This is by design. Big projects like this are huge moneymakers for those who are politically connected.
Planned boondoggles.
Absolutely. There are so many hands exchanging money you don't know what went where unless you pull in a forensic accountant to uncover patterns of misappropriation and dereliction of fiduciary duties. I say this as an investigator with quite a bit of experience on corruption cases.
Yep - worked on a shipyard for a while - when they got wind that the government was submitting changes to a job, that job would become the priority so they could bill for the first round and then really soak the taxpayers for implementing the changes....
The problem was caused by the Jim Doyle (Democrat) administration which illegally took money from the Highway trust fund and used it to pay for shortages in the general fund.
Act 10 fixed the budget shortfall, but the damage was done and the highway fund shortfall has not been able to be refilled.
In Seattle they were replacing/modifying the 520 Floating Bridge. The first change order was $400 Million which was issued within the first couple months of the project because the floating bridge pontoons were not designed correctly.
Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) only fired 2 employees over that one. But eventually the Transportation Secretary was force out when the legislature refused to pay her position after an accumulation of WSDOT mistakes and public blunders.
Prior to that the Governor and the Secretary went on a state wide town hall tour asking the people to support some new gas tax they were pushing and how much good it would do for state wide transportation. I attended one of those as a County Engineer and questioned the decision making and the need for the mega-project mindset that WSDOT has adopted. I made the point that that one change order was the equivalent of 200 $2 million projects/80 5-million projects and son and so forth and that if they removed all of the projects from Seattle/Tacoma/Vancouver/Spokane requested funding that this change order would fund every remaining project for the rest of the cities and counties that they had requested funds for.
The room exploded with clapping but it was dead silence from the podium... Go figure
For sure!
Check out the MESS with I-77 in NC...