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Stopping a project?

Roberta Banks
How do you go about stopping a road construction project that has already started, but has a ton of issues - first and foremost the lack of safety due to poor planning, delays for supposed material delays, more employees not working on the job than are, etc.

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    Charles Marohn

    I hope that someone else has a better answer, but my sense is that you can't stop it. At least, I've never seen one stopped once the contract is let and things are moving ahead. Please, someone give a counter example, but that's generally not how things work.

    Once a government enters into a contract to start a project, it's a binding agreement. If the city cancels the project, there will be a lawsuit and other breech of contract issues. Cities are really reluctant to do this, no matter how bad things are. I've seen really incompetent contractors be allowed to finish a project just because the legal issues around canceling it were insurmountable.

    In the business, there is a rather famous quote from former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown that creates a guiding philosophy to project development:

    In the world of civic projects, the first budget is really just a down payment. If people knew the real cost from the start, nothing would ever be approved.

    The idea is to get going. Start digging a hole and make it so big, there's no alternative to coming up with the money to fill it in.

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