I think if you did, you'd know this isn't philosophy, but actual, "empirical" reality such as examples of the Post Office, the DMV, and possibly certain critical elements of the Orville dam.
Government knows it does not take care of things, either with out-sourced maintenance or their own crews. They therefore often build things a little more durable.
More durable than what? Than what a private firm would do? What is government's incentive to build things that are more durable? One thing for sure, since no one in government actually owns any government assets, no one has any incentive to maintain these projects which is why the history of the maintenance of government projects is miserable at best. "The Projects" is ghetto-code for dilapidation of things built for government programs.
WalMart builds shopping center space for their own use. They build it very solidly built and sound. Across the street, the private shopping center developer, who is often not going to build and hold, often builds crap.
As I said, the free market isn't perfect, but the open competition in the free market will weed out schlock. America has the highest quality country in the world not because of government but because of the open competition and voluntary cooperation of buyers and sellers in the marketplace free from government interference. The standard of living and safety of government-heavy countries are far below that of America.
All of this has little to do with the contractor who builds what is on the plans and in the contract. The designer sets the standard for much of this and he designs what he is paid to design with a service life and materials as dictated by his user.
That is why I say, to the degree the free market is running the show, the better the result. Also, to the degree the local government is small, businesslike, transparent, free of bribes, and accountable, the better the result.
Over the last 15 years I have watched as the military went through more design-build trying to mimic the private sector with one goal in mind — drive the cost down 30%. Quality during that process has been all over the ball park. Delivery times have been up and down as well. Durability has not improved but lack of standardization has actually made maintenance harder to maintain for military bases.
Part of the reason for the mixed results is confusion of purpose and blurred goals in the last 28 years from the Commander in Chief on down. The one thing government can do very well is build a maintain the military. Government is an entity of force which is it's raison d'etre. Thus, military projects and maintenance fits government like a glove. So again, especially in military matters, the more patriotic, businesslike, and bribery-free the approach to goal-setting, researching, bidding, and deal-making with outside contractors, the better the result.
Quality on construction in general, is much higher than it was 30 years ago given the same item to item comparison and this is regardless of the buyer. I base this opinion on hundreds of millions in projects over almost 50 years.
I assume you mean government construction projects. Your general statement is hard to validate or nail down, but there is every reason to believe that to the degree the free market was involved, to that degree cost, turnaround time, and quality for those projects were the best. To the degree it was opaque, unaccountable big government running the show, the price for that quality was probably unconscionable.
There is some information that I haven’t shared in investigating the full history of the engineering & the project at Oroville.
This information reveals a series of engineering decisions involving multiple special groups
+financial,
+meteorological history estimates,
+original ambitious higher flow capacity MS design,
+Finite Element Analysis simulations (for solid concrete structure integrity in Modified Mercalli intensity shaking scale [earthquake max estimate]), +hydraulic model testing flow -100ft high rooster tail problems,
+unexpected discovery of less than acceptable substructure rock & how it was addressed,
+worst case flow estimated once in 10,000+ years, etc.
Short of the long, the project was large and involved many facets of these groups working together.
There are strong indications that some decisions were made dependent on constrictions found, and in other cases liberal estimates that were “best practices & knowledge” at that time.
This is a classic combination that have led to failures, not by intentional means, but of a collective set of circumstances. When I mentor engineers, one of the first tasks I make them undertake is to read Henry Petroski’s book on Design Paradigms, “Case Histories of Error and Judgement in Engineering”.
I’m convinced Oroville will become a classic in engineering history and will be added to books of this genre.
The tough part right now - this situation is a very very expensive problem to fix. At least they have good information on the exposed geology (save’s ‘em a survey & a huge number of drill holes)... :-)