Broken Buildings, Busted Budgets: How to Fix America's Trillion-Dollar Construction Industry

Broken Buildings, Busted Budgets: How to Fix America's Trillion-Dollar Construction Industry Broken Buildings, Busted Budgets: How to Fix America's Trillion-Dollar Construction Industry by Barry Lepatner, University of Chicago Press, 2007, 208 pages, $79.95 ISBN 0226472671

Barry LePatner's Broken Buildings, Busted Budgets states flatly that that the inner-workings of America's trilliondollar construction industry are broken. By LePatner's well-referenced assessment, America's construction industry is the most productive in the world, and the envy of its European counterparts. He insists, however, that it is not productive enough, but wastes billions each year due to inefficiency. LePatner states that the recommendations in his book will "serve to liberate anyone who builds anything from fear of paying too much, waiting too long, and not getting what was paid for."

LePatner finds the principal problem with the construction industry to be its fragmentation into thousands of "mom and pop" contractors that must work together to complete a project, though they each are...