addendum:
Hodgie writes in the comments section of the Greenville News-
Posted: Thu Feb 07, 2008 Post subject: Not really surprised...

After having been in the CU-ICAR complex for over a year watching the construction crews re-doing something that was already completed because it was done wrong, or undoing something else because another task should have been done first, I'm not surprised that room and board costs might be going up. A couple of examples:

--Several areas has been graded/landscaped several times only to be dug up again because someone forgot to put in the utilities (e.g. irrigation lines) that run underneath the dirt.

--Thousands of pavers have been put in for Millenium Blvd and the surrounding walkways. Workers were pulling sections of these pavers up before they had even finished putting them all in. Some of the reasons they were pulling them up were:
--Forgot to put drain holes in around the perimeter of the roadway
--Forgot to put in benches that have their bases below the level of the pavers
--Sinkholes (there are more of these...more pavers will be coming up soon!!)
--And my personal favorite: after putting all of the pavers in, several were pulled up to replace them with "special" ones that have a Tiger's paw embossed on them.

I'll confess that I'm no construction engineer, and I realize that just a couple of examples may not sound like much, but as a casual observer that sees this happening every day (as well as others around me that comment on the same things), it does seem as if a lot of what's happening at CU-ICAR is extremely wasteful, and would add up to a lot of money being spent on the project. I'd hate to think that these costs are being pushed off on college kids because of incompetence, lack of oversight, or for the sake of someone else making a buck.

Please feel free to correct me if I'm way off base here, but...