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The absurd part of this is that the solution is so clear and easy in the United States: Use the scale of the federal government. We got to where we are, in the

The absurd part of this is that the solution is so clear and easy in the United States: Use the scale of the federal government. We got to where we are, in the U.S., because we've got massive inefficiency in state and local government. There's only a handful of cities that are massive enough to do projects that would require hiring highly paid specialists to manage these huge projects. Similarly, most states have very few opportunities for long-term career-building public project management. (There's like 3 west of the Mississippi.) But consolidating all of this expertise in a federal agency tasked with planning and executing massive public projects would allow us to hire career-oriented planners and keep them busy for ever. It's how we run the military, of course. And, ironically, the military is a leech on the U.S. taxpayer, massively bloated and throwing money at foreign problems in the most ham-fisted way just to justify itself – but if you shifted even 20% of the military's spending to a domestic public works department, all that money would not only be to the benefit of the U.S. taxpayer, but you could hire tens of thousands more American workers to do the jobs. It's a win-win for everyone. And it's probably something a lot of legislators could get behind. Not only that, but a federal public works department would quickly be able to aggregate learnings on improving efficiency – knowing what works and what doesn't – while also being able to wield the power of the federal government to negotiate lower prices.

gersh 4y ago
We have the army corps of engineers, which maintains a lot of the dams. We could expand from there.
- larrik 4y ago
  I was thinking of them, too. We could utilize the military directly rather than siphoning off their funding.
abduhl 4y ago
Tunneling and underground work is a uniquely localized specialty. A national organization that runs underground work is going to still need specialized knowledge for each region both because of local ground conditions and local contracting practices. It is very difficult to export know-how from one area to another. Site sampling/testing practices are not even consistent across regions. Beyond that, as someone with extensive experience with underground projects and the federal government, the federal government doesn’t pay nearly enough and its benefits lag private industry significantly at this point. It’s also worth noting that this agency already exists somewhat but spread across departments (FHWA, EPA, etc.). They still outsource to consultants.
- bluGill 4y ago
  Out sourcing to consultants is not the problem. The problem is that we don't have the ability to manage those consultants. We are also outsourcing management of consultants, including gathering requirements. At no point does anyone get cost control as part of their goals, and in many places they get instructions that are contrary to good cost control.
  - abduhl 4y ago
    You honestly think that the federal government would be more effective at managing consultants? The majority of additional costs in any underground job fall into one of two buckets: third party disputes or differing site conditions. A national agency will do no better than a local agency at managing these and will probably be worse because they won’t have any relationship with the locals. At the end of the day an infrastructure project has to be built locally, not in Washington. I won’t even touch the fact that most infrastructure jobs are only partially funded by the federal government with the remainder funded by local tax or rate payers. The federal government has no interest in cost controls beyond their own money and the residents of State X have no interest in funding more of the infrastructure of State Y than they already do.
    - bluGill 4y ago
      I didn't say anything about federal control. Others have, but i'm not seeing anyone interested in solving the problem at any level
- ketzo 4y ago
  Yeah, but that's technical knowledge, not project-management knowledge. The article argues that the real gap is not in people who know how to build things, but in dedicated civil servants who know how to manage those people. And that is a much more transferrable skill than "how to build this kind of rail tunnel through that kind of soil composition" or whatever.
  - abduhl 4y ago
nine_k 4y ago
How many are the examples when the federal government was more efficient (as in effect per unit money) than a commercial company? Certainly there are some. How many examples are there when it was the other way around? Asking unironically, because in a monopsony situation when there's only one buyer, a state or federal agency, commercial companies compete in materially different ways than in a free(r) market.
- yummypaint 4y ago
  Read up on the design and construction of the pentagon and los alamos national laboratory. The relationship between the US federal government and private sector changed tremendously over the 20th century.
- analog31 4y ago
  I'm thinking health care and education.
- PuppyTailWags 4y ago
  Veteran's Affairs, the postal service, social security benefit enrollment and payment processing, the irs, and public education is generally more efficient than commercial offerings at multiple points in their historical existence. Many of them are currently hampered by underfunding though, so I don't know how efficient they are now (being unable to invest enough to maintain themselves would force them to make long-term inefficient tradeoffs).
  - jimmaswell 4y ago
    Aren't VA hospitals hopelessly corrupt with such a low standard of care that any veteran avoids them like the plague if they're able?
    - PuppyTailWags 4y ago
      Please read my entire post.
vorpalhex 4y ago
FEMA can't even show up to emergencies in a timely manner, or produce functional online training courses. Why do you think more federal agencies are an answer? Draining the US military of 1/5 of it's budget while Russia is invading it's neighbors and China is more aggressive with Taiwan is probably unwise. Then bringing in federal assets to run an extremely local project (forcing those people to also travel for extended periods of time), with no jurisdiction (fed can't overrule state laws on planning typically) sounds like a disaster. The government also has a very spotty track record with construction projects.
- alistairSH 4y ago
  US military spending exceeds the next 10 nations COMBINED. Of those 10, half are allies (UK, France, Germany, SK, Japan). Surely, we could cut 20%, still outspend our rivals (China, Russia, India) by >30%, and be ok?
  - clcaev 4y ago
    The goal since WW2 has been dominance, not just in Americas, but also in East Asia, Middle East, etc. China, on the other hand, has had the luxury to concentrate its efforts more strategically. To reduce military expenditure, the US would have to dial back the breadth and depth of reach. Giving up on Taiwan, and then letting Korea and Japan fend for themselves against China would probably also be needed if it were to cut back on its ambitions. Nuclear proliferation would be an immediate outcome.
    - rtkwe 4y ago
      The US could cut back and still compete in the West Pacific/South China see but it would have to focus there very heavily to the detriment of the existing implied obligations to NATO. Part of the US's politically dominant position post WW2 is that we've signed ourselves up to be anywhere in the world fighting a large scale conflict inside of a month with huge stockpiles of everything you need to fight all over the world, including one floating one that can backup the standard land based prepositioned stocks. [0] Granted a lot of that was also enabled by being the only major economy not significantly bombed through the war but that advantage was heavily invested in since then. [0] Wendover Productions has a great video about the insane amount of logistics dedicated to the goal of never having to wait for materiel practically anywhere in the world. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIpPuJ_r8Xg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIpPuJ_r8Xg
starkd 4y ago
Interesting idea. Something needs to be done, because right now, the US can't even construct a nuclear power plant in Georgia on time and within reasonable budget range.
whiddershins 4y ago
What was the size of the organizations that actually made the New York Subways, on time, and on budget? What size organization made the Verrazano and the Golden Gate bridges? What size organization made the Hoover Dam and the Pacific coast Route 1? Using tiny (compared to the equipment we have now) steam shovels?
- pandemicsoul 4y ago
  All of those projects were built nearly 100 or more years ago. Public works can't be built in the same way anymore because laws are different and there's vastly more complexity in property ownership.
scythe 4y ago
>There's only a handful of cities that are massive enough to do projects that would require hiring highly paid specialists to manage these huge projects. If you use the Census Bureau's broadest definition of economically intradependent regions, the Combined Statistical Areas — defined roughly by commuting patterns, which is the relevant scale for a transit system — there are in fact eleven major cities at populations of seven million or higher: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Baltimore-Washington, Dallas, San Francisco, Boston-Providence, Houston, Atlanta, Miami and Philadelphia-Wilmington. Over a third of Americans live in one of these "agglomerations". But establishing a system to handle regional planning would require crossing state boundaries in six of those cases. There are some advantages to local expertise: the geographic and social factors affecting Miami are very different from those in Dallas, which are both very different from San Francisco, which are all totally unlike New York. Establishing the necessary agencies and securing their purview would require federal action, though, I agree.
- WorldMaker 4y ago
  > But establishing a system to handle regional planning would require crossing state boundaries in six of those cases. 6 of 11 is more than half of your examples. That alone seems to suggest there would be efficiencies in federally-supervised planning simply to cross-cut inter-state concerns. (Such as with roads, the use of "inter-state" there is not an accident.) Scrolling further through the list of CSAs the ones between a million people and seven million that are multi-state seem too often to be the least well served by public transportation access today compared to their peers, and that doesn't seem to be a coincidence.

