Poor Preparation means Lost Opportunity
I keep hearing about projects that are missing their budgets in both costs and schedule.
One recently started up with everyone running around patting themselves on the back when from the financing forward it has not been a great project. I suspect it is $150 million over what it would need to be (and no, it is likely not the project you think it is; there are several examples out there like this despite my personal thoughts being about a certain one).
I am hearing from contractors that are going on pre-bid site reviews where it is clear the owner is not prepared. The site review for a multi-hundreds of million project was simply a hand waving exercise.
Folks, you must prepare for your large project. You don't have to do all the planning and engineering before you go out for bids, but you must do a reasonable amount, likely 30% of the total or even a bit more.
Our industry is setting itself up to be a full employment opportunity for construction lawyers.
Perhaps that is good, too. It keeps me in construction expert witness work, even though I would rather, as an industry, we did a good job to start with and stop all this nonsense.