My job for a couple of years was to review charges that contractors were adding to their transportation projects and advise whether those charges should have been part of the original bid or whether they constituted a legitimate change that the contractor could not have known about prior to the project and thus a valid additional expense. The issue being, every change that was denied was money that the contractor would not get on top of the base price, and would instead come out of their bottom line, so contractors fought extremely hard for every change so they wouldn't lose any money from their profit. Every proposed change also had a percentage of profit built into it as well. The contractors would get the subcontractors to help them, because otherwise the subcontractors would have to fight with the contractor for money that the contractor didn't want to give up. So all these forces were working against the government who was trying to stay on schedule, and not trying to go over budget. Its a lose lose situation for the government, if you pay, your costs go up and if you don't, you get sued and have to fight about it in court. The government bid system is also not about who does the best work, or who is the most experienced, those come into it, but the main factor is who is the cheapest. So obviously, the cheapest bidder is going to leave things out that they then will want to add on the change orders. All this to say, I totally understand why the Federal government isn't interested in building a national high speed rail system.
