A contract given to Bechtel, the second largest benefactor of the human misery that is Iraq, to build a children's hospital faces an uncertain future do to delays and huge cost overruns.
Bechtel's contract has been cancelled. Of course the reasons the US gov't gives are different than the Iraqi's. I wonder who is covering their ass and who isn't? Hmmmm.
From the New York Times
The United States is dropping Bechtel, the American construction giant, from a project to build a high-tech children's hospital in the southern Iraqi city of Basra after the project fell nearly a year behind schedule and exceeded its expected cost by as much as 150 percent.
Called the Basra Children's Hospital, the project has been consistently championed by the first lady, Laura Bush, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and was designed to house sophisticated equipment for treating childhood cancer.
Now it becomes the latest in a series of American taxpayer-financed health projects in Iraq to face overruns, delays and cancellations. Earlier this year, the Army Corps of Engineers canceled more than $300 million in contracts held by Parsons, another American contractor, to build and refurbish hospitals and clinics across Iraq.
-snip-
The Iraqis assert that management blunders by the company have caused the project to teeter on the verge of collapse; the American government says Bechtel did the best it could as it faced everything from worsening security to difficult soil conditions.
Now here's the good news.
A senior company official said Thursday that for its part Bechtel recommended that the work be mothballed and in essence volunteered to leave the project because the security problems had become intolerable. He also disputed the American government's calculation of cost overruns, saying that accounting rules had recently been changed in a way that inflated the figures.
The official, Cliff Mumm, who is president of the Bechtel infrastructure division, predicted that the project would fail if the government pressed ahead, as the briefing papers indicate that it would. Because of the rise of sectarian militias in southern Iraq, Mr. Mumm said, "it is not a good use of the government's money" to try to finish the project.
"And we do not think it can be finished," he said.
Rest of the article here to find out how Bechtel isn't in breach of contract even though they didn't finish the project - http://www.nytimes.com/...
Crossposted at http://i-hate-politics.blogspot.com/