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Nowhere to a Bridge
Here in Massachusetts, we may be dysfunctional leftists, but at least we aren’t as bad as Rhode Island.
I was roaming around YouTube and was spoon-fed this story about the replacement of the Washington Bridge in Providence. This isn’t a little bridge. It’s the westbound half of I-195, and is estimated to cost $300 million dollars. The are two RFPs (Request For Proposals). One for demolition and the other for replacement.
I am used to the bidding process, only not on this scale. The state notified 2,172 vendors. Notification isn’t unusual. What is strange is the number of notifications. I think they even asked the local flower shop, considering the number of requests. Sixty-seven companies downloaded the plans. There were fifty-two submitted questions. Nobody submitted a bid.
They have a tight schedule and are offering up to a $10M bonus for early completion. That also means a $10M penalty when you’re late. Governor McKee promised a “Day of Reckoning” for anyone already involved in the bridge project leading up to its closure. There are two law firms under a contingency fee arrangement earning 17% of any damages awarded.
By bidding for this project you have to know the lawsuits will begin against you immediately.
One time I bid and won a controls job for the DHS on the Canadian border. I knew they were going to be a big pain, so I threw an extra 25% on it. For what they put me through I should have doubled it. A pump was undersized and burnt itself out. I didn’t design the system, I just did the controls. On jobs like this, I import the entire specification as text into my program. I then write the code under each paragraph. Many times the spec is contradictory or redundant. My job is not to be creative, but to regurgitate the written word into code.
When this pump burnt out they wanted me to pay for its replacement. I asked them to show me what I did wrong. They couldn’t. What they did say was, “The intent was…,” and they also implied they have a team of lawyers waiting and I will lose. I will never bid on another DHS job again, even at double the price.
I went to my first WooSox game the other night. The WooSox are the Worcester Red Sox. They moved here from Pawtucket, RI in 2021, where they were known as the PawSox. The state paid an exorbitant amount of money to mow down a dilapidated section of Worcester to build Polar Park. The ballpark is very nice but they have a lawn section where the Green Monstah is supposed to be.
The ballpark is a huge improvement to the city. The local restaurant scene has greatly improved. How did Pawtucket manage to lose such a money-maker? The PawSox have been threatening to leave for years, yet Rhode Island did nothing about it.
I’m only dumping on that little state because I know this bureaucracy will happen here, and the rest of the country isn’t far behind.
I feel I have to say something nice about my little neighbor to the south. Um, Wright’s Chicken Farm is amazingly delicious. Also, the Nordic Lodge has an all-you-can-eat buffet including steak, lobster, and anything else you can think of for only $135 per person. Hint: Don’t eat for three days before and after. You can hide your yacht here to avoid Massachusetts state taxes like John Kerry does. That’s all I can come up with.
What does this say about our society when nobody wants to build a bridge at any cost? I miss the days when projects were double and triple what they should have been. At least they got done. Now we are going nowhere.
Published in Domestic Policy
One fatal accident and you can count on losing $10 million. My guess is there will be no takers . . .
The RFPs must have been written extremely poorly.
I’m sure your right. You can usually work around that to some extent. I think the threat from the governor poisoned the job. You always get someone to bid. This is strange.
“A pump was undersized and burnt itself out. I didn’t design the system, I just did the controls…When this pump burnt out they wanted me to pay for it’s replacement.”
That’s hard to argue with, if you installed the pump.
I didn’t install it. I just programmed it’s operation. Specifically the problem was it had too high of a head pressure for it’s size. It had a thermal overload. The spec called for this overload to alarm only, which it did. It didn’t call to disable the pump. I brought it to their attention and nothing was done. The operator got tired of the constant alarm and disabled it. They threatened me and I paid for it. It wasn’t extremely expensive but it made me despise federal or large bids.
We as contractors have to double or triple jobs like this, or better yet, don’t bid it at all.
We were having this sorta conversation this week comparing CA and NY to everywhere else regarding immigration- but I’ll contend it’s just about everything else, too. For my friends’ from NV benefit I said that MA differed to NY and CA only in size and scale of money, crime and social problems. But give it time.
We also agreed that the Dems seem to be following the script and election playbook from UK’s Labour. That focused on the Build it or else approach to housing just introduced there. Kamala’s Build 3mio houses in 4 years just means almost that many consultants will become rich, but no houses built.
Tiny little states with delusions of
grandeuradequacy…Right, like the bang-up job they did with EV charging stations.
