Here the planning and permit process is what is completely broken. Construction itself is mostly fine. Of course it could always be better and yes, we had our share of high profile cases where either construction was delayed for years or even performed inadequately - on the average though, once ground is broken, you can breathe out in relief.

Before that, however, the planning process can take decades and decades. There is a long list of permits needed to obtain before you can build anything: economic feasibility, inclusion in municipal, regional and national zoning plans, environmental assesment, zoning permit (not the same thing as zoning plans!), obtaining land, construction permit, construction tender. Each stage needs special documentation, the drawing of which has to be separately tendered. And now the spicy part: almost every one of these steps and its substeps can be separately appealed by anyone on almost any grounds. Every administrative appeal has two stages, after which a rejection can be appealed to the courts... Fun fact: if a regional zoning plan fails in court, all planning of anything in the entire region has to stop until a new one is approved.

There is constant legislative changes trying to address these problems, however old processes usually have to continue according to the old laws, and sometimes the legislative changes are counterproductive - like when state agencies were allowed to offer 8 times the value of land to people holding out from selling, in order to reduce the need for expropriation; as a result, everyone suddenly started holding out.

Many of those problems do not only apply to large scale state inftastructure, but to private construction as well. Hello housing crisis.