They bid on a job that was only 30% specified. The scope of work eventually doubled when the site was fully analyzed and the price tag almost doubled. Nothing to see here.
There is work that is 100% documented in the proposal and in those cases it’s reasonable to hold the winning bidder’s feet to the fire, but this isn’t one of those.
In the absence of time pressure they could have let a contract to fully specify the work, then one to do it. But if they’d done that there might not have been a dam by the time work started.
> Nothing to see here....In the absence of time pressure they could have let a contract to fully specify the work, then one to do it.
I agree that in this specific case, had the contractor come back and said "it will be $1 billion more," it would have been worth paying to avoid the destruction of the Central Valley.
The broader discussion is that this is avoidable. Two models abound in the private sector. For less time-sensitive situations, one has changeover processes [1]. For time-sensitive work, companies avoid like death being totally dependent on a single company.
The latter would require large changes in the way contracting is done in America. But it's not like nobody else in the world faces time-sensitive repairs. The defensiveness we, as Americans, have towards our system which shows clear and apparent pricing flaws is surprising.
There is work that is 100% documented in the proposal and in those cases it’s reasonable to hold the winning bidder’s feet to the fire, but this isn’t one of those.
In the absence of time pressure they could have let a contract to fully specify the work, then one to do it. But if they’d done that there might not have been a dam by the time work started.