it at all
| then" - the usual building code solution is property
| maintenance codes that mandate repairs.
| bombcar wrote:
| The buildings often get repaired/updated pretty quickly -
| it's the items like sidewalks that are under the purview
| of the government itself that "slip through the cracks".
| rtkwe wrote:
| What's the alternative that reaches eventual compliance
| everywhere on a shorter span than "wait for the
| grandfathered buildings to be bought and demolished"
| though?
| londons_explore wrote:
| A daily fine for everything noncompliant. Make the fine
| approximately proportional to the number of potential
| users impeded.
|
| Then a popular crosswalk gets upgraded before a rural
| crosswalk that nobody uses anyway. An easy upgrade is
| done before a hard upgrade. Sometimes even new stuff
| might be built non-compliant if, for example, there are
| other substantial benefits that outweigh the fine.
|
| Just burn the fine revenue. (Burning money is the inverse
| of printing money, helps reduce inflation, and means
| nobody has an incentive to maximize fines)
| lukas099 wrote:
| I have trouble imagining anyone convincing a city to
| 'burn revenue', even if it's a good idea in principle.
| Maybe the next best thing is applying it to a negative
| income tax so that it goes to the lowest-income
| residents.
| bombcar wrote:
| It's a reference to Modern Money Theory which states that
| a (federal) tax is disconnected from spending because the
| government prints money.
|
| But ADA stuff is almost always handled on a local, not
| even state, level.
| londons_explore wrote:
| It only makes sense for the federal government to mandate
| burning dollars.
|
| They're the ones who can print them anyway. The end
| result is they just print less each year.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Impose a supplemental property tax, increasing over time,
| on buildings out of compliance with current requirements,
| so that upgrade or replacement becomes comparatively more
| desirable vs. doing neither than it currently is.
|
| Or, just have a fixed window to achieve compliance or the
| building is condemned.
| briandear wrote:
| Cool. Let's start with NYC subway stations. Public
| infrastructure should be ADA compliant yet NYC permitting
| will hammer a small business for a toilet two inches out
| of compliance when the city itself has massive issues
| that are ignored.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| As implemented ADA compliance requires that even trivial
| changes to a moderate complexity intersection require an
| engineering study at $300-500k, minimum.
|
| There are other requirements as well relating to multimodal
| travel depending online the funding source.
|
| All the while, we had an increasingly dangerous
| intersection with no visible crosswalks and outdated
| signals for years.
|
| The stupid isn't ADA, it's compliance activity. Cities and
| towns cannot afford the engineers to meet the standards, so
| the Federal and State governments fund projects. So there's
| no framework of best practices beyond the state standards -
| each project is a special snowflake.
| MaxMatti wrote:
| Yes but you can do all that before tearing open the street or
| sidewalk
| ahoy wrote:
| I imagine a lot of the cost & time for public projects is
| precisely because they have to be contracted out to private
| developers. If the government had construction workers &
| equipment on it's own payroll (like we do for police, postal
| workers, sanitation, etc), these projects probably get done a
| lot quicker.
|
| It would have the bonus effect of making infrastructure
| construction/maintenance projects happen more often. Both by
| lower the barrier to get started (no need to have contractors
| bid your project, etc) and b/c it's wasteful to have public
| employees just sitting around with no work to do.
| coryrc wrote:
| > because they have to be contracted out to private
| developers
|
| The problem is not the people completing the work; it's not
| like Aldi's has their own paving machine in the back.
|
| It's that the government doesn't have employees who know how
| to specify the project and nobody has an incentive to finish
| in a timely manner.
| 93po wrote:
| > nobody has an incentive to finish in a timely manner.
|
| I think the real problem is more that there is
| accountability for job performance in the private sector
| (you get fired if you suck and waste your boss's money) and
| very little to none in the public sector. No one votes for
| politicians based on objective performance data.
|
| It'd wild to me how it's considered American to have this
| sort of bid process because "free markets" and "small
| government" but the results are everything Americans accuse
| socialist countries of being.
