The curse of the VA Hospital in Aurora

The Veterans Administration is building a new hospital in Aurora, CO that was originally supposed to open this month - May 2015. The original budget was for $328 million, then revised to $604 billion, but this quickly became $1 billion, and then $1.73 billion with an opening in 2017.  And this doesn't include $340 million of "activation costs", like beds and such, making the total cost $2.07 billion.

Congress is outraged, and there will likely be a shutdown this summer; however, that will add as much as $200 million to the cost for "demobilization and remobilization expenses" and push the opening to 2018.

But it is a huge hospital, right?  Wrong.  It only has 182 beds, putting the cost at $9,5 million per bed.  It has about 8 wings, each of which is about 5 stories tall.

So what went wrong?
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It wasn't just the unforeseen mineral spring that was flooding the land, or the buried relic of a swimming pool that exploded the budget of the new Veterans Affairs hospital under construction in Aurora. Nor was it only the ballooning price of structural steel, the years of wrangling with a key contractor or the pricey chunk of land next to two of Colorado's busiest roads.

The real story is largely one of good, old-fashioned constituent clout, bureaucratic infighting, leadership changes and never getting to "no," according to those familiar with the development. Along the way, a plan to build an affordable, innovative redesign of the region's veterans health center morphed into a massive, years-overdue extravagance.

--http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_23470410/auroras-new-va-hospital-has-long-costly-history
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It has a bad reputation among subcontractors:
The project's rotten reputation among subcontractors — the result of bad blood between the VA and K-T, almost from the start, that eventually spilled into court — was a major reason costs rose so dramatically. Small companies rely on prompt payments to meet payroll and expenses, often unable to cover those costs for very long. Many rely on bank loans and lines of credit to bridge the gap. But some banks balked at letting small business clients rely on its money to work on the VA project.

"The bad name of this project is on the street," warned James Chang, a VA resident engineer on the project in December 2012. "No one wants to bid on this project." Companies would happily work with Kiewit, and had done so previously, but would not work on this VA project.

--http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_28125325/aurora-va-hospital-project-spooked-subcontractors-causing-cost

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See also: http://www.9news.com/story/news/investigations/casualties-of-care/2015/03/17/denver-va-hospital-1-billion-over-budget/24925269/
http://www.9news.com/story/news/local/2015/05/20/va-hospital-project-shutdown-likely/27668565/
http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_27103393/contractor-kiewit-walking-away-from-va-hospital-aurora

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Update:  See http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3091430/VA-nearly-cash-half-budget-busting-hospital.html