[ajmurmann]

There was a very interesting article a few years ago (I've tried to find it several times but cannot) that tried to explain at least some of this. The one factor they circled in on is that the US government stopped enjoying their own experts. Instead even publishing project requirements for different construction companies to bid on have to be outsourced. This causes mainly to problems: if you get the contract for writing the spec you cannot bid on the project. So many big and competent players will avoid writing the spec. The other issue is that the project is lacking holistic oversight by someone who understands what's going on and had incentive to keep cost down. Because nobody has a actual career as a construction expert with the government we see the government putting people in charge of these projects who worked at the contracting company the previous day. They had a few examples of the same construction company finishing projects pretty much on time and budget in other countries but going over a lot in similar projects in the US.