Witnesses from the Veterans’
Administration and its contractor Brasfield & Gorrie sparred at a House
Committee on Veterans’ Affiars hearing April 10 over the delays of up to a year
and cost increases of up to $120 million for construction of a new VA hospital
in Orlando, Florida. The contractor for the 314 bed facility, which now could
cost as much as $2.5 million per bed, blamed VA designers for the delays and
ballooning construction costs, citing an increase from 4,532 design drawings to
more than 10,000, and the need for more than 3,200 requests for information
from Brasfield & Gorrie to the federal government designers.
“As a result of the lack of
completed design for the hospital, it was impossible to construct the hospital
efficiently,” said Brasfield & Gorrie Chairman Miller Gorrie at the
hearing. Gorrie pointed out that, though the project was supposed to be
finished this coming October, the last drawings from the designers were only
delivered last week. The poor planning meant Brasfield & Gorrie had to cut
its workforce on site from 1,000 to 500 while it waited for finished designs.
Glenn Haggstrom, executive
director of VA’s office of acquisitions, accepted some of the blame for the
delays and cost increases, confessing that the agency took too long selecting
medical equipment for the facility, forcing delays in determining room sizes
needed to house it. VA official Robert Petzel echoed Haggstrom’s testimony: “Errors
in the initial design along with procuring and integrating specialized medical
equipment into the existing design, both VA responsibilities, affected the
contractor’s schedule,” he admitted.
House members’ responses were
predictably agitated. Representative Corrine Brown (D-Fla) summed up the
committee’s sentiments: “I am not a happy camper” she said. “That is
unacceptable.”