| [deleted]
| bumby wrote:
| The government has lots of employees who came from the
| private sector and know exactly how that side of the house
| works. They aren't really this disjointed set of workers.
|
| IMO, a lot of the differences come from the different set
| of rules that govt work has to run by. For example, Aldi
| can just decide to hire a contractor that they know does
| good work at a reasonable price. In contrast, the govt has
| to use a lengthy fair and open bid process and if they want
| to select a bid that isn't the lowest, it's a painstaking
| process to justify that selection. Govt work must adhere to
| certain laws that tend to push up labor wages (see: Davis
| Bacon Act). Plus, the govt has lots of other competing
| goals, like supporting minority or veteran-owned business
| etc. A simple comparison misses all of those nuances.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> In contrast, the govt has to use a lengthy fair and
| open bid process and if they want to select a bid that
| isn 't the lowest, it's a painstaking process to justify
| that selection._
|
| Isn't that a recipe for cost over-runs?
|
| I mean, it sounds like if building a tunnel costs $100M
| and one company bids $100M (planning to deliver on
| budget), a second company bids $50M (planning 100% cost
| overruns) and a third company bids $25M (planning on 300%
| cost overruns) it's mandatory to select the third
| company?
| bumby wrote:
| Within reason, yes. Engineers will still evaluate the
| proposals and if there's a huge discrepancy like you
| described, they can be thrown out. But often part of the
| game seems to be first underbid (within reason) to get
| the contract and then make up the difference on change
| orders to be profitable.
| ProblemFactory wrote:
| > For example, Aldi can just decide to hire a contractor
| that they know does good work at a reasonable price. In
| contrast, the govt has to use a lengthy fair and open bid
| process and if they want to select a bid that isn't the
| lowest, it's a painstaking process to justify that
| selection.
|
| It's unfortunate, but probably better than the corruption
| that anything else will enable in the long run. Churchill
| said that democracy is the worst form of government,
| except for all the others. For government spending,
| lowest bidder is the worst form of contracts, except for
| all the others.
| bumby wrote:
| I think the point that gets lost when you see comments
| like the GP is that they are operating under different
| sets of constraints because they are trying to optimize
| for different things.
|
| FWIW, the govt can do "best value" contracts instead of
| lowest bid. But there is an asymmetry in risk to those
| making the selection. If something goes wrong in the
| design/construction, or if corruption is found, there's a
| lot more explaining to do. Like the old quote, "Nobody
| got fired for hiring IBM," except in this case "Nobody
| got fired for selecting the lowest bid."
| JonChesterfield wrote:
| It's absurd really. Massive pressure to pick the cheapest
| bid, then very slowly discover that the cheapest option
| can't actually do a reasonable job in a reasonable
| timeframe, then some years later try again with the same
| cheapest must win premise. It's kind of optimising for
| cost but poorly and with no feedback loop.
| nradov wrote:
| There is a feedback loop. Under a firm fixed price
| contract, the vendor has to eat any cost overruns.
| Contacts can include bonuses for finishing ahead of
| schedule, or penalties for being late. And there are
| administrative procedures for barring vendors who fail to
| deliver as promised from bidding on future contracts.
| bumby wrote:
| There are second order effects on those, though. Fixed
| price contracts incentivize contractors to cut corners to
| make up for cost overruns or to pad their profits (doubly
| so if it's a contractor who underbid to win the
| contract). Unless you're willing to pay for a lot of govt
| oversight, many of those won't be noticed until the
| contract is long complete. Even if noticed, you need an
| organization willing to engage in that legal fight.
|
| The administrative controls are lagging indicators at
| best, and administrative controls are usually one of the
| least preferable control mechanisms.
| asdff wrote:
| Its also that you have thousands of miles of road in
| disrepair, and you have budget to deal with 1% of that so
| to be pragmatic you triage but people miss that and equate
| such pragmatism with incompetence.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| I'm not sure it's so much the have to be contracted out part,
| Aldi may not have in-house pavers either, as the contracting
| protocols and methods they are required to use. I think an
| honest, empowered government worker could find and supervise
| a modest construction project as well as an honest and
| empowered Aldi worker. But the government workers are not
| empowered.
| Symmetry wrote:
| Countries that have low infrastructure costs, like Spain, do
| this.
