A 16-room school, not subject to Pentagon regulations, under construction in Afghanistan.
We’ve known for a long time that the cost of college education has gone through the roof. But who’d have thunk it’s affecting elementary schools as well?
It’s a safe bet there are no bargains to be found when the federal government gets involved.
Senator Timothy Johnson, D-S.D., wondered at a recent hearing why, according to Pentagon budget documents, it costs $40 million to build an elementary school on a U.S. military base, nearly three times the price of a “comparative private sector 600-student elementary school.”
The answer, from Pentagon installation chief John Conger:
We are fully cognizant of the fact that it costs more money to build the same building on a base with military construction than it does for the commercial sector to build a similar building off base. We’ve been exploring the reasons for that and studying it, and there are a few things that bubble up as to the rationale. There are federal rules when you spend federal money. There’s additional regulation that’s imposed, prevailing wage rates, et cetera. There are military requirements on how one can construct a building. There are antiterrorism force protection requirements that, you know, aren’t required off base. There are additional costs to construction when one has to get through security; just the access to the site adds cost.
That cost is significant, but not on the scale that you just described. The information that we’ve got implies something on the order of a 30% premium that we pay. We’re looking at those rules to find out what’s in our control and what we can change in order to create a more balanced number, you know, something that has less of a premium. We want to get the same building for less, we really do.
You know you’re in trouble when your response to why you’re spending 166% more than the private sector is to say you’re only spending 30% more.