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Bill, you're absolutely right, but dare I say that you're not the only one. The real culprit in this issues is the accuser. It is the government and its archaic tendering process, in which the government screws down the price, and then pushes as hard as they can for value-add. In the end, the contractor which wins, is the contractor who knows how to cut costs and scratch-back a few bucks here and there, and ultimately, cuts corners!
What you are describing, and that article i a classic, is the inevitable long-term oucomes, w-a-y down the path, when the contracted entity has already done everything it can to build it and make some profit, using substandard labor and materials. This is in actuality, an epidemic, and I really do mean that, yet the government still thinks it can squeeze harder.
Everyone in government wants to look good and/or criticise the opposition (Shadow) member. Its what they do, and the wake-up call to everyone reading, is that it comes before doing the right thing for the public interest, who partly pay for the infrastructure, and the corporations who pay for the remainder. Government are like banks, they play with the money of others, they do not create, they merely ditribute, but they have got themselves into some game of one-up-manship, of cat-n-mouse, and have all but forgotten about quality.
In WA, the newspapers are forever bringing projects with cost-overruns to the reader's attention, and blaming the contractor. Why?! Because the initial costing was budgeted on a previous job, which was itself done on a shoe-string, and yet this job was tendered for even cheaper to make some minister look good. When the job screws up, the shadow minister is the one who looks good on the war-path and the minister goes into damage control...but this fixes nothing!
The government is very, very quick to point the finger, but in reality, it consistantly creates its own issues.
What this country needs is a handful of large failed projects, so eventually somebody smart in parliament will makes themselves look good, by pointing out the obvious...the government tendering process is all wrong an needs reform!
I'm doing projects right now, with my money and that of my investors. Do I go with the cheapest? No, I pay for a quality produced product, not on promise. And you know what, it's way cheaper, coz it lasts longer.
This is the problem the US is facing right now, collapsing infrastructure, attributed to cost-cutting.
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