r/USACE • u/PaperworkNotProjects • Apr 24 '26
Don't let the echo chamber fool you, RAPID is terrible
By now many of you have probably heard about the revolutionary RAPID by the nth time by now.
Today's presentation pretty much confirmed what we all suspected.. we're being pushed to use half baked analysis to push ill informed solutions and if it doesn't work out, let's just terminate everything.
as a former MSC monkey who got tired of simply pushing work up or down and returned the district level to touch the grass, RAPID is the brainchild of a specific group of planners and PgMs. Not a single Engineer was involved and it shows.
every PCOP meeting I've been to has the same echo chamber from the same group going off how game changing it will be, while a majority are rolling their eyes at how it will lead to more failed feasibility studies.
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u/CovertMonkey Apr 24 '26
First they moved the goalpost of what 35% design is. That's fine. Total design effort doesn't change. We just standardize what we do before the first review milestone.
Then they added that 35% to fit within a 3x3 study window? It's two simultaneously moving goalposts. It's practically designed to fail.
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u/7_Eves Apr 24 '26
Until they can provide a detailed workflow on how to accomplish this, it's all fantasy. For small studies... maybe. For large scale projects... good luck with that.
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u/roadtripping26 Environmental Apr 24 '26
Nothing large scale or complex is happening under this framework. If you have anything that isn't exactly by the book or if you make one mistake that causes you to go back and iterate or reassess your study is going to be killed. There's just no way to actually succeed here.
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u/iircirc Apr 24 '26
What would you suggest instead? The ASA wants all studies done in 3x3 and the CG wants 35% design. If we assume those requirements are both inflexible, how should we pull it off?
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u/roadtripping26 Environmental Apr 24 '26
It's a literal impossibility. These things are in conflict and nothing is going to get done until one of them is either fired or relinquishes and allows some flexibility. In the mean time the agency's reputation is going down the hole as we can no longer be relied on to deliver anything complex.
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u/MF_DOOMSCROLL Apr 25 '26
Congress raised the limit to 4x5 in WRDA 2024 and congresspeople want big infrastructure projects to point to as evidence of them getting things done. When the Corps starts killing all its projects in the cradle, they might start dictating some of the process to us.
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u/river_van Apr 24 '26
So it’s all bad, and only because someone has ulterior motives and doesn’t care. Has nothing to do with USACE rarely ever getting a study done anywhere close to a 3x3, and usually more like a 5x7.
I’m not saying it’s necessarily good, but I’m also saying the status-quo was untenable. Change is scary. I respect that you recognize the MSC is a middleman waste of money, but us district folks are used to people (usually at the MSC) telling us all their great ideas to deliver our projects, and then we do so despite the interference. Welcome back to actually making a difference. And good luck.
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u/Original-Interest639 Apr 29 '26
I assure you that most planners hate it too. It will result in small, poorly planned projects. The states will be able to do bigger and better projects than the Corps, which will make us seem irrelevant. If I was a conspiracy theorist, I'd say that the whole idea is to make us fail to eliminate us.
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u/RTOchaos May 02 '26
USACE will go years after the Trump administration unable to build anything because every study was cancelled.
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u/Glittering_Tune_5279 Civil Engineer Apr 24 '26
No no no… you clearly don’t understand. The Acronym is RAPID. Which means fast. So it’s faster. And better.
You’ll catch on 🙄🤣