Having been in construction I question if that obvious thing is really waste.
Of course if it really is 5 people watching the one guy put of cones that is waste. However most constructions jobs are let the machine work for 10 minutes, then you need 5 people for manual labor for 5 minutes before the machine works again. While it is true you have 5 people standing around watching the machine work 2/3rds of the time, there is nothing else that they could do and be back in 10 minutes so it is most cost effective to pay them to do nothing 2/3rds of the time.
> Having been in construction I question if that obvious thing is really waste.
Read the linked article. You'll see that it truly is waste.
> The budget showed that 900 workers were being paid to dig caverns for the platforms as part of a 3.5-mile tunnel connecting the historic station to the Long Island Rail Road. But the accountant could only identify about 700 jobs that needed to be done, according to three project supervisors. Officials could not find any reason for the other 200 people to be there.
For just one project, that's 200 paid $1,000/day to do nothing. $73 million/year wasted, just for one project.
The $1,000/day figure comes directly from the NYT article quoting the head of construction at the MTA. This is the paragraph after the one I quoted previously:
Nobody knew what those people were doing, if they were doing anything,” said Michael Horodniceanu, who was then the head of construction at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs transit in New York. The workers were laid off, Mr. Horodniceanu said, but no one figured out how long they had been employed. “All we knew is they were each being paid about $1,000 every day.
>Nobody knew what those people were doing, if they were doing anything
I just can't help but smile and remember the scene from The Sopranos of some wiseguys seating in lawn chairs at the construction site eating pastrami sandwiches... but in a tunnel this time!
True, but 1000/day is still high. I doubt the foreman makes that much (I'd consider $40/hour high for a foreman, but NYC probably pays higher wages than you would get here).
The $1000/hr is probably a bureaucrat who sat at a desk pushing papers. There is some value in that job, but it is easy to find useless make-work to appear busy withing getting anything important done.
Of course if it really is 5 people watching the one guy put of cones that is waste. However most constructions jobs are let the machine work for 10 minutes, then you need 5 people for manual labor for 5 minutes before the machine works again. While it is true you have 5 people standing around watching the machine work 2/3rds of the time, there is nothing else that they could do and be back in 10 minutes so it is most cost effective to pay them to do nothing 2/3rds of the time.