re: Man builds city park stairs for $550 - City says it will cost $65,000

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That's not exclusive to government projects though. If these were stairs for a private company, they surely wouldn't approach $65k.

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That's not the only thing that bloats the price but whatever. You're hell bent on arguing.

Who the frick thought it was a good idea to attach the HR post to the stair treads?

Last Summer as a board member of a youth sports complex on a public park the State of Louisiana bidding requirements limited the youth association to only 3 contractors to build a new concession stand. All the engineered drawings were up to all current codes. Of the 3 bids received the lowest bid was $242,000. As a lessee of the park we were able to skirt the rules and had it build by a private contractor as per the bid specs for $68,000. That is government waste.

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All the engineered drawings were up to all current codes. Of the 3 bids received the lowest bid was $242,000. As a lessee of the park we were able to skirt the rules and had it build by a private contractor as per the bid specs for $68,000. That is government waste.

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The most conservative estimates for the Healthcare.gov site are $75MM to build, and LNCHBOX is arguing government construction contracts aren't absurdly high.

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ADA

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I bet they can get down better now with those nifty steps.

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and LNCHBOX is arguing government construction contracts aren't absurdly high.

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That's not what I said, but knock yourself out with patting yourself on the back.

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Is it a government contract?

That's all I need to know about whether or not the bid is unnecessarily high.

I spent two years working for an international EPC company. Our government projects were a completely separate division for a reason.

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Maybe on the design side, but outside of Louisiana that's not true for construction. I.e. 1 mile of road on a public ROW is not going to be more expensive than one mile of road inside a plant. Yes I know safety/personnel play a big part of this but having been on both sides (design and construction) for both public and private work I would say that is not the case for construction.

ETA I was on a project building a railroad through a downtown area with one bridge over a small river. Our marine fleet maintenance budget was over 1mm (we bought a 8k pontoon boat to dick around on and thats it) which was really just a honey hole. So depending on contract size I guess it changes. Over 100mm and yes theres lots of inflation. Small jobs like a stairway though, not so much.

We are all joking about the absurd $65,000 estimate for the stairs, but in reality some contractor was (is?) gonna make about a $60,000 profit on those stairs, which equates to stealing $60,000 in government money.
We don't laugh at those that abuse the welfare system, nor should we really laugh at those that abuse the contractor side.