APNewsBreak: Ex-VA exec says he wasn't told hospital cost

DENVER (AP) — A former Veterans Affairs Department executive who was harshly criticized by Congress for massive cost overruns at a new Colorado VA medical center said he was never told the price had ballooned to more than $1.7 billion before he left the agency, and does not know how it happened.

Haggstrom, who was the VA's top construction official when the project nearly collapsed amid legal disputes and skyrocketing costs, said the last estimate he heard from the builder before he was removed from the project was about $890 million.

[...] after years of disputes among the VA, the contractor and the design team, an independent government panel called the Civilian Board of Contract Appeals ruled in December 2014 that the VA had violated the contract by not giving the builders, the Kiewit-Turner joint venture, a design that could be built within budget.

Multiple investigations concluded the costs got out of hand because the VA did not oversee the project closely enough, did not assign enough officials to it, approved lavish design elements, failed to get the designers and builders to agree on the design and tried to use a complicated form of construction contract that agency executives did not fully understand.

Congress this week passed a bill designed to make it easier for the VA to fire employees and allowing the department to reduce an employee's pension for negligence or mismanaging funds — in part a response to the Colorado project.

Last year, Congress stripped the VA of the authority to manage large construction projects and turned it over to the Corps of Engineers, also a reaction to the Colorado project.