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posted by martyb on Monday July 01 2019, @07:32PM   Printer-friendly
from the You-Thought-Your-Builders-Were-Bad dept.

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?


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Rich on Tuesday July 02 2019, @02:13AM (6 children)

    by Rich (945) on Tuesday July 02 2019, @02:13AM (#862252) Journal

    There are too many "bullshit jobs". Too many people from top to bottom of socienty milking what's left of the substance for effortless money or power. There's been a recent Youtuber's ("Rezo") video causing a major stir, where he took apart the CDU and other government parties. Aside from the main topic, he had two disturbing clips of politicians, former SPD head Sigmar Gabriel and CDU secretary of drug policies Marlene Mortler. These two were so ludicrously clueless about core knowledge needed for their jobs, it has to be seen to be believed. If those responsible for the Berlin Airport would know ten times as much about as them about what's needed, the Airport would still fail.

    Somewhat unrelated, but to give you an idea of how the paralysis works: We have, think of the children, obligatory smoke detectors now. Coming with them is an army of battery changers, in turn supervised by certification agents and their corporate overhead. I made the effort to look up the death toll caused by fires at the federal statistics service: It went down from about 380/a to 340/a over the last 10 years. Taking out the improvements from housing replacements and the fact that media is no longer consumed through devices with two-figure Kilovolts in a chipboard case, the gains look small. These devices trigger when properly frying a steak and I would assume that there are a good number of accidents when people climb on wiggly chairs trying to get the battery out to stop them wailing. Disinfecting telephones with the same effort would likely save more lives, disinfecting hospitals from multiresistant germs would for sure.

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  • (Score: 2) by MostCynical on Tuesday July 02 2019, @03:48AM (4 children)

    by MostCynical (2589) on Tuesday July 02 2019, @03:48AM (#862267) Journal

    It is all about insurance, which is all about risk, wrapped up in actuarial tables.
    Project managment is also all about risk managment, but mostly ends up being about cashflow and cost minimization.

    If you can offset some risk, your premiums drop.
    This can be as essy as engaging contractors, or out-sourcing certification..

    Have you addressed, dealt with, mitigated or militated the risk?
    No.

    But you have saved money on those premiums.

    --
    "I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 02 2019, @06:34AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 02 2019, @06:34AM (#862302)

      Explain please, how you'd save money on premiums without at least mitigating the risk? Those numbers don't care whose dick got sucked. They care what the rate of incidence is, and the cost attached.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 02 2019, @08:45AM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 02 2019, @08:45AM (#862321)

      But you have saved money on those premiums.

      Only a bit if at all, the insurers will take most/all of the savings.

      • (Score: 2) by MostCynical on Tuesday July 02 2019, @08:58AM

        by MostCynical (2589) on Tuesday July 02 2019, @08:58AM (#862325) Journal

        But the initial cost to the government was lower, and the contractors absorbed some of the risk and insurance costs.

        Besides, when it eventually gets through several different courts and appeals, the extra billions don't seem to bring down governments, ministers, or even heads of departments.

        --
        "I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday July 02 2019, @01:29PM

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday July 02 2019, @01:29PM (#862373) Journal

        the insurers will take most/all of the savings.

        Then there wouldn't be incentives to reduce premiums because you couldn't reduce premiums. Initial premise of the thread becomes broken.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 02 2019, @03:06PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 02 2019, @03:06PM (#862409)