gersh 4y ago

We have the army corps of engineers, which maintains a lot of the dams. We could expand from there.

larrik 4y ago
I was thinking of them, too. We could utilize the military directly rather than siphoning off their funding.

abduhl 4y ago

Tunneling and underground work is a uniquely localized specialty. A national organization that runs underground work is going to still need specialized knowledge for each region both because of local ground conditions and local contracting practices. It is very difficult to export know-how from one area to another. Site sampling/testing practices are not even consistent across regions. Beyond that, as someone with extensive experience with underground projects and the federal government, the federal government doesn’t pay nearly enough and its benefits lag private industry significantly at this point. It’s also worth noting that this agency already exists somewhat but spread across departments (FHWA, EPA, etc.). They still outsource to consultants.

bluGill 4y ago
Out sourcing to consultants is not the problem. The problem is that we don't have the ability to manage those consultants. We are also outsourcing management of consultants, including gathering requirements. At no point does anyone get cost control as part of their goals, and in many places they get instructions that are contrary to good cost control.
- abduhl 4y ago
  You honestly think that the federal government would be more effective at managing consultants? The majority of additional costs in any underground job fall into one of two buckets: third party disputes or differing site conditions. A national agency will do no better than a local agency at managing these and will probably be worse because they won’t have any relationship with the locals. At the end of the day an infrastructure project has to be built locally, not in Washington. I won’t even touch the fact that most infrastructure jobs are only partially funded by the federal government with the remainder funded by local tax or rate payers. The federal government has no interest in cost controls beyond their own money and the residents of State X have no interest in funding more of the infrastructure of State Y than they already do.
  - bluGill 4y ago
    I didn't say anything about federal control. Others have, but i'm not seeing anyone interested in solving the problem at any level
ketzo 4y ago
Yeah, but that's technical knowledge, not project-management knowledge. The article argues that the real gap is not in people who know how to build things, but in dedicated civil servants who know how to manage those people. And that is a much more transferrable skill than "how to build this kind of rail tunnel through that kind of soil composition" or whatever.
- abduhl 4y ago

nine_k 4y ago

How many are the examples when the federal government was more efficient (as in effect per unit money) than a commercial company? Certainly there are some. How many examples are there when it was the other way around? Asking unironically, because in a monopsony situation when there's only one buyer, a state or federal agency, commercial companies compete in materially different ways than in a free(r) market.

