View Single Post
Old 04-13-2017, 05:51 PM   #3
NN5I
Carl, nn5i
 
NN5I's Avatar
 
Join Date: Sep 2011
Location: Tallahassee, FL
Posts: 1,441
Default

Early-completion bonuses (and late-completion penalties) are very common in road-construction contracts, and usually save money for the state. That's because the state has to staff every project with engineers, surveyors, inspectors, and grunts, and (if the project is at all large) usually has to maintain a project office (building) on the site. That's all quite expensive. Finish early, and these large costs are reduced.

Many years ago, when I worked for the Florida State Road Department (nowadays called Department of Transportation) as a grunt and inspector on the multi-year Julia Tuttle Causeway Interchange project in Miami -- I was there from 1958 to 1962 -- one line item in each segment of the overall contract was maintenance of traffic. This was a payment for the contractor's considerable cost of maintaining a path for city traffic to cross the site (several miles square). One part of the project finished months early. A State Legislator (Charlie Johns) raised a stink about paying the whole contractual cost "because the contractor didn't have to maintain traffic for the whole planned time". One of my bosses was summoned to go to Tallahassee and be grilled by a Legislative Investigating Committee (one of many "Johns Committees").

He made it simple for them. What he told them, basically, was "We have penalties in our contracts for finishing late. Are you suggesting, Senator, that we penalize the contractor for finishing early?"

The press, who (like everyone else) despised Charlie Johns anyway, took it from there.
__________________
-- Carl
NN5I is offline   Reply With Quote