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| > If the government had construction workers & equipment on
| it's own payroll, these projects probably get done a lot
| quicker.
|
| Ah yes, because that's what government workers are known for,
| speed, efficiency and quality.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| In my city the tram lines are being maintained and repaired
| at night. It's not uncommon to see people welding stuff at
| 3AM.
|
| Trams run fast and very rarely break.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| well take your pick, private builders in britain are known
| for graft and borderline fraud
| londons_explore wrote:
| Many governmental organisations do have their own employees
| for this sort of thing.
|
| I'm not sure it results in projects being cheaper or quicker
| overall.
| throwawaysleep wrote:
| Probably cheaper, but with abysmal quality.
|
| I used to be a public sector dev with an agency that stores
| plaintext passwords and direct deposit information. People
| simply didn't know any better and because government
| doesn't have merit raises, the rest of us simply didn't do
| anything about it.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Yes, I've never heard of a private company that has
| absolutely useless security protocols, let alone one that
| was broken into as a result of complete incompetence of
| their security architects and admins. /s
| throwawaysleep wrote:
| Plenty of private companies have issues too, but when it
| comes to devs, the quality is so low that major issues
| are basically guaranteed.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| "The problem with corruption, inefficieny and ignorance
| in government is corruption, inefficiency and ignorance,
| not government".
|
| Let's not put the cart before the horse, shall we? Yes,
| all human organizations can suffer from these things (and
| maybe some more than others). But that's not a reason in
| and of itself to dismiss an entire class of human
| organizations as irretrievably doomed.
|
| Look at what the UK government's digital service has
| done: absolutely outstanding online presence for so many
| important government services.
| zdragnar wrote:
| FWIW, the UK also has abysmal pay for tech salaries
| compared to the US, so the incentive to avoid the public
| sector may be lower.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| also in many cases if regulation is written to prohibit
| such practices, the government exempts itself from that.
|
| For example, you can't use SSN to identify someone.
| Unless of course you were doing it before the prohibition
| was established. Apparently it's fine if you keep using
| it, forever.
| Arainach wrote:
| That may be true in software (where the pay gap in the
| private sector is particularly blatant) but it's not true
| in most industries. The stereotype of lazy government
| workers is essentially conservative propaganda - I've
| known and worked with plenty, and with a few obvious
| exceptions (political appointees, software, etc.) across
| the board they're passionate and great at what they do.
| Civil engineers, road builders, park rangers, EPA
| researchers, administrative assistants, even IT.
| briandear wrote:
| Conservative propaganda?
|
| https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/08/31/the-rubber-
| roo...
|
| And have you ever been to a government office to pull a
| permit? Or dealt with government procurement? Or
| attempted to get paperwork through the FAA?
|
| And your experience with who you've worked with isn't
| data by the way.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| My girlfriend works public service. The only lazy
| coworkers she has are Ron Swanson types taking it upon
| themselves to make public work shittier because they
| believe the government shouldn't do anything.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| _And have you ever been to a government office to pull a
| permit? Or dealt with government procurement? Or
| attempted to get paperwork through the FAA?_
|
| Yes. It was relatively straightforward, as long as you
| followed the rules.
|
| The hard part is following all the relevant rules, almost
| all of which exist because people have tried to rip off
| the government or lawmakers decided to impose unrelated
| requirements on procurement. That's not the fault of the
| government workers whose job it is to carry out the
| requirements that have been imposed on them.
|
| And what does an opinion piece about teachers have to do
| with procurement? Those are completely separate things.
