One thing to emphasis is that the hollowing of the civil service was an explicitly Republican plan, and one of the intentions behind it was to allow
private firms who donated to Republican interests to loot the public till.

Demanding design-build on all public projects (especially homeland security projects) is vitally important. Design-build means hiring one firm to make the design specifications, another to do the work. This allows design firms to compete based on how cost-effective a plan they can produce, without having an incentive to pad the bottom line. One example would be security. Ask the police department to plan for security and you end up with huge amounts of police overtime, and all sorts of "cop toys" that they would like to be able to keep on hand. (Bringing this back to Boston, note the security plan for the Democratic convention, which ended up with an offer of all the overtime any policeman in Eastern Mass. wanted, and all sorts of equipment purchases. So you had huge crowds of policemen sitting around, not doing much, and a young woman killed at a Red Sox game, with equipment purchased for the Dem. Convention that the officer involved was not qualified to use.)

Also blame the Republican congress for cutting all federal funding to the Big Dig in the late 90s, after the project had reached beyond the point where construction could be halted. This threw all costs back onto Massachusetts taxpayers, despite a pledge from the Feds to pay half the costs. This is the point where the ignoring of real problems began.

=== Also blame the Republican congress for cutting all federal funding to the Big Dig in the late 90s, after the project had reached beyond the point where construction could be halted. This threw all costs back onto Massachusetts taxpayers, despite a pledge from the Feds to pay half the costs. ===

The original estimate for the Big Dig was somewhere in the neighborhood of $5 billion. The final cost around $11 billion. I am sitting in a midwestern city that is choking economically due to the lack of a critical and 30-year-overdue infrastructure project; we can't get any significant amount of federal funding even though the state (though not the directly-affected metro area) voted for W both time. You might make an argument to me that Boston's infrastructure was so critical to the whole nation that it required an investment of $4 billion by the federal taxpayer (me), but why the HECK should I be expected to pay for the $6 BILLION overrun?

sPh

But do we have the civil service assets, even in the Department of Defense, to perform even minimally "competent client meta-management"?

Thanks for the post. I found it very helpful, by teaching me about an aspect of the disaster I hadn't seen reported. It also made a good balance to a GOP governor's using the event for political capital.

Ellen's got why the objections are perhaps misplaced. I realize that government will contract out for tasks. So when Nathan reports on privatization, perhaps it's a misnomer. But she's right that it needn't mean privatizing the functions of government to lay out specs, seek competitive designs and competitive bids, ensure oversight, and manage generally in the public interest.

John

http://www.haberarts.com/

Before we swiftly abandon the notion of privatization in infrastructure projects, we should realize that this was a failure of oversight, not a simply a failure of "privatization".

Think about it this way: a bull can pull a load equal to that of say 10 men. Although there is the slim possibility that the bull could break loose and gore a bystander, it is much more efficient to pull a heavy cart by training a driver to harness the bull rather than harnessing 10 human beings to do the pulling.

The mark of good government it to use its resources to maximize the efficiency of tax dollars in a transparent way. Yes, Boston's Big Dig fell short, but that’s no reason to think that tying up 10 men is any better.

Correct link for "2006: Workers doubted ceiling method"
http://www.boston.com/news/traffic/bigdig/articles/2006/07/18/workers_doubted_ceiling_method/

I agree that private engineering management of huge projects like this is nothing out of the ordinary. I also concur with the other commenter who mentioned Bechtel's GOP ties - anyone recall who was President in the early '80s when this deal went down? The turnpike authority made a Faustian bargain, and now they're paying for it.

Also, anyone remember the "Harbor of Shame" from the 1988 presidential campaign? Some academic should do a case study comparing the Big Dig management versus the Boston Harbor Project, another multi-billion dollar public infrastructure project (the latter cleaned up Boston Harbor)that went on during the same time frame. Here's a one-page summary of the BHP from the website of the private firm that served as CM. Note that this close to $4 billion project came in UNDER budget, and IN BOSTON. Amazing, eh? I have some inside knowledge of this project, and in some very important ways it was structured differently from the Big Dig.

http://www.earthtech.com/projects/water/bostonharbor.htm

So what is your thesis? THat Big Dig type jobs should be done by public organizations?

How about in Europe? How is it done there? Are they able to get their large public projects done in time and on budget via private entities?

I do agree that large aggrgations of capital need to be better restrained. But your argument is vapid.

Better to understand that power corrupts. Take away power to de-corrupt.

What is wrong is the American culture that allows those at the top to get away with whatever they want.

Punish severely those at the top who act wrongfully. Special penalties and courts and a seperate justice system for the powerful, that is what is needed.

