lelduderino

lelduderino t1_j9qfi48 wrote

Reply to comment by michael_scarn_21 in The MBTA and Green Line are mentioned: We Finally Know Why It Costs So Damn Much to Build New Subways in America by timboot

Pension contributions and other benefits are part of the fully burdened calculation on either side.

It costs the T substantially more, fully burdened, to hire outside tradespeople for a large number of regular day-to-day non-megaprojects, than if they were to staff up to handle maintenance and lower-scope capex (which would also mean staffing up enough to handle maintenance in the first place).

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lelduderino t1_j9q6ftx wrote

Reply to comment by Maxpowr9 in The MBTA and Green Line are mentioned: We Finally Know Why It Costs So Damn Much to Build New Subways in America by timboot

It's also not just a problem with design or project management firms.

The T, for many many years, has been understaffed in the trades for even small capital projects.

Carpenters, plumbers, electricians, etc. they're all coming out of the same unions whether they're T employees or working for a contractor. Same group of people, same expertise. However, the ones who are T employees have much lower fully burdened costs per hour. The outside labor not only gets greater wages in their pocket (job security being part of the tradeoff for slightly lower base wages as a T employee), but those costs are then obviously marked up by whoever the contractor is.

Unfortunately, the optics of having low(er) publicly accessible direct payroll constantly wins out over the true cost of the labor.

Obviously the T doesn't need to have permanent staff to handle projects as large as the GLX, but smaller regular ongoing renovations, upgrades, etc. often end up costing the taxpayers 2-3x what they would cost if the T were properly staffed and managed for efficiency over optics.

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