
Why US Major Infrastructure Construction Costs Are So High - barry-cotter
https://pedestrianobservations.com/2019/03/03/why-american-costs-are-so-high-work-in-progress/
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barry-cotter
It seems US construction costs are double or triple the norm in other
developed countries in part because of using much more expensive and
construction methods, in part because of procurement methods that are more
lawsuit than project based (and in California the result of repeated
incompetence, and also because of an unwillingness to look at best practices
outside the US.

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jaclaz
The analysis (unless a whole lot of correction factors are added/introduced)
makes little sense.

Besides the fact that in the US there is a level of specialization and
limitations in the workers that is unheard of in the used comparison term
Spain (which might cause an increase of workers in a "same" project in the
US), an average construction worker in New York is likely to cost twice, maybe
even more than what an average construction worker costs in Madrid, and this
difference might well increase when we are talking specialized or high-skill
workers (such as those employed in large infrastructures/tunneling,
particularly if TBM driven).

A couple data points:

[https://www.careerexplorer.com/careers/construction-
worker/s...](https://www.careerexplorer.com/careers/construction-
worker/salary/)

[https://www.constructionworkers.eu/en/es/country](https://www.constructionworkers.eu/en/es/country)

And then there is different cost of materials, access to the sites, traffic
and what not, and differences in the rock/terrain to be bored, etc., etc., the
idea that the way bids/contracts are made and carried on, and the following
litigations are the cause of an increase in costs/prices on may have some
merits but the Author will need to provide much more data than what is in the
article to be credible.