Probably mostly the same stuff, but this one is longer:
Thanks @kedavis. I’ll watch later. I don’t think I went over that bridge more than 10 times in my life. Bourne to Providence wouldn’t be a normal route for me. This issue is insignificant to almost all of us but it’s like a hint to the fall of Rome.
Right up there with spending billions on EV chargers and getting, what, 7 of them?
Exactly. Exact same ting. It sounds trivial but it really is scary. Meek little post but this kind of thing is the beginning of the end. I just don’t understand . I’m sure @Joelb was right but this smells worse than low tide.
Post will past, and I’ll move on.
Oh, and:
What is more likely? The Government screwed up, or 13 companies.
What’s left? “You vill build ze bridge, or else!“
Yup. The companies aren’t set up to loose money. The government is.
Contrast this budding bridge fiasco with the construction of the Pentagon. Secretary of War Henry Stimson told President Roosevelt that the Army needed more office space in May 1941. On 17 July 1941, Congress held a one-day hearing and gave the War Department 5 days to come up with a plan for a new building. The miracle-working Gen. Brehon Somervell, the Army construction chief, was put in charge. On 28 July (11 days later) Congress authorized the spending. Roosevelt approved the site location on 2 September (this was actually 2nd site proposed because Roosevelt rejected the first one), and contracts were finalized on 11 September. Ground was broken the same day. Design work was completed on 1 June 1942. Each section of the Pentagon was occupied as it was completed. Construction was completed on 15 January 1943.
It took 20 months from the time that the Army asked for a new building until it was complete. It has 6.6 million square feet of office space. And much of it was in use before it was complete.
Surely we don’t want to do most construction projects at such a breakneck pace as the Pentagon. But it takes years to build a simple bridge because we are strangling ourselves in regulations and lawsuits.
Yes. Even a project to replace an old oil or natural gas pipeline with a new, better, safer one will be tied up in lawsuits for years.
I’m currently working on a relatively small project for Umass Amhurst. My spec is 1757 pages long. There is no way I could ever possibly meet the requirements word-for-word. There are contradiction and omissions everywhere. But we accept the job and get it done. Usually people are good with that. If I didn’t believe there was a good-faith effort to just get the job done right I never would have taken it.
What are they speccing, an aircraft carrier? That’s 700+ pages longer than War and Peace! I wouldn’t even accept delivery. Tell them to send the CliffsNotes.
I’m good at recognizing cut-n-paste. I just go bla, bla, bla, flip. And do it again until I get to something meaningful.
To be fair, something hanging in mid-air needs to be considered more carefully than something all on the ground. But yeah.
Look up how long it took to build Boulder dam. In the middle of the desert. In the middle of the Depression.
Then look up how long it took to build a new visitors center at [Hoover] dam in the 1980s/1990s [The fact that I have to mention two decades should give you a clue]
Of course I’m aware of that. But it’s probably not wise to make direct comparisons between buildings and bridges/dams/etc, over decades. Should keep it same-to-same.
Also back in the 1940s they were less concerned with electrical wiring, HVAC, computer connections… asbestos… lead paint…
It might also be useful to know how many deaths and injuries there were during the initial construction. But no matter how I phrase the question, all that comes up is 9/11.
The Vintage News says the official total was 96 deaths, but people who didn’t die on site weren’t counted.
I wonder what the construction death counts are like these days.
Of course pointless regulation etc accounts for most of delays and excess costs these days, but there are a few other things to consider.
Keystone XL was canceled because of lawsuits and mule-headed intransigence of certain administrations. They would rather force Canada to ship the crude by rail than to use safer, cheaper, and environmentally better pipelines. Why do we have the dumbest people on earth making the big decisions now?
I’m pretty sure Keystone was underway and doing fine, until FJB cancelled it literally on Day One.
But I suppose if it hadn’t been delayed previously, it might have been FINISHED before FJB had a chance to cancel it.
Keystone phases I, II, and III were completed and are operational, delivering 591,000 bbl/day from Alberta to refineries in Texas. The Keystone XL phase would have added 510,000 bbl/day, as well as connecting the Bakken fields in North Dakota. Trump forced the permit through for XL in 2017, but it was still tied up in lawsuits. TransCanada had secured $7 billion in financing and shipping commitments of 500,000 bbl/day. Dementia Joe canceled the permit on his first day in office, and TransCanada canceled the project five months later after having spent $1.5 billion on development.
Who will attempt to build a major pipeline in the US after this fiasco?