Coffman amendment to require training and reduce VA delays passes
Washington, D.C. – July 23, 2015 – (RealEstateRama) — A bill to strip the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) from managing construction projects over $100 million cleared an important legislative hurdle today, passing the House Veterans Affairs Subcommittee on Health on a unanimous voice vote.
The bill, HR. 3106, the Construction Reform Act of 2015, strips the VA of all construction management authority on projects over $100 million and transfers it to non-VA federal entities, such as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers or the General Services Administration (GSA).
In March 2015 U.S. Representative Mike Coffman introduced bipartisan legislation to strip the VA of construction authority for all projects over $10 million, transferring management authority to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
In 2014, Coffman passed legislation through the U.S. House of Representatives that would have transferred construction management authority on the four troubled VA hospital projects identified in the GAO report to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Coffman’s bill was not taken up for a vote in the U.S. Senate.
“I am very happy to see this essential reform move forward. The VA can’t handle the job of major construction and this bill will help protect our veterans and our taxpayers from future VA failures,” said Coffman, a longtime critic of VA construction problems. “The VA’s budget should be spent taking care of our veterans, not billions in cost overruns. It is time for the professionals to take over where the VA has failed.”
The VA has been heavily criticized for its construction management, with a Government Accountability Office (GAO) study in 2013 finding four VA hospital construction projects each hundreds of millions over budget and years behind schedule. The cost estimate for the VA hospital project in Aurora has since risen to be a billion dollars over budget alone.
During the Subcommittee on Health markup today, Coffman passed an amendment to H.R. 3106 that requires regular professional training of VA construction staff and reforms the approval process for change orders.
The GAO report identified delays in approving change orders as a major driver of cost overruns at the four VA hospitals in Aurora, New Orleans, Las Vegas and Orlando.
The American Subcontractor Association and the Associated General Contractors of America, which represent over 4,000 and 28,000 businesses across the country respectively, supported Coffman’s amendment.
The American Subcontractors Association praised the reforms, saying of the need for VA staff training: “The VA’s failure to select the most appropriate construction delivery technique could be said to be at the heart of the most egregious problems with the Aurora project.”
The Associated General Contractors of America (AGC) said “both of these reforms will help address the problems of the current program and set it up for success in the years ahead.”
