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Full Title: Behind efforts to build prototypes of Trump's border wall, emails show a confusing and haphazard process
The bidding process was rushed and bewildering. The cost projection is already at $21.5 billion for 1,000 miles of wall at 30' high, which doesn't seal all of the border.
To provide some perspective - A stack of $21.5 billion in dollar bills ascends to a height of 1,460 miles ... ~6 times as high as the International Space Station.
As with all mammoth government projects, the price tag will invariably increase.
Jill Castellano and Rafael Carranza, USA TODAY Network
Oct. 22, 2017
Border wall sample section
SAN DIEGO, Calif. – In response to a Freedom of Information Act request, the USA TODAY Network obtained nearly 200 pages of emails sent to and from a CBP email address that was set up in March for companies to ask questions about the bidding process. They chronicle continuous confusion over the most basic details of the process – deadlines, page counts, how to submit bids, where to submit bids and so on. Government officials wanted all proposals submitted in 12 days. During that time, they added seven amendments to their original requests for proposals – which were already more than 130 pages – containing hundreds of answers to questions. Then, with hours before the deadline, they decided to give companies another week to submit bids but still limited all proposals to 10 pages. Each winner would be awarded up to $300 million over the next five years. "Having a rushed process is going to lead to some shortcuts by the federal government," he added. "You may not end up with the best pool of vendors when you put something on the fast track."
"This shows me the government still does not know what they want, is still developing specifications and spending a great deal of money trying to figure out what they want to do," said Patrick Malyszek, who runs a consulting firm for government contractors called M3 Federal and has over 35 years of experience working with federal contracts. "The more questions you get is a direct indication that there is something wrong with the procurement relative to the design or expectations." Ultimately, six companies were chosen to build a total of eight border wall prototypes. But experts and companies who submitted bids agreed – the border wall bidding process was rushed, and qualified candidates may have been overlooked for the sake of speed. One company says it's taking the government to court. Separately, four of the companies have been fined amounts ranging from $34,000 to $3.1 million by the federal government over the past decade for worker-safety or environmental violations, or to settle lawsuits, according to the nonprofit Good Jobs First.
The bidding process was rushed and bewildering. The cost projection is already at $21.5 billion for 1,000 miles of wall at 30' high, which doesn't seal all of the border.
To provide some perspective - A stack of $21.5 billion in dollar bills ascends to a height of 1,460 miles ... ~6 times as high as the International Space Station.
As with all mammoth government projects, the price tag will invariably increase.