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| >Yes. It was relatively straightforward, as long as you
| followed the rules.
|
| The hard part is not going postal as you find out piece
| by piece that person A didn't tell you about rule X and
| that department T actually has a revised form W that...
| and on and on until you find out that you didn't actually
| have to do any of that because there's some other less
| shitty process none of these people told you about.
|
| It's like the bureaucratic runaround is the default
| behavior in some of these organizations.
| monknomo wrote:
| something that's helpful to keep in mind is that the
| government orgs you deal with frequently have what have
| what they must do set by law, with little latitude to
| change things other than bugging congress
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| Have you ever tried to get google to give you information
| you need? It's not any easier.
| stephencanon wrote:
| > have you ever been to a government office to pull a
| permit?
|
| Yes, several times, and it is always completely
| straightforward. Fill out the appropriate forms, provide
| the correct documentation, pay fee. If it can be approved
| by the administrator, it's issued promptly. If it needs a
| hearing, it's scheduled for the next one, you show up and
| answer questions, they make a decision promptly and it's
| either issued or not. I've rarely had such efficient
| interaction with private companies.
| analog31 wrote:
| Have you ever been to the IT department of a private
| company, to get a small change made that makes your job
| more efficient or helps a customer solve a problem?
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Where I live we see the same even though sidewalks are the
| responsibility of the property owner.
| paulusthe wrote:
| Private meet budgets way more often, because there's a finite
| amount of money. Lenders sign term sheets detailing exactly how
| much money they'll lend and on what terms, so the developer has
| precisely that amount of money to spend. It's a big deal to
| need more funds, because it requires a ton of legal work,
| probably new banks, new agreements, new terms, etc - all of
| which might conflict with the existing funding structure.
|
| So yeah private ones usually do meet budget.
|
| Source - am architect
| tnel77 wrote:
| I feel like some of the issue/reason is because the government
| has to cover every single possible scenario. "Time to make a
| road. We better do a three year environmental study to make
| sure this doesn't hurt the native turtles."
|
| I'm all for taking care of the environment, but it feels like
| there's a lot more "let's get community and environmental
| input" than we had in the past (for better and for worse).
| dwohnitmok wrote:
| The article/video addresses this. You have to be careful that
| images of past efficiency aren't just examples of
| externalizing costs.
|
| > There is no perfect project that makes everyone happy. So,
| you end up making compromises and adding features to allay
| all the new stakeholders. This may seem like a bunch of added
| red tape, but it really is a good thing in a lot of ways.
| There was a time when major infrastructure projects didn't
| consider all the stakeholders or the environmental impacts,
| and, sure, the projects probably got done more quickly,
| efficiently, and at a lower cost (on the surface). _But the
| reality is that those costs just got externalized to
| populations of people who had little say in the process and
| to the environment. I'm not saying we're perfect now, but
| we're definitely more thoughtful about the impacts projects
| have, and we pay the cost for those impacts more directly
| than we used to._ But, often, those costs weren't anticipated
| during the planning phase. They show up later in design when
| more people get involved, and that drives the total project
| cost upward.
| asdff wrote:
| This is a huge time sink for transit projects. For example,
| the sepulveda rail project in LA has like 6 alternatives
| right now going from heavy rail, monorail, above and below
| grade, a few different routings. Each requires careful study
| as if you were going to commit 100% to it, millions of
| dollars probably in expensive engineering labor, even though
| realistically only 1 alternative (the heavy rail offering the
| fastest end to end time) is rumored to be considered. Still,
| the agency got proposed by this monorail maker, so to act in
| good faith they have to claim they did their due diligence
| and came up with these plans showing that yes, in fact, the
| monorail is inferior to the heavy rail alignment. If you have
| any community groups opposing any aspect of the project,
| prepare to spend 2 years refining further useless
| alternatives to satisfy each and every nitpick. Both
| community groups (and these are not representative of the
| community, but more the loudest and angriest with the most
| time to spare of the community) and companies exploit this
| good faith planning to extend timelines, increase costs, and
| often dilute the end product to the detriment of the public
| that this "community engagement" process is supposed to
| protect.