My documentary/book in progress is at http://www.leftwingmediamachine.blogspot.com

The articles headlined in this morning’s Herald and Globe are a clear indication that the documentation points to the upper levels of Big Dig engineering and management, sufficiently enough that Attorney General Reilly chose not to even hint at the particulars today as he builds a criminal case in Mrs. DelValle’s death. There’s little doubt in anyone’s mind that Bechtel Parsons, as project managers, are central to that probe. As I believe they should be.

But I have to disagree that this horribly sad loss of life is, ultimately, a consequence of privatization in quite the way Nathan has framed it here; for there is burden enough to go all around, and much of it falls squarely on the shoulders of those public entities which shared management and oversight responsibilities for the Central Artery/Tunnel project with Bechtel Parsons/Brinkeroff. Over the years, the Turnpike Authority, the administrations of Bill Weld, Paul Cellucci and Jane Swift, and the Federal Highway Administrators regionally and in Washington, among others, have acted with no less self-interest, disregard for the public, arrogance, ineptitiude, or downright duplicity, as proven by their performance as oversight authorities and management "partners" with BP/B, and as documented in countless investigations over the history of the Big Dig.

The tragedy of Mrs. Del Valle’s death has triggered an accounting, very much as the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger triggered an accounting: not simply another in an endless string of probes into squandered billions, not another expose of shoddy work, or an assessment of faulty processes and methods; it will be all of those. But finally, too, will come the long- past -due accounting of the collective mindset and attitude among those for whom such misfeasance had grown, by the early to mid-90’s, into the virtually unmanageable daily reality of "overseeing" this 14.5 billion dollar public works project.

The decision by Morton Thiokol managers to overrule the concerns of their own engineers, who well knew of the vulnerability of the O rings and advised against the launch, was made in the context of the political and public relations expediency of that launch proceeding on schedule. By 1994, cost overruns on the Big Dig were gargantuan and growing. As documented in a report by Inspector General Robert Cerasoli, BPB knew that the true cost would approach 14.2 billion dollars, and indicated so to state officials, while said state officials were promising FHWA officials, state taxpayers and bond regulators that the project would not exceed 10 billion, indexed for inflation: From the Boston Globe:

"Big Dig managers in the William F. Weld and Paul Cellucci administrations knew in 1994 that the megaproject's price tag was heading for $14 billion and schemed to hide billions in costs from the public and bond investors, according to a report issued yesterday by state Inspector General Robert Cerasoli.

Managers of the Central Artery-Ted Williams Tunnel project used "a largely semantic series of exclusions, deductions, and accounting assumptions" to cover up $6 billion in cost overruns, according to the report.

And they did it with the assistance or complicity of local Federal Highway Administration officials and the state's private management consultant, Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff, the report said."

Late in 1999, Big Dig officials discussed the pros and cons of telling [State Treasurer Shannon] O'Brien the truth. Both for political reasons and to avoid "brutal press scrutiny," according to memorandums outlining various strategies, they "opted not to disclose the overrun." "

[And as for B/PB:]

Consultant Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff has "remained virtually immune from any criticism or blame for this crisis" but actively participated "in the promulgation of misleading reports to the state Legislature."

Despite Bechtel/Parsons' 1994 disclosure to Weld of the project's true cost, the Cerasoli report said, "In fact, documents reviewed by this office illustrate B/PB's efforts to develop and maintain the mechanisms used to obscure Big Dig costs." [End of quote]

So there, documented in Cerasoli’s report, is the virtue of public oversight in all its glory as it played out over the push to avoid the unthinkable horror, not of a motorist’s tragic death, but of "brutal press scrutiny." Yes, these were Republicans, running the MacGovern state, home of Teddy Kennedy, dutifully protecting their public image as keepers of the reins of fiscal sanity from the hands of those irresponsible Democrats in the Legislature.

Does any of this sound familiar?

The only sense in which this case will be the "canary in the coal mine" is the degree to which it will reveal the intensity and the scope of the effort that will be undertaken to discredit the Attorney General’s criminal probe. It bears watching, and one has to hope that ‘brutal press scrutiny" hasn’t become the oxymoron in Massachusetts that it has in Washington. That Reilly is a Democrat running for Governor of the state whose current governor is a Republican presumably running for the presidency in 2008, almost assures that the truth, the accounting of responsibility and the pursuit of justice for Milena Del Valle’s death will become as troubled and opaque as the 20 year long project that was its cause. I’m grateful that Nathan has brought this to the front page here, because its an opportunity to ask that readers and posters here work to keep that from happening.

Hmm....I noted that the 2006 "favorite story" included quotes from two stories, one appearing 7/18/06 and the other back in 2004...the part after the ellipse ("The engineers also said they have discovered documents showing that Bechtel managers were aware that the wall breached this fall was deficient from the moment it was built in the late 1990s, yet did not order it replaced and did not inform state officials of the situation.") was referring *not* to the current situation with the bolts, but to the leaks discovered in 2004.