yummypaint 4y ago
Read up on the design and construction of the pentagon and los alamos national laboratory. The relationship between the US federal government and private sector changed tremendously over the 20th century.
analog31 4y ago
I'm thinking health care and education.
PuppyTailWags 4y ago
Veteran's Affairs, the postal service, social security benefit enrollment and payment processing, the irs, and public education is generally more efficient than commercial offerings at multiple points in their historical existence. Many of them are currently hampered by underfunding though, so I don't know how efficient they are now (being unable to invest enough to maintain themselves would force them to make long-term inefficient tradeoffs).
- jimmaswell 4y ago
  Aren't VA hospitals hopelessly corrupt with such a low standard of care that any veteran avoids them like the plague if they're able?
  - PuppyTailWags 4y ago
    Please read my entire post.

vorpalhex 4y ago

FEMA can't even show up to emergencies in a timely manner, or produce functional online training courses. Why do you think more federal agencies are an answer? Draining the US military of 1/5 of it's budget while Russia is invading it's neighbors and China is more aggressive with Taiwan is probably unwise. Then bringing in federal assets to run an extremely local project (forcing those people to also travel for extended periods of time), with no jurisdiction (fed can't overrule state laws on planning typically) sounds like a disaster. The government also has a very spotty track record with construction projects.

alistairSH 4y ago
US military spending exceeds the next 10 nations COMBINED. Of those 10, half are allies (UK, France, Germany, SK, Japan). Surely, we could cut 20%, still outspend our rivals (China, Russia, India) by >30%, and be ok?
- clcaev 4y ago
  The goal since WW2 has been dominance, not just in Americas, but also in East Asia, Middle East, etc. China, on the other hand, has had the luxury to concentrate its efforts more strategically. To reduce military expenditure, the US would have to dial back the breadth and depth of reach. Giving up on Taiwan, and then letting Korea and Japan fend for themselves against China would probably also be needed if it were to cut back on its ambitions. Nuclear proliferation would be an immediate outcome.
  - rtkwe 4y ago
    The US could cut back and still compete in the West Pacific/South China see but it would have to focus there very heavily to the detriment of the existing implied obligations to NATO. Part of the US's politically dominant position post WW2 is that we've signed ourselves up to be anywhere in the world fighting a large scale conflict inside of a month with huge stockpiles of everything you need to fight all over the world, including one floating one that can backup the standard land based prepositioned stocks. [0] Granted a lot of that was also enabled by being the only major economy not significantly bombed through the war but that advantage was heavily invested in since then. [0] Wendover Productions has a great video about the insane amount of logistics dedicated to the goal of never having to wait for materiel practically anywhere in the world. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIpPuJ_r8Xg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIpPuJ_r8Xg

starkd 4y ago

Interesting idea. Something needs to be done, because right now, the US can't even construct a nuclear power plant in Georgia on time and within reasonable budget range.

whiddershins 4y ago

What was the size of the organizations that actually made the New York Subways, on time, and on budget? What size organization made the Verrazano and the Golden Gate bridges? What size organization made the Hoover Dam and the Pacific coast Route 1? Using tiny (compared to the equipment we have now) steam shovels?

pandemicsoul 4y ago
All of those projects were built nearly 100 or more years ago. Public works can't be built in the same way anymore because laws are different and there's vastly more complexity in property ownership.

scythe 4y ago

>There's only a handful of cities that are massive enough to do projects that would require hiring highly paid specialists to manage these huge projects. If you use the Census Bureau's broadest definition of economically intradependent regions, the Combined Statistical Areas — defined roughly by commuting patterns, which is the relevant scale for a transit system — there are in fact eleven major cities at populations of seven million or higher: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Baltimore-Washington, Dallas, San Francisco, Boston-Providence, Houston, Atlanta, Miami and Philadelphia-Wilmington. Over a third of Americans live in one of these "agglomerations". But establishing a system to handle regional planning would require crossing state boundaries in six of those cases. There are some advantages to local expertise: the geographic and social factors affecting Miami are very different from those in Dallas, which are both very different from San Francisco, which are all totally unlike New York. Establishing the necessary agencies and securing their purview would require federal action, though, I agree.

WorldMaker 4y ago
> But establishing a system to handle regional planning would require crossing state boundaries in six of those cases. 6 of 11 is more than half of your examples. That alone seems to suggest there would be efficiencies in federally-supervised planning simply to cross-cut inter-state concerns. (Such as with roads, the use of "inter-state" there is not an accident.) Scrolling further through the list of CSAs the ones between a million people and seven million that are multi-state seem too often to be the least well served by public transportation access today compared to their peers, and that doesn't seem to be a coincidence.