VA Construction "Fubar on Steroids"

‘FUBAR on steroids’: Congressmen blast VA about construction debacles 
Stars and Stripes
By Heath Druzin
Published: January 21, 2015

“This is a FUBAR on steroids if I’ve ever seen one. …I feel like I’m in the Twilight Zone when I listen to this,” Rep. Phil Roe (R-Tenn.) said, using a military slang acronym that includes an obscenity. “I’m not sure the VA should ever build a hospital.”

Sloan Gibson, Deputy Veterans Affairs Secretary, at a June 4, 2014 event in Washington, D.C.

OLIVIER DOULIERY/MCT FILE PHOTO

In the latest black eye for the Department of Veterans Affairs, congressmen grilled officials Wednesday over construction mismanagement that has cost the department hundreds of millions of dollars in overruns and delayed major projects by years.

“It’s long past time for these projects, marred by bureaucratic ineptitude, to be complete,” House Committee on Veterans Affairs Chairman Rep. Jeff Miller (R-Fla.) said during a hearing on VA construction problems.

The hearing was prompted by several recent flaps over major projects, including a new VA medical center in the Denver suburb of Aurora, Colo., where a contractor walked off the project after major delays and hundreds of millions in cost overruns. A recent Government Accountability Office report found that, on average, the largest VA projects were three years late and $376 million over budget.

Speaking in front of the House Committee on Veterans Affairs, Deputy VA Secretary Sloan Gibson said the department is overhauling the way they do construction and that “veterans and taxpayers are right to expect more and they deserve much better from their VA.”
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