> An accountant discovered the discrepancy while reviewing the budget for new train platforms under Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan. > The budget showed th

> An accountant discovered the discrepancy while reviewing the budget for new train platforms under Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan. > The budget showed that 900 workers were being paid to dig caverns for the platforms as part of a 3.5-mile tunnel connecting the historic station to the Long Island Rail Road. But the accountant could only identify about 700 jobs that needed to be done, according to three project supervisors. Officials could not find any reason for the other 200 people to be there. > “Nobody knew what those people were doing, if they were doing anything,” said Michael Horodniceanu, who was then the head of construction at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs transit in New York. The workers were laid off, Mr. Horodniceanu said, but no one figured out how long they had been employed. “All we knew is they were each being paid about $1,000 every day.” People may disagree with the following view and downvote, but still... Where can I read an account of what the accountant found and how they reached their conclusions? I can only trust/hope that the accountant had experience in construction and/or could consult with trustworthy advisers. But the two things that came to mind as I read these three paragraphs were that a) this is a puff piece written from the POV of "spending too much money" for whatever agenda this spin would help b) this is cost-cutting being re-spun to look good Some balance: I live close by to a brand new driverless underground metro network that's being developed. I'm super excited to travel on the new trains when they arrive. I even hope to work there at some point. When I was poking around the websites at an early point in the construction process, I found that one site's design/layout was clearly mobile-first to the extent that it was mobile-only and displayed Amusingly™ on a desktop PC; I also found a bit of a headscratcher with another site's DNS setup that I didn't know where to report; and when I poked around the bid platform that let any contractor sign up to be recruited to be part of the construction, I decided the whole system (bid platform and everything else) felt very very rushed-through. So I have no industry experience but I've had a very tiny whiff of what a multi-billion project looks like on the ground as it's developing. Tons of overhead, lots of space for little things to fall through, etc etc. I wouldn't be surprised if what's happening here is really just most of the same kinds of industrial-scale rounding errors. But that makes it equally possible that what's reported really is unambiguously what happened, or that this is the uncomfortable norm and there's some spin.