| bluedino wrote:
| I've seen this with roads. 1/2 mile closed or under
| construction for the whole summer. And then 4 miles of another
| road seems like they do it in 2 weeks.
| asdff wrote:
| Thats sometimes because the teams are not in sync because
| there's often more work than labor or budget. sewer work has
| to happen but the sewer team is busy with 10 other streets
| that will be completed first, so the paver team has to wait.
| It's not like work isn't being done, its more like work is
| being done elsewhere and you aren't there to see it.
| jonas21 wrote:
| The cost of a grocery store parking lot being closed can be
| easily quantified in terms of lost sales, while the cost of
| closing a short street or walkway is not as well-defined, and
| the cost is not borne by those in charge of the construction
| anyhow. So in the former, there's a clear and measurable
| incentive to get things done quickly, and in the latter,
| there's not.
| londons_explore wrote:
| In many cases, taking longer to do work costs _more_.
|
| Especially when things like equipment, cones and barriers are
| being rented at high daily rates for months while work is
| practically at a standstill.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Absolutely, and added on to this is that cost is fairly
| proportional to labor hours (plus cost of rental equipment),
| so if it takes a lot longer to get done, it's probably also
| costing a lot more money.
| dkarl wrote:
| I don't know much about public works, but when you're
| hiring trades and subs for small residential projects, you
| pay extra to know they're going to show up and work on your
| project until it's done. If you want to minimize costs, you
| have to accept that it may be slow. They say they'll start
| on Tuesday, and they actually show up Friday. They do two
| days of a four day job, and then they disappear for a week.
| It's not because they're lazy. It's because they have
| different projects that are more or less lucrative to work
| on, and they generally prioritize the more lucrative ones.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| Also: below pavements there are usually quite a lot supply
| lines as that's the only available space. All work there has
| to be done careful not to damage anything. On a larger
| parking lot however there is just a single power line for the
| lights and little sewage for collecting rain water, while
| most other area is free.
| [deleted]
| LanceH wrote:
| So my city runs along a highway. They did construction,
| closing 5 of the 7 north-south roads crossing that highway
| _at the same time_. It was either incredibly stupid, or a
| brilliant move to build a habit of doing everything local.
| asdff wrote:
| There's probably a good reason for it. Highway closures are
| always planned to have the least impacts possible. A lot of
| caltrans work happens on weekends or at 2am as such.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > It would be interesting to compare prices of privately funded
| projects vs publicly funded ones, both in terms of cost, over-
| budget amounts and time needed to complete the project.
|
| Take for example the Munich "Luise Kiesselbach Tunnel": it
| finished early and under budget, and to my knowledge in its
| seven years of operation there was no apparent case of cutting
| corners or botched work. And now one may ask, how is that
| possible in the country that produced infamous disasters such
| as the BER airport, the Elbphilharmonie or the #2 S-Bahn tunnel
| under Munich?
|
| The answer is, the funding makes no difference - the
| _oversight_ of the funders over the construction process does.
| When you have to hire external consultants for each project,
| where the people keep on rotating, instead of having expert
| knowledge in-house that answers to you, you 'll always end up
| with worse quality - and the external consultants may not have
| the political standing to override pushes for changes, which
| tend to be a massive issue in government-funded projects.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| The problem is that regulated "oversight" is no guarantee of
| cost reductions, either, and may be a significant portion of
| the cost increases.
|
| Incentive alignment is one of the main problems. When big
| projects become "job builders," you've now completely
| misaligned your incentives.
| asdff wrote:
| The scale that government manages, even your small suburban
| town or whatever, is much larger than an aldi store. Chances
| are there's more work than money or labor which is why things
| take as long as they do more than anything. It's not like a
| private company would manage this better, when the mindset of
| the american capitalist is to ditch their lifeboats to appear
| to sail faster.
