federal funded project

[iowa]

i am involved in writing a grant for a new hanger at our airport.
we decided to build a 5 stall T-hanger in 2003 at our own expense.
it cost us 145,000 complete!
guess what a vertual identical hanger will run
that we have a federal grant for this year?

650K!
should of had at least 4 more new hangars
iowa

[3958v]

It would be interesting to compare what the cost would be if it were not a federaly funded project. I know here in PA if a project receives state or federal money then the workers are paid almost three times as much as if it were a private job. It all goes to show how ineficently government works in this country. Bill K

[iowa]

we had an anxious contractor quote us 168k!
dave

[lowNslow]

guess what a vertual identical hanger will run
that we have a federal grant for this year?

650K!
should of had at least 4 more new hangars
iowa

No wonder they are trying to raise the user fees.

[iowa]

suppose our projects
was the straw the tipped the balance?
dave

[GAHorn]

It would be interesting to compare what the cost would be if it were not a federaly funded project. I know here in PA if a project receives state or federal money then the workers are paid almost three times as much as if it were a private job. It all goes to show how ineficently government works in this country. Bill K

When gov't money is spent on a job, it must meet gov't specifications. (If such specs were not required, there'd be no end to real waste on shoddy mat'ls/workmanship.) I think that's a good idea. It never bothers me that a fellow citizen (or legal resident) gets union or fair wages for their work and that mat'ls meet specs. I'd hate for my taxes to go pay for shoddy work using chinese steel and illegal aliens.

[iowa]

that's true george
but the same guy that built the last one
will probably build this one!
and we're using the same spec's
i don't think $650 pliers are necessary!
dave

[jrenwick]

The government job might cost him that much more just in the paperwork!
(It's called accountability.)

[3958v]

George if you are willing to pay four times as much as a job is worth please give me a call before you do your next excavating job. There are a lot of small contractors in this part of the country doing good work with good materials and for the goverment to pay several times the going rate for labor seems a bit ridiculous to me. I want my tax dollars to go as far as possible. I dont mean to get my back up but as a small contractor of almost thirty years I resent the fact that you imply that all people who are not over charging are doing shoddy work. Bill K

[iowa]

we have had two other federally funded projects
at our airport in the last 10 years.
i know all the contractors that bid the jobs personally!!
one of them ended up doing the work
whether we or the government paid the bill.
one could say that no one does shoddy work around here
or everyone does shoddy work to the same degree.
all i know is that we have to come up with 5% of the fed money
and it seems 4x as much as it should be.
dave

[djbaker]

I'm involved in building Hangars at Beverly MA. The price seems high at $650,000. That amounts to $87 per sq ft. You could build a house for that, without the kitchen of course. Prices vary for the costs of sewer, water, electricity, and ramp and taxiway space, but the building alone, erected should cost about $20 per ft, then add in the rest. If your building higher than a 14ft high door that will also add. At first I thought I'd like to be the contactor building for $650,000, then I remembered the Goverment paperwork.

[GAHorn]

George if you are willing to pay four times as much as a job is worth please give me a call before you do your next excavating job. There are a lot of small contractors in this part of the country doing good work with good materials and for the goverment to pay several times the going rate for labor seems a bit ridiculous to me. I want my tax dollars to go as far as possible. I dont mean to get my back up but as a small contractor of almost thirty years I resent the fact that you imply that all people who are not over charging are doing shoddy work. Bill K

What in the world tells you it's OK to leap to that conclusion and make accusations against me?
PLease don't leap to conclusions nor turn my words into something I neither said nor implied.

This is a good example of how we all have some idea in our minds what constitutes a "hangar"....and what that hangar should cost...and what is overpriced. In this conversation NO specifications have been mentioned. NO implication has been made that you do shoddy work.

My statement is in support of rigid specifications and standards, with appropriate inspection to ascertain that those specs/standards are met by the winning contractor...when my taxes are paying for something.*

In this case, it sounds as if only one contractor wins bids at iowa's airport. Perhaps that is part of the problem: Insufficient number of bidders.
Whether that is due to overly restrictive build specifications, location, or performance guarantees.... or whether it's because there are no other contractors who are willing to meet those specs on that sort of project.... all comes into play as to what the ultimate bid price may result.
$650K for some T-hangars is expensive, certainly. But without knowing all the factors involved, it does not automatically equate to shoddy contractors, overpriced hangars, or "gov't waste".

*When it's my own money paying for my own project, then I'm in the driver's seat to determine costs and specs. I built my own hangar. It's not engineered by anyone other than myself. I believe it's better built than my friend's pre-engineered, non-gov't, $85K hangars 4 miles away that do not have the strengths my $28K hangar has. I didn't ask for bids. I just did what I pleased. And that sort of thinking, while fine for your own projects on your own property, simply does not meet the requirements of hangars built on public property that must meet local bldg and other codes (like a gov't bid job quite rightly does.)

[iowa]

by october
i'll be able to tell you if this new fed funded hanger
is built 4x better than the old hanger!
i have a feeling that they'll be the same!
anyway, i know where your coming from george,
but i also remember that the hanger we funded privately
included a 5K fee (part of the 140K) for all the specs to be okayed by
an engineer before construction was started.
it has been my experience that when the gov is involved
all....all the T's are crossed and the I's dotted
but in the end the workmenship is the same.
at least here in iowa.
dave

[3958v]

George I am sorry if I offended you but you seemed real willing to give the peoples money away when you saw no problem paying union scale wages in Guthrie Center Iowa. There are probably no workers making union scale wages any where near that town unless they are doing government work. Dave stated that the hangars were virtually the same. Based on that I assumed that the end result would be the same and the basic specifications would be the same but the cost was 4.5 times as much. Seems like an awful high price to pay just because its being funded by Uncle Sam. I dont see a problem if federal money were to raise the cost by 25% or so but that was 448% if I did the math right. I might also add that here in rural PA there is not a lot of shoddy work either as word of poor quality travels fast. Again I am sorry if I offended you as for the most part I respect your opinions but I get frustrated when my government cant do a project like this without spending four times what Daves crew did in 2003 Bill K

[GAHorn]

Hi, Bill! You and I are OK.

The problem with this sort of discussion is that we all leap to conclusions as to what we imagine the details are. In fact,...there are very little details known about his situation and it's an anecdotal conversation.

I doubt that any of us will disagree that we abhor waste that we sometimes seem to observe in some jobs like this. It's just that, despite iowa's irrefutable reputation and judgment, it's unlikely that any local entity is going to accept a gov't bid that's 400% out of line. There's got to be more to the picture than we're aware. (At least I hope so.)