Do Public Works Projects Have to be so Slow?

 "China is set to build 70 international airports in ten years, while Britain prevaricated on a single runway." (Tony Blair, autobiography)

The legacy countries of what used to be called the industrialized world seems to have a terrible time getting major public works projects done:

• A brand-new $6 billion Berlin airport is sitting idle for $16 million every month because it hasn't been able to pass the fire protection inspections since its completion date in 2012(!), six years after ground-breaking. 

  

  Berlin: For five years a complete airport without people and planes

• The Second Avenue in New York was so long in the making with so many stops and starts that one doesn't even know what to count as the  begin of construction. The first phase got completed now, but with a cost of $ 2.7 billion per mile of rail people wonder if the second phase that is slated to cost $ billion will ever be built. 
• Baltimore's Red Line light trail project was estimated to cost nearly $3 billion and was scrapped after 13 years of planning. 
• There is still not a single mile of true high-speed rail completed in the entire US
• New power sources require up to $9 billion in new transmission lines, very little progress has been made to date

 The list of large public works projects that took decades to plan, nearly as long to build, and went way over budget in the process is long. The list of projects that got designed but never got built is even longer. What is going on?

Theories abound:

• Too much regulation, namely environmental protection, in the US specifically the National Environmental Protection Act of 1970
• Too much participation: Too many NIMBYs, individual interest that can block any project, in short
• A lack of political will and visionaries that carry out the really big ideas
• In a time where government is under siege in general and public budgets have been curtailed in many countries, there is simply not enough money for big projects 
• With so much already on the ground most money is tied up with operating what we already have
• Government can't get anything done. 

Hoover Dam: Environmental protection took a back seat

Environmental regulation

The other day I held a slim little booklet in my hand, title: Baltimore Metro Impact Study. May 1985. The document was prepared only 32 years ago, but is as different from today's Environmental Impact Statements and New Starts document submissions as if it was a relic of ancient history, when environment  and public opinion didn't matter. The 1985 impact study weighed in with 116 pages. The environmental impact statement (EIS) for the Washington DC area Purple Line comes in volume I-IV and its table of contents alone is 14 pages long.

There are major barriers to the timely completion of the federal environmental review and permitting requirements for important infrastructure projects. It often takes over eight years for the largest, most complex, and controversial projects to complete the environmental review process, compared with just over two years in the 1970s (Getting Infrastructure Going, RPA 2012)

Subway EIS on 116 pages

But the environment and public opinion DID matter in 1985! The impacts statements from today's rail projects and the ones from 1985 were both prepared after the National Environment Protection Act (NEPA) of 1970, after the Club of Rome had brought sustainability into the minds of the public, after Silent Spring and after the first oil crisis. People weren't environmental or rights Neanderthals then. Quite the opposite: Civil rights, clean air and clean water and community reinvestment acts all fall into that period.  But something went wrong since then, environmental consideration taking a path that nobody had anticipated. President Obama, a declared friend of the environment, took notice:

In August 2011, President Obama sent a memo to all of the heads of executive departments and agencies directing them to immediately speed the delivery of major infrastructure projects that are stuck in the NEPA process to more quickly deliver their job benefits, and use information technology to improve the accountability, transparency, and efficiency of the permitting and review processes.20 In October, 14 infrastructure projects were selected by the Council on Environmental Quality for expedited reviews. (RPA Report)

Other rather progressive thinkers also want to speed up the process. Developer and frequent speaker about American Cities, Chris Leinberger, noted at an AIA conference about infrastructure and public architecture that "it is irresponsible how long our public work projects take from concept to realization. We simply don't have the time to wait seven years before that new line will be running" he said about a new light rail line in Seattle.
Leinberger also zeroed in on NEPA, and the preparation of environmental impact statements. He thinks that these documents not only take too long, but not even predict what will happen accurately. He suggested that somebody do a study that compares the reality of completed projects with the data and model based projections contained in a typical EIS.

Bertha, the mega drill under Seattle became famous for getting stuck

As usual, though, the reality is more complex. Not only was the environmental act proposed to protect the environment, NEPA was actually conceived as a streamlining effort that would bundle individual environmental tests in an efficient manner.

NEPA was originally conceived of as a streamlining tool – organizing the many reviews, regulations, and regulatory agencies and consultants involved in any given project while providing citizens with an opportunity to learn more about projects and their impacts, and the government’s decision-making process.(RPA)

From my own work on larger transit projects I can confirm that EIS documents and "Technical Reports" have taken on a life of their own. Originally intended to inform the design of a project and make it more environmentally friendly and efficient, the documents are today running on their own track and are prepared to justify a project rather than influence its design.

