GAO: Military barracks with rats, sewage, gas leaks ...

The premium is caused by the difficulty in working with the federal government and the requirements they demand.

 

Agreed. The paperwork to get andbthen managr a project ends up costing as much as the work.

 

Tell me about it. I superintended the building of a movie theater on Orlando's Naval Training Center back in the 80s. If a laborer picked up a hammer and the Navy inspector or the LT Commander that was my contact saw him I had to pay the laborer Union Carpenter pay for the day. I had to let an entire crew of painters go because they pissed off the Female Admiral that ran the base. She wanted me to fire them and when I told her I couldn't because they were sub contractors she revoked their base passes.

 

We are effectively talking housing here - not defense or technology, which can be more of a black hole. It shouldn’t be THAT hard even with govt contracting. It’s just about the political will to get it done. I guess updating housing isn’t as sexy as adding a bunch of aircraft carriers or landing that munitions contract in a congresspersons hometown. Some of those scumbags in congress probably look at it like any other “public housing”. These issues are beneath them.

Figure out which buildings are in the worst state of decay or strategically need updating. Find a contractor that can build new at relative to local market rates. No different from any infrastructure, it has a useful life. Once you get beyond that useful life it’s better to start new or you have a money pit even if you do well to manage it (and if you fail to maintain, it ends up a crumbling sh%*hole).

 

Again, it is extremely complicated and hard to explain on a message board but I'll try to do it breifly. The bottom line is that we are trying to redesign the Joint Force for a new adversary, just as a bunch of major platforms are reaching their end of designed service life. So now you have to decide if you are going to buy that new naval strike missile that is critical for mission success or build a new child care facility at that base in the middle of the desert. I'm over simplifying it but I think you get the idea. Also, we budget about three to four years out, so even if the DoD and Congress wants to address the issues found in this report, it would not start until '25 or '26 at the earliest. It's the services that submit the budget requests with their priorities.