The exact shape of the bureaucracy is the problem. The US lacks in-house capacity and relies on outside consultants and contractors who are more than happy to overbill if not audited properly.
The California HSR project was at one point using a staff of less than a hundred full-time staff to monitor over a thousand consultants which led to a lot of cost blowouts.
Yes and this is corruption by design, to allow the top to profit "off the books" legally.
Consultants shower the brass lavishly with creative methods of legal bribery, like inviting them for talks and paying them huge fees or promising comfy positions after their retirement from public office.
To earn that back, they overcharge through the nose for projects.
> The US lacks in-house capacity and relies on outside consultants and contractors
This trope needs to be taken out back and shot. All the big early and mid 20th century projects were done by contractors as was the bulk of the design work. The difference is that the government and by proxy the people didn't just bend over and take it when their money got wasted. And everything was a lot less codified and process-ified so there was more room for competition (and also real graft).
> Today, these consultants manage nearly every aspect of the job: They direct day-to-day construction work in the Central Valley and negotiate with farmers to buy land. They assess the geological conditions in the San Gabriel Mountains and estimate how many people will ride the future system. They produce tens of thousands of pages of reports and attend community meetings. They even oversee other consultants.
> But significant portions of this work have been flawed or mismanaged, according to records reviewed by The Times and interviews with dozens of people involved in the project. Despite repeated warnings since 2010 about weaknesses in its staffing, the rail authority believed it could reduce overall costs by relying on consultants and avoiding a large permanent workforce. But that strategy has failed to keep project costs from soaring. Ten years after voters approved it, the project is $44 billion over budget and 13 years behind schedule.
> When state rail authority employees go to their Sacramento headquarters, they work in offices rented by a consultant. When they turn on their computers, much of their data is stored on servers owned by consultants. The software they use to help manage the project is the property of a consultant.
> Given the enormity of building a 520-mile rail system, the 10-member rail authority team that existed in the early years amounted to a “cheer squad,” Kopp said.
> Several rail authority employees said in interviews that the audit correctly identified the confused relationship between state employees and consultants. In some cases, they said, state employees report to consultants, rather than the other way around.
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Private public partnerships (PPPs or P3s) are also similarly overhyped. Done correctly they can shift financial risk, but investors are actually sophisticated and not dumb idiots, so they'll either raise their prices to deal with additional risk, or they'll walk away from a deal that turns really sour. https://www.constructiondive.com/news/joint-venture-walks-aw...
The California HSR project was at one point using a staff of less than a hundred full-time staff to monitor over a thousand consultants which led to a lot of cost blowouts.