Haiti Reconstruction

This is my first post on this blog. Thanks for joining me.

Today the United States has pledged 1.15 billion dollars for reconstruction of schools, hospitals, and neighborhoods in this country affected by the recent earthquake. The money is pledged over the next 2 years.The pledge comes at a time the US itself faces some hard economic realities.

It will be interesting to see how this money is used and if anything was learned from Katrina or Iraq where billions of dollars were squandered on contractor set asides that were unqualified and corrupt.It is also surprising that the pledge is for 2 years. Nothing was said in the news articles today about rebuilding infrastructure or City planning.

I doubt much improvement will be seen in the next 2 years either as rallying enough professionals and coordinating rebuilding will be a major task especially the government way. If Katrina and Iraq are the model, most of the money will be soaked up by bureaucracy and corruption before building ever starts.

I personally attempted to get information regarding Government building programs that Architects could submit proposals on after Katrina and after hours of web searching gave up.

If you read this blog and have any information regarding opportunities for Architects rebuilding Haiti please post it or send to my email and I will share with the community.

Architects have been one of the hardest hit professions during this recession. Hopefully some work will trickle down from the 1.15 billion for planning and design.

Thanks for reading.
Don Bryant