GAO Blames VA For Hospital Construction Delays And Overruns

GAO testimony to a House subcommittee last week demonstrated that Veterans Administration supervision of its own major construction projects is dysfunctional and fails to meet construction industry standards for construction management. As a result, according to the GAO  auditors who appeared at the hearing, VA medical center construction projects average three years behind schedule and $366 million over budget. Projects in Las Vegas, Denver, New Orleans and Orlando were the subject of the GAO review.

According to the Congressional testimony, the primary cause of the problem is VA's inability to deal with design changes in a timely manner, resulting in multiple demobilizations and remobilizations on each project, while contractors await, often for many months, VA decisions on proposed expansions or revisions of the projects. In some instances, significant mid-stream changes in dimensions of the latest imaging and other high tech medical equipment have meant on the fly revisions to room dimensions and floor load specifications. Many of the problems resulted from VA's determination to begin construction before finalizing the decisions about facility size and purpose.

During the hearing, several Congressmen questioned the award of significant compensation bonuses to VA administrators charged by GAO with responsibility for the delays and cost overruns. Kansas Congressman Tim Huelskamp said in questioning VA Acquisition, Logistics and Construction head Glenn Haggstrom that Haggstrom's pay should have been docked instead of augmented because of all the decision making delays.

Republican “Green” Legislation

Sitting on President Obama’s oval office desk for the past 5 days is a piece of legislation described by House and Senate Republicans as “green” legislation to create cutting edge energy conservation technology jobs. Called the Federal Buildings Personnel Training Act, and designated HR 5112 in the House and S 3250 in the Senate, the bill is supposed to cut federal government energy costs and train the federal building maintenance work force in the use of high performance technologies for energy conservation in federal buildings.

About 97% of federal office buildings use private contractors to maintain and manage the facilities, and according to House co-sponsors Judy Biggert (R-Ill.) and Russ Carnahan (R-Mo.), the legislation should cut the $7 billion spent annually on heating, cooling, powering and lighting federal facilities. GSA expects every dollar spent on training under this legislation to return $3.95 annually in energy cost savings. Senator Susan Collins (R-Me.), cosponsor of S 3250, quotes GSA as complaining that contractors responsible for managing federal facilities “lack qualified, well-trained people” to manage more than 500,000 federal buildings, structures, associated infrastructure and other physical assets in the U. S. and around the world.

The legislation was presented to Obama December 3, and awaits his signature. Interesting that the Republican climate change deniers were the ones to sponsor this bill in both houses. The stimulus legislation they have been complaining about for nearly 2 years appropriated $5.5 billion to GSA for upgrading energy efficiency of federal facilities, and ever since, GSA has been complaining that lack of proper expertise among facility operating personnel was a major roadblock in reaching federal government energy reduction goals. Once the bill is signed into law, training for the operators of the numerous federal buildings in the Chicago area should kick into high gear.