Democrats Join Coffman’s Call to Fire VA From Construction Business at Oversight Hearing
WASHINGTON, D.C. – March 20, 2015 – (RealEstateRama) — At a hearing this morning of the House Veterans Affairs Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, chaired by U.S. Representative Mike Coffman (R-Aurora), Democrats on the subcommittee joined Rep. Coffman’s call to fire the VA from building any future hospitals.
The legislative hearing was intended to review a number of bills before the subcommittee, with the greatest focus on the recent revelations that the VA hospital in Aurora was now estimated to cost $1.73 billion, only months after the VA insisted the project could be completed for $604 million.
The Aurora VA hospital project is currently being taken over by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, after the Civilian Board of Contract Appeals in December 2014 found the VA in material breach of its contract with the contractor, Kiewit-Turner (KT), that is building the hospital. In a deal negotiated to keep KT on the project, the Army Corps agreed to come in and see the project through to completion.
The Ranking Member of the Subcommittee, Rep. Ann McLane Kuster (D-NH) along with Reps. Tim Walz (D-MN) and Kathleen Rice (D-NY), all said that the VA is clearly not capable of managing its own construction projects.
The VA itself appears to be moving in that direction.
The VA “has not ruled out the possibility of turning construction management functions to the [U.S. Army] Corps of Engineers,” testified Dennis Milsten, the Associate Executive Director of the Office of Operations, in the VA’s Office of Construction and Facilities Management.
Asked by Coffman to explain how the project estimate went from $604 million to $1.73 billion in only a matter of months, Milsten blamed a lack of “rigorous process[es]”, “a rush to get to a firm fixed price with the contractor”, and “a design that continued to evolve.”
Coffman responded: “I think there is probably an easier explanation that would be pure incompetence. Pure incompetence.”
You can view a video clip of that exchange here.
VA officials also testified that the $880 million cap in current federal law that was expected to be hit in mid-April is now likely to be crossed in mid-May.
Coffman’s bill to raise the cap on the Aurora hospital project that was authored in January raised the cap on the project to $1.1 billion, a figure arrived at through discussions with VA leadership. The bill also fired the VA from the project and formalized the Army Corps’ role as the new construction authority.
Coffman is now amending that effort to raise the cap to $1.7 billion along with serious reforms to ensure that those responsible for this failure are held accountable and that mistakes like this never happen again.
The full House Veterans Affairs Committee is slated to discuss the hospital project at an April 13 hearing.
Coffman passed a bill unanimously through the U.S. House of Representatives last year to bring in the Army Corps of Engineers on all troubled VA hospital construction projects. The bill did not receive a vote in the U.S. Senate.