The environmental impact studies absorb a lot of consulting capacity and represent a large part of the soft cost. They are performed in their special silo of experts trained in writing these reports but not in designing a project. Much of the documentation of historic resources, parks and the like are extensive compilations of the obvious and never to be read by the design engineers. They weigh down public library shelves but can hardly be understood by the public. The Baltimore Red Line, a surface-subway light rail line, for example, didn't involve much demolition at all and ran either in existing "right of ways" or underground. Historic structures (Section 106) or parks were not physically affected. Still, much paper was devoted to the impact on historic resources and parks. The EIS rarely determines which of the required alternatives is ultimately picked as the "preferred alternative". In spite of all the science, research and talk about data, the preferred alternative is often predetermined by politics. In short, the required documents justify a project that the powers-to-be had defined on their own long before the impacts had been determined.
To figure out how the NEPA process could be accelerated the Regional Plan Association in New York prepared in 2012 a report titled Getting Infrastructure Going. It includes a recommendation to better integrate design and environmental review but certainly does not recommend to weaken enironmental protection in favor of expediency.


Community participation 

Of course, it isn't all about NEPA. NIMBY does play a role, citizens objecting to big projects. As on NEPA, the intention of community participation are noble  but certain systemic problems have arisen and the process has frequently gone array. One of the systemic problems of infrastructure projects is that negative impacts are well defined and clearly addressed whereas the benefits are not. In addition residents in the path of a public works projects, be it a road, transit, a power line or a pipeline are well defined also whereas people who are beneficiaries are not.

The problem arise from insufficient techniques of capturing and defining "impacts" and from antiquated methods of community participation. To get people to be excited about a project  a narrative is needed that says why a project is good and not only reports that prove small negative impacts. It is then not surprising that only complainers would turn out let alone that potential beneficiaries usually aren't even invited because they live outside the (negative) impact zone. To make things worse, especially US law is skewed towards private property rights over public interest and the common good. Methods from times when life was simpler, the audience more homogeneous and the material less complicated just won't do any longer. Invitations for public hearings may be written in several languages but the process of signing up to speak or taking the mike in front or issuing written comments is designed for only for well spoken people and totally foreign to folks from other cultures where such meetings are either much more direct or not common at all.

Alternatives for a  Amtrak Northeast Corridor tunnel alignment 

Having people attend evening meetings in persons is hard enough. Having them comment on displays of technical drawings even more. The fact that agencies increasingly shy away from presentations in fear of giving opponents "a bully pulpit" and instead hold so called "open houses" with poster boards on easels makes things worse. The poster approach requires people to understand things by just looking at them without a helpful well worked out presentations. The intended one on one dialogue with agency representatives placed at those boards represents a very high hurdle.  Community "input" is most meaningful in the formative purpose and needs stage when fundamental alternatives are still on the table.

“It took 410 days to build the Empire State Building; four years to erect the Golden Gate Bridge. The Pentagon took two years; the Alaska Highway just nine months. These days it takes longer to build an overpass.” (Jonah Goldberg)

As on environmental protection, acceleration cannot be achieved on reducing community participation. It must be achieved by making it more meaningful and by employing modern technology. Leinberger suggested crowd sourced planning where laypeople develop the basic alternatives. Certainly online commenting and opinion polls could broaden community participation by lowering the threshold while also expediting it at the same time.


Government

The good news is that government is pretty good at learning from its mistakes: Anytime some government project went awry because it involved bribery, corruption, cost or schedule overruns or poor performance, politicians add new rules to prevent such failure in the future. The bad news is that government will continue to accumulate rules infinitely. As a result procurement books ("Requests for Proposals, or RFPs) have become as voluminous as the NEPA documents, no matter whether it is about buying services or buying goods or construction. Responders have to wade through pages and pages of boilerplate language and specific regulations that regulate wage scales, minority participation, non-collusion, buy-American rules and provisions for every eventuality, each important rules in itself, but collectively making a response a costly and time consuming affair that is almost impossible to undertake for small businesses. RFPs are costly  for public agency to prepare, for bidders to respond to and for selection committees to review. Accordingly, the procurement itself drags over many months even for small projects, adding to the schedule and to the cost.

In this light it was a surprise that the construction of a "beautiful wall" on the southern border of the US advertised a procurement schedule that was so fast that it seemed even more unreal than the project itself. Concept paper March 10, shortlist March 20, phase 2 submittals four (!) days later and award in mid April. Of course, it wasn't an expression of a suddenly reformed swamp but more one of lack of knowledge. The schedule was impossible, even for a master of the "art of the deal". Once federal procurement experts looked actually  took a harder look, a revised solicitation is decidedly less ambitious.

