The town in which I live is building a new auditorium and music instruction space at the local high school. The current budget for the project is in the neighborhood of $40 million. (That is not a typo; I really said forty million dollars is being spent on an auditorium.) After doing supposedly exhaustive planning for the project, the town was surprised to discover that there was some contaminated soil at the construction site. It took years to decide what to do about the contamination, but after a lengthy investigation of the soil conditions and a remediation effort, construction is finally underway. Today, however, we heard that there is a new problem afflicting the project: the groundwater is leaking into the excavation at its lowest point, the orchestra pit in the front of the auditorium. The result will be another lengthy delay and cost increase.
If one needed to illustrate the inability of government to manage construction projects (or any other projects) well, this auditorium certainly fills the bill. Look at the latest problem. The construction is being done on a site for which extensive investigations were done of the subsurface conditions. No proper discussion of underground contaminants could have been had without a full consideration of the impact of ground water on moving those contaminants. That means that the town ought to have known more, by far, about ground water at the site than would normally be the case. The engineers working for the town designed a water control system to prevent the ground water from seeping into the excavation, but that control system has failed. It seems inconceivable that the actual ground water situation could have been a surprise to those engineers. So how did we get to this failure with its time and cost effects inflicted on the project? No one is saying.
The most likely outcome of this mess is that the town will just spend more to complete the project, the engineers who improperly designed the system or the contractor who built it improperly will be let off the hook, and the whole matter will be swept under the rug. Ah the beauty of your tax dollars at work.
If one needed to illustrate the inability of government to manage construction projects (or any other projects) well, this auditorium certainly fills the bill. Look at the latest problem. The construction is being done on a site for which extensive investigations were done of the subsurface conditions. No proper discussion of underground contaminants could have been had without a full consideration of the impact of ground water on moving those contaminants. That means that the town ought to have known more, by far, about ground water at the site than would normally be the case. The engineers working for the town designed a water control system to prevent the ground water from seeping into the excavation, but that control system has failed. It seems inconceivable that the actual ground water situation could have been a surprise to those engineers. So how did we get to this failure with its time and cost effects inflicted on the project? No one is saying.
The most likely outcome of this mess is that the town will just spend more to complete the project, the engineers who improperly designed the system or the contractor who built it improperly will be let off the hook, and the whole matter will be swept under the rug. Ah the beauty of your tax dollars at work.
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