AURORA | The Department of Veterans’ Affairs officials say incomplete hospital designs and willful ignorance of warnings from its construction contractor are the reason why the Aurora replacement veterans hospital is now estimated to cost a whopping $1.7 billion and years over deadline.
Dennis Milsten, VA director of the Office of Construction and Facilities, told a House subcommittee on veterans affairs Thursday that the project started veering off track soon after 2004 when hospital designs were created by the joint venture H+L/SOM LLP/CRA/S.A. Miro.
“We had a designer we charged with delivering a design that could be built for just under $600 million,” Milsten said. “We did not do the proper amount of due diligence on that estimate. We did not dig into far enough detail to actually figure out (if) it could or couldn’t be done. We relied on that and we moved forward.”
He said the VA also made missteps in not listening to construction contractor Kiewit-Turner, who for nearly five years said the design was hundreds of millions of dollars over budget.
In December Kiewit-Turner won a complaint it filed with the Civilian Board of Contract Appeals that said after the initial agreement over the hospital’s budget in November 2011, the VA submitted design plans to Kiewit that were more complex and that “significantly increased the scope of the work.”
Rep. Kathleen Rice, D-N.Y, was one of several committee members who said she would not consider giving another penny to the VA until she knew the specifics of what went wrong with the project and that it wouldn’t happen again.
“What I think we need is a very detailed report of exactly what went wrong, when it went wrong, and who you hold responsible for those mishaps and miscalculations,” Rice told the VA officials. She said she wanted them to come up with a report by next week.
Meghan Flanz, director of the Office of Accountability Review at the Department of Veterans Affairs, told the committee she had an administrative board investigating the project.
“The process of collecting evidence of decisions made over a many-year program takes time,” she said. “The process my team is working on will take more like a month than a week, but we are working to get those answers just as soon as we can pull the evidence together.”
“The problem is the money runs out in May of 2015,” Rice responded, citing the VA’s own estimate that it will need Congress to authorize an additional $930 million by mid-May to keep construction moving.
All of the committee members who questioned the VA officials about the Aurora hospital said they didn’t believe the VA should be in the hospital business at all.
Flanz said the Army Corps of Engineers was also doing a study to determine if the VA should continue to build hospitals.
Isn’t it time for our Government to start to ‘clean house’? Must they continue to have people who are not capable of doing anything right on the job? This isn’t a singular issue, but is widespread in government. They hire anyone who can complete an application without aid from a sighted person, and then give them responsibilities far above their abilities and expect a good outcome. The VA hired ‘one new person’ to head it, that’s not enough people, thousands must be let go and competent people hired to replace them, people from private enterprise, people who KNOW who to get work done correctly and promptly. Government is known for being bogged down in inability and very ignorant people as employees who oversee others of the same ilk.
There are many reasons projects like this run over cost. You suggest unqualified people are behind it. Do you know this to be a fact, or is it your anti-government bias — which runs through many of your posts on many articles — which is informing your view here? From what I’ve read in many articles, this whole matter is quite complex and blame — where there is blame — needs to be apportioned in multiple directions.
And you point out what is wonderful about Obama and this crew, who I find untrustworthy and racist.
When all roads lead to government, you need not look elsewhere.
If what happened here, happened in private enterprise, business fails, in the case of government Not one person will be fired, perhaps a promotion for bringing their inability to light.
AURORA | The Department of Veterans’ Affairs officials
say incomplete hospital designs and willful ignorance of warnings from
its construction contractor are the reason why the Aurora replacement
veterans hospital is now estimated to cost a whopping $1.7 billion and
years over deadline.…
Read this again, if you did to begin with, it’s ALL government’s fault, they have no one who knows enough about construction or how to read blueprints and designs to understand cost. Kiewit, as the article states, warned them 5 years ago that the ‘plan’ was millions short of the proposal, what part of that makes you think there are ‘multiple parties to blame’?
Ask any contractor who works on VA projects, big or small, about incomplete designs and change orders. Big profits. The practice of contractors is to provide a competitive low bid with full confidence and knowledge that most of your profits will come from numerous change orders. Poor planning and design guarantees from the inevitable design-build outcome. One of my better business deals came from a VA project. No one at VA seemed to care … alas, taxpayer money.
So are you saying you low-balled the bid and ran up the costs at taxpayer (as in my) expense as one of your better business deals?
The VA’s ineptitude creates many change orders which contractors are obliged to incorporate into their ever changing scope of work. It’s not easy dealing with the VA mainly due to their incompetence. Change orders are profitable, but it’s not the fault of contractors.
So are you saying you low-balled the bid and ran up the costs at taxpayer (as in my) expense as one of your better business deals?
One aspect many folks don’t realize is that the VA is and has always been a jobs program for military vets, including many who are disabled. Many times a vet will get the job over more qualified non-vets. As a Vietnam vet, I’m ok with the VA giving preferences to vets, but sometimes they get some folks in positions way beyond their skill set or abilities.