This would appear to undercut the next sentence:
"READ THAT LAST PARAGRAPH. Bechtel had workers complaining and documents showing that the roof in the tunnels were faulty, yet they covered it up, no doubt because they wanted to save money."

Could you please explain? I trust this was an honest error. I am not at all a Bechtel apologist (see prior post), but this isn't right.

Lot's of conservatives- and here, I mean among the Republican voters in Massachusetts, not the successive Republican politicians who have occupied the corner office on Beacon Hill since 1991- do seem to presumptively hold up the Big Dig as a manifestation of free-spending liberalism and corruption perpetrated by Democrats and labor unions.

If shoddy workmanship is shown to be among the causes here, it will certainly reinforce that perception. It has never really mattered that the overwhelmingly Democratic (and conservative) state legislature has had little to do with the delays, cost overruns and leaks which have plagued this project, other than being the body which formally passed the bills taxing Massachusetts citizens to cover costs the federal government refused to pay when the extent of inept management and false accounting became known.

The issue of pinning the blame on liberals extends from that conservative perception, and as I note in my post further down the thread, I believe there will be a concerted effort to focus public perception on any criminal liability among workers, unions and subcontractors by all those interests, public and private, whose mangement authority is now in the cross-hairs of Reilly's criminal investigation.

Two final comments about Dukakis' role here, and the failure of oversight: Dukakis initially opposed the whole idea of the Big Dig.
Salvucci is supposed to have convinced him otherwise. And no, there was nothing inherently wrong with the state hiring Bechtel to oversee the mangement of the project. As others have pointed out, and Massachusetts' experience has shown, no public entity has the resources or the expertise to do something as complex as this.

The role of public entities in this case was oversight, and there were layers upon layers of ostensible oversight by Authority boards, peer-review panels, paid consultants, Inspectors General, FHWA officials, city inspectors, and more. That oversight was inadequate, ignored, or deliberately corrupted by the sheer magnitude of the money involved, the complexity of the scheme, and the overwhelming political liability the Big Dig had grown to represent for those who bore responsibilty.

It has taken a woman's death for us to reconsider the real cost of such inadequacy, disregard, and outright criminalty.

Steve Bailey, a business columnist for the Boston Globe, has a column today comparing the management of the Big Dig versus management of the Boston Harbor Project, another multi-billion public infrastructure project that went on at the same time. The latter, however, came in pretty much on time and definitely under budget.

A">http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2006/07/19/a_tale_of_2_projects/">A Tale of Two Projects

Note that both had private construction managers. The difference was the public management team. Also, the Boston Harbor construction management firm was not the project designer.

Interesting that the Globe's own page of Big Dig problems shows NO articles between Sennott's excellent pieces in 1994 and the results of a one-year investigation in 2003. Those of us living here at the time recall that the issue of ballooning costs blew up publicly in 2000 - and the Globe was caught apparently unaware. Between 1994 and 2000, the Globe was one of the biggest cheerleaders for the project, treating us to one puff piece after another about how excellently the whole thing was working out. (Anyone remember that article about which donuts Big Dig construction workers preferred - Dunkin' or Krispy Kreme?) It's nice that they published a big investigative piece in 2003, but that was well after the horses were out of the barn.

I'm not blaming Charlie Sennott, who went on to bigger and better things at the paper and wasn't covering the Big Dig in the mid-late '90s. But the Globe bears some responsibility in not following through.

Great. Thanks so much.

One alternative might be to make Civil Service Reform a campaign issue, with the Big Dig an example of what happens when private profit suborns the public good.

Restore the Civil Service! Yea! Civil Service.

Remind people, too, of how much of the common good results from government produced and supervised projects. My town has a sidewalk system constructed in the thirties by the WPA. They're in remarkably good shape, amazing good shape, considering that they've suffered every kind of weather New England can throw at them. They're in better shape than sidewalks built later.

The only forces which seem to be able to do them in are Mother Nature's Tree roots as the tree lawn trees have matured, and vandals who conduct midnight raids on the brass medallions, which are evidently highly collectible now.

Mike

It has been such a complex and confusing problem for so many years that it takes a scorecard to sort out the criminals here. Someone (but who?) needs to go back and start from the beginnings of the project and go forward as efficiently and throroughly as possible so evidence is not destroyed. I think we can expect some "missing" records on this deal. We all knew it was unsafe on some level, but this? If there is any justice, heads should roll!
My question would be "Where, if any, is the integrity and pride that people used to have in their work?" This whole tragedy was avoidable long ago, IMHO.

Not sure what you mean, but there was a time, not that long ago that people would work up to par just to cover their asses. Apparently, this is what has woken me up to the fact that few, if any, can be trusted. Just my .02 cents.