| jaclaz wrote:
| That (re-paving 20-30 meters of a walkway) is a tiny project,
| it has nothing to do with the complexities of large projects
| (which are the theme of the article).
|
| On these tiny projects, usually the difference between what a
| public administration and a private can do is only the
| bureaucracy involved which is a lot for the public and very
| little for a private firm.
| bombcar wrote:
| It can also depend on the depth of the bureaucracy; in my
| little town the town owns a pothole/miniature paving setup,
| and fixes their own minor things; they don't have to contract
| out with a company to get it done.
|
| A (larger) town nearby they contract, and everything gets
| pretty bad before they sign a huge contract, and the company
| works for a year and fixes everything in one long go.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| I was giving an obvious example... we can still compare
| building a skyscraper in a busy city vs building a hospital.
|
| Sears tower was built in three years, while our neurologic
| clinic [1] with three floors took more than a decade.
|
| Say what you will, but sears tower is a complex project.
|
| [1] https://goo.gl/maps/KLwDmGnk9PrcVLyr5
| secabeen wrote:
| You don't have to look far to find recent similar build
| times. Salesforce tower was built in 5 years.
| asdff wrote:
| Others have mentioned this already but there are plenty of
| regulations that are relevant just for hospitals because of
| what they are. For example, the bulk of the historic LA
| county hospital is vacant, because the building is no
| longer up to the seismic standards required by the state
| for a hospital. When you have a big earthquake, you
| probably want the hospital to be the very last building to
| fall in the city. The building, however, is used for things
| like offices or storage because these uses don't have the
| same standards as a hospital.
| jaclaz wrote:
| It is very difficult to compare different (complex)
| projects (independently from whether they are public or
| private) because - Captain Obvious speaking now - they are
| different (not only the actual thing that is built, also
| the quality of the project and its engineering, the chosen
| contractor and a lot of other factors come into play, your
| new examples add two completely different countries and two
| completely different periods of construction).
|
| Construction times are even trickier, as they may also be
| influenced by other factors (authorizations/approvals or
| changing norms as an example).
|
| A (typical) appropriate construction time for a
| (large/complex) project is around 4-5-6 years, 3 years
| means they were fast (in Chicago , in the '70's) 10 years
| means they were slow (in Slovenia, in more recent years),
| but otherwise there is no way to make senceful comparisons.
| Joeri wrote:
| A possible explanation for that situation is that some utility
| below the pavement needs urgent work, so the pavement is broken
| open by a utility contractor to do that work, and then they
| don't repave it properly ... because they're not allowed to. If
| that utility contractor did the final repaving they would be
| taking that work from other contractors which would violate
| laws that force government to open up contracts fairly. So, a
| bidding process is started to select the contractor that will
| repave, and that process takes months.
|
| I work for government myself and have often been frustrated by
| the inefficiency forced upon us by well-intentioned but
| misguided legislation. Also, you learn pretty quickly that some
| contractors play the game better than others and will win one
| government contract after another, not because they will do the
| job better, but because they understand the rules around
| bidding better.
| willyt wrote:
| Madrid Terminal 4 cost about half what Heathrow Terminal 5 did.
| Same architect. Both billion EUR projects. Both complicated
| sites next working airports. Similar sizes and infrastructure.
| Madrid T4 was a public project and Heathrow T5 was a private
| project. So I think it's more to do with the contracting
| culture of a country than wether it's a private or a public
| project. With the UK megaprojects there's about 5-10 project
| manager guys who rotate between them. It's quite a small group
| of people who all know each other. A lot of the people working
| on HS2 now would have been junior project mangers on Heathrow
| T5 or Crossrail in the past; they bring the culture with them
| between projects. I think UK construction culture is quite slow
| and bureaucratic compared to say France or Spain, but not as
| bad as the US which is on another level.
