The Trump administration will be unable to build significant amounts of the president’s border wall. The wall will require dozens of contracts to do the design and construction work. The procurement process will take a year or more and be subject to time-consuming legal challenges. President Donald Trump’s vague requirements will have to be refined into actionable technical requirements and engineering designs. Land acquisition, environmental impact statements and infrastructure such as roads and utilities in remote areas have to be completed before construction starts.

Even when the government owns the land and has access to utilities, it takes five to 10 years to complete a major procurement to the point of an initial operating capability.

The wall will be much like the Honolulu rail project in terms of problems with poor project definition, incomplete requirements, difficult land acquisition and never-ending litigation. If Congress gave Trump $5 billion today, the wall would not be completed in Trump’s political lifetime.

Garnett Howard

Ewa Beach

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