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Stories about seriously mangled public infrastructure projects keep coming up and even the alleged super-efficient Germans are not exempt. But what would you expect when you change and expand the project while it is being implemented and when you use smaller contractors with no track record for projects like this? the BBC has the story:
As a structure, it looks impressive enough.
Until you pause, look around you, and absorb the silence. This is Berlin Brandenburg or BER, the new, state-of-the-art international airport built to mark reunified Germany's re-emergence as a global destination.
It is a bold new structure, costing billions, and was supposed to be completed in 2012.
But it has never opened.
BER has become for Germany not a new source of pride but a symbol of engineering catastrophe. It's what top global infrastructure expert Bent Flyvbjerg calls a "national trauma" and an ideal way "to learn how not to do things".
[...]Martin Delius, a former Berlin city politician who later headed an extensive inquiry into what went wrong, says those in charge decided "to give 30 to 40 contracts to smaller companies which they thought they could pressurise into giving them lower prices".
"They built a very complex controlling system which didn't work," he says.
Most disruptive of all were decisions to change the size and content of the new airport - while it was being built.
[...]New construction boss Hartmut Mehdorn made a list of all the faults and failures, Mr Delius tells me.
"Small ones like the wrong light bulbs to big ones like all the cables are wrong," he says.
The final total was 550,000 - more than a half a million problems to fix.
Maybe that builder who left a big hole in your dining room wall for a couple of weeks wasn't so bad after all? It wasn't like seven years later, was it?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Monday July 01 2019, @09:42PM (3 children)
But, TFS specifically states that the goals and the plans changed as the contracts progressed. I agree with all the above comments condemning the Germans for having far too many independent contractors involved. But, even if there had been a super-contractor to bind them all - it's hell trying to hit a moving target when nobody knows where it's going.
Would you make hundreds of changes to your house, while hiring dozens of independent contractors, AFTER the architect had signed off on your plans?
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Monday July 01 2019, @09:48PM (1 child)
No I wouldn't, and neither would you. In most construction jobs those sorts of changes would mean re-pricing the job. I suppose the 30 or 40 small contractors were not confident enough to tell the client they were going to double the price of the job.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 01 2019, @10:40PM
Clearly you're not familiar with having the government as a client. We use this simple equation to manage our cost overruns:
Estimate^2 < Invoiced Amount
(Score: 5, Informative) by Username on Monday July 01 2019, @09:57PM
That is usually how construction goes. Hire a company to build it, they sub contract out the different jobs, excavators, builders, electricians, plumbers, etcetc. I believe this is especially true in germany where trade unions are very strong. They just decided to cut out the middle man and hire on the sub contractors directly. These guys do what they are told assuming you know what you're doing. They wont say, sorry this isn't in the blueprint and we would have to get it re-approved by the engineers and architects then send it onto the foreman and inspector to explain the changes to the workers. They will just do it.