| hnuser847 wrote:
| Reminds of the Navy Pier Flyover in Chicago, a half-mile long
| bicycle/pedestrian bridge that took seven years and $64 million
| to construct[1].
|
| Not saying that this project was simple by any means, but why
| did it take seven years to finish? For comparison, the Sears
| Tower, arguably Chicago's most iconic building and at one time
| the world's tallest building, only took four years to complete.
|
| [1] https://blockclubchicago.org/2021/05/10/navy-pier-
| flyover-a-...
| asdff wrote:
| The flyover is free. The sears tower collects rent. If you
| pay for fast construction with the tower, that means less
| time not collecting rent which might work out better. If you
| pay extra to expedite the bike bridge, whats the point? Its a
| cost center for the city either way. Getting it done faster
| just wastes the public's money giving them the same thing
| they would have gotten anyhow.
| c22 wrote:
| I imagine some aspects of building horizontally might not
| scale as well as vertical construction.
|
| For instance, it looks like the Navy Pier Flyover touches the
| ground in many different places along its half-mile length,
| each of those places will have different junk buried there
| already, unique challenges and access restrictions, and new
| ownership/usage agreements.
|
| With the skyscraper you dig one messy hole then stack and
| connect layer after layer of engineered rectangles.
| willyt wrote:
| In the mid 19th C Brunel built a ~100 mile long railway
| line in 5 years, the route was dug out by hand with picks
| shovels and wheelbarrows. It's a marvel of engineering with
| a route alignment that would allow trains to travel at well
| over 100mph. However, over a hundred people were killed
| just digging one of the tunnels on the route. When the
| Sears Tower was built there were probably still guys
| walking along the bare girders with no safety harnesses. So
| that's probably part of it.
| bumby wrote:
| I was happy to see the author mention optimism bias.
|
| One part I didn't see is how project managers may deliberately
| underestimate to take advantage of the sink cost bias. If
| competing for funds, a PM may intentionally low-ball an estimate
| to get their project selected, knowing it's easier to continually
| ask for more money later rather than a larger sum upfront.
|
| I would have also liked to see more discussion about joint
| probabilities. If one sub-discipline goes over budget, it may
| other disciplines (particularly commissioning) exceed their
| initial estimate as well. Change orders beget change orders.
| ghaff wrote:
| In my experience project managers can often be fairly
| realistic. But everyone up the management chain
| (understandably) wants projects to cost less and take less
| time. So a lot of pencil sharpening happens to take slack out
| of the system. Then deliveries are late, Joe is out with the
| flu for a week, v arious unexpected problems are encountered,
| etc. And before you know it you're overbudget and late.
| bumby wrote:
| One of the researchers mentioned by another commenter has
| termed this "strategic misrepresentation":
|
| The first theory Flyvbjerg embraced is called "strategic
| misrepresentation." Which is essentially a fancy way of
| saying that you lie in order to get what you want.
|
| > _FLYVBJERG: We'd actually interviewed planners who said
| that they did this deliberately, that they actually were
| incentivized to misrepresent the business cases for the
| projects in their benefit-cost analysis. And they wanted
| their projects to look good on paper, to increase their
| chances of getting funded and getting approval for their
| projects. And they said, "We do this by underestimating the
| cost and overestimating the benefits, because that gives us a
| nice high benefit-cost ratio so that we actually get chosen._
| [1]
|
| I've experience this, but I also think it may depend on the
| unique culture of individual organizations. Of course, it's
| likely just one of many factors that ultimately lead to poor
| planning. The podcast in [1] covers some of them and it's a
| good listen for anyone interested in public work projects.
|
| [1] https://freakonomics.com/podcast/heres-why-all-your-
| projects...
| Arrath wrote:
| Project managers often come in too late, in my experience.
| And they are, by and large, realistic. Specifically for
| construction, the low-balling stage is when the Estimators
| are putting together a tender to try to secure the work in
| the first place.
