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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, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 02 2019, @06:03AM (1 child)
I'm trained in both classic and agile project management. There's actually (and I guess this isn't common knowledge at this stage) a coherent body of knowledge being created that encompasses the two approaches, and helps define when either approach is appropriate.
Agile is not going to get you anything you want when everything can be planned, specified and tracked from Day 1. If there's a set of rails, classic (what is called "predictive" project management by the cool kids) project management will choo-choo you down those rails without surprises, and without drama.
On the other hand, predictive project management comes to a nasty halt where the rails stop, and the gravel starts. Can't predict more than a couple of months out because of inherent complexities? Predictive project management maps will give you a white space with HERE BE DRAGONNES. Or lies. Beautiful, tightly predicted lies. Agile says: "OK, we know where we want to go, we know what we'll need, let's hike to the top of this ridge and see what we discover. And let's not spend any more yet than this hike requires."
If you think either one is going to save the world, you're in for a nasty shock.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday July 02 2019, @02:37PM
The big complexities are monopolies and profit.
You can project manage your companies 25th sportsball stadium complex real estate development project. You can't project manage a software project that will only make a profit if we invent something literally new and completely unique that we, we in the sense of species not just company, have never done before. And second place means typically no profits, or perhaps 3rd or 4th place means no profits.
You can project manage the construction of the 56789th Catholic church building. You can't project manage the next dude (or dude-ette) to be cannonized as a saint.
There are analogies with quantum physics in that you can't project manage a single unique atom into responding simultaneously with certain Heisenberg limited measurements. Although you can VERY successfully "project manage" a steam engine cylinder full of those atoms into behaving under the rules of classical thermodynamics very effectively and profitably.
A lot of business projects fail because the managers don't understand the difference between stamping out license plates with more logistical efficiency than the competition vs inventing the idea of developing a machine to stamp out license plates.