Phase 1 of the RFP will be due on or about March 20, 2017 and will require vendors to submit a concept paper of their prototype which will result in the evaluation and down select of offerors. Phase 2 will require the down select of phase 1 offerors to submit proposals in response to the full RFP, including pricing, which will be due on or about May 3, 2017. CBP intends to issue multiple award Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contracts. Some limited number (yet to be defined) of additional miles are contemplated to be included by competing the requirements among the successful IDIQ contract holders. The intent of this procurement is to acquire and evaluate available wall prototypes and provide some initial construction of some wall segments, but is not intended as the vehicle for the procurement of the total wall solution for the border with Mexico.

The procurement site states that "Customs and Border Protection intends to issue the final Request for Proposals not before March 15, 2017". As of March 22 the revised RFP has not yet been posted. Instead an update darkly states:

Due to system limitations, the issuance of two separate RFPs cannot be posted through traditional means.  As such, the RFPs will be posted shortly under the Combined Synopsis/Solicitation type as HSBP1017R0022 and HSBP1017R0023.

That sounds more like one is used to. And that is before more reality about funding, site control and other pesky items such as practical specifications set in, let alone NEPA and public participation. The procurement of the wall is intended as a "design-build" process in which the bidder designs and builds and often even finances a project. Typically in public procurement of design build detailed non-proprietary performance specifications are provided  so that the proposals are apples to apples at least  in terms of what that wall is supposed be doing. (without performance metrics bidders could propose a six foot chain-link fence and still be compliant). The wall procurement will likely show how public projects should not be done rather than providing a good model for a faster process.

The enormously lengthy procedures lead to another government related delay: Change in administrations because projects don't follow the quadrennial election cycle. Often a new mayors, governors or presidents will pressure design teams to investigate additional alternatives or otherwise change the scope of the work. In the case of the Baltimore Red Line a rail project that was started around 2002 by a Democratic Governor was diverted to study Bus Rapid Transit by a Republican in 2004, reverted to a Democrat in 2008 and was then killed by another Republican in 2015.

No one intended to make it so hard to get big projects completed. Rather, the gravitational forces that bring good ideas crashing to the ground emerged from the muddle of good intentions. Marc J. Dunkelman 

Another issue of infrastructure construction is the unique condition of the construction industry in which design and construction are usually separated. Project delivery models that combine design and construction into one team  (design-build) can produce a streamlined process that avoids dead-end designs that bust the budget.
As before, neither procurement or project delivery itself should be stripped from regulations that protect the public from corruption, poor quality or incompetence. But procurement and project delivery need to be innovated, simplified and shortened.

Conclusion

If current trends continue RFPs, proposals and planning documents would soon consume all resources and nothing would be left for actual construction. Already courses need to be given to engineers about document management, communication and filing procedures. And if and when it comes to construction, the rules even more convoluted from hundreds of pages of general conditions, voluminous contract language to business licenses, insurances, performance bonds and maintenance of traffic. One doesn't have to be a libertarian or fan of the current President to find some appeal in the idea that for every new regulation two old ones should go. But that, too, is easier said than done because taken one by one most of the existing rules make sense.

Which is to conclude that a highly developed civilization where hardly anybody wants to take a risk and everybody wants to play it safe and where nobody wants to accept inconveniences, big public works projects will happen less frequently, will continue to take longer and become more expensive.
Which probably is a good thing given how many of those big projects in the past have turned out to be wrong-headed and had disastrous consequences. One has to just think of urban renewal, urban freeways or old style public housing to see how quickly the idea what would be good changed. Nobody should want to go back to the end of the nineteenth century when New York's subway tunnels were built in record speed and with a high death toll and without much consideration of safety, equity, environmental impacts or community input. New technologies and procurement and delivery models such as design-build-operate and manage. (DBOM) can provide better protections and a faster process, but they have their own downsides as well.

No acceleration idea, though will resolve the fundamental problem, that US infrastructure investment is only 2% of GDP while Europe spends 5% and China 9% according to a U.S. government report.

Postscript:

A presentation by Gena Wirth of Scape Studio about environmental resiliency work on the coastlines of State Island NY brought to light the limited capability of NEPA in dealing with positive impacts that from the onset aim towards mitgation as the purpose of a project. I.e. where the project itself is mitigation  the traditional approach of dealing with mitigation as a necessary consequence of a project's negative impacts is bound to fail. In Scape's case of creating ecological breakwaters the process is almost turned on its head. The traditional sequential review is further useless because the project engineers and designers use hydraulic models that the reviewers have never seen before and that are essentially unprecedented. Innovation will bring about such situations more frequently. The solution for their project is an iterative process  and ongoing communication between designers and reviewers with peer reviewers as a "neutral party" facilitating and verifying the science of the approach.

This approach may be useful for an acceleration of even more standard projects and their environmental review.

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA
updated for post-script 3-30-17

Border Wall bids
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