|
| The PM arrives later, once the project has been awarded and
| now they have to make these estimator sourced budgets and
| schedules somehow jive with reality. It isn't an easy task.
| kevviiinn wrote:
| Almost like we shouldn't be listening to MBAs who don't know
| the intricacies and expect everything to turn out perfect in
| order to pinch pennies
| ghaff wrote:
| I've had plenty of pushback from managers (and customers)
| who didn't have MBAs. The difference is usually between how
| long things "should" take everything going well and how
| long things often do take.
|
| On a small/personal scale, you can (and I do) sandbag to a
| certain degree. But it's hard on a large project when
| everyone and their brother is looking to trim any fat out
| of the estimates.
| bumby wrote:
| The counterargument on large projects is there's so much
| coordination between different groups that the location
| of the "fat" becomes opaque and difficult to identify.
| kevviiinn wrote:
| And how do they know how long anything _should_ take,
| especially when they don 't understand the details of the
| process? Sometimes "trimming fat" just isn't realistic or
| even possible
| asdff wrote:
| All that matters is that you get the contract. Sunk cost
| fallacy keeps your customers. It probably also helps that
| everyone operates like this, so its typical to expect
| things to come in late and overbudget to a degree.
| jack_riminton wrote:
| This is exactly it, the optimism bias is usually more likely to
| come from the client, especially if there's politics involved.
| What makes it worse is that once the project is underway
| there's a political tendency to increase the scope.
|
| Prime example is the Scottish Parliament building, first
| estimate was for PS50m. By the time all of the politicians were
| done with it the project's scope was unrecognisable and it cost
| well over PS500m.
| notahacker wrote:
| And there's one of the biggest differences between public and
| private sector scope changes. When the private sector decides
| to massively revise what they're doing on a project most of
| the decisions take place behind closed doors and the guy with
| the most impact on the scope creep probably puts in on his CV
| as successfully scaling up operations. When the public sector
| project balloons it's people's tax dollars and there's an
| opposition party and lots of journalists pointing out the
| original budget.
| abduhl wrote:
| This is the Willie Brown approach:
|
| "News that the Transbay Terminal is something like $300 million
| over budget should not come as a shock to anyone. We always
| knew the initial estimate was way under the real cost. Just
| like we never had a real cost for the Central Subway or the Bay
| Bridge or any other massive construction project.
|
| So get off it. In the world of civic projects, the first budget
| is really just a down payment. If people knew the real cost
| from the start, nothing would ever be approved. The idea is to
| get going. Start digging a hole and make it so big, there's no
| alternative to coming up with the money to fill it in."
| bumby wrote:
| Unfortunately, public projects also have to manage public
| perception. Just like you wouldn't appreciate, say, a roofing
| estimate to be later called a "down payment," the public in
| general doesn't like that approach either. "We don't know how
| much it'll cost but just trust us and let's just get started"
| isn't a particularly palatable sales pitch, especially in
| domains with a long history of corruption.
| asdff wrote:
| At the same time, you gotta give people the medicine they
| need. They have no concept of what a fair price on the
| market is for a subway line being build in your city with
| all the local considerations you have. No one does, that's
| the whole trick of it. At some point though, people need
| subways, they need sewers, they need bridges, and if we
| give them the shot to just turn their nose at anything good
| that seems expensive, we'd probably still be dumping our
| buckets out onto the street at night versus requiring
| plumbing.
| [deleted]
| bumby wrote:
| I think this is infantilizing the public, the very people
| paying the project. Imagine if you went to a car dealer
| and they wouldn't tell you the price of your purchase
| because they say you just don't know what you want or
| need anyway. Just sign the blank check and you'll get
| your keys later.
| iamsanteri wrote:
| Alliance model contracting is the future of large-scale
| infrastructure projects to make them stay on time and under
| budget. Some very good and positive indications gained in
| Australia and lately also here in Finland. It can be a bit rough
| when not executed properly, but in the best case I see so much
| potential in getting the industry "back on track".
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