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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 JoeMerchant on Monday July 01 2019, @08:55PM (9 children)
This is nothing new, people have screwed up big things literally forever. It's only recently that we've started to get it right most of the time, but it's all too easy to fall back to the baseline of human organizational performance which is somewhere between dismal and non-existent.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 3, Interesting) by PartTimeZombie on Monday July 01 2019, @09:45PM (2 children)
This is true.
The customer is always wrong too:*
That is a recipe for disaster, and I suspect several German construction companies will have passed on the project when that sort of project management scheme became was proposed.
Also, changing the job during the actual build will have been when it became clear this job was doomed.
* OK, not always but if they don't listen to the people they are paying to do the job, run.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Dr Spin on Tuesday July 02 2019, @07:13AM (1 child)
The customer is always wrong too
Now you are even thinking like Google and Amazon
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday July 02 2019, @09:44PM
I was thinking like Google and Amazon because I had this conversation yesterday:
Me: Your wi-fi is not working because you have airplane mode turned on.
Customer: No I don't
Me; If you put your cursor over that Airplane icon there, what does it say?
Customer: Airplane mode.
Me: Yes, Airplane Mode. That tuns wi-fi off.
Customer: No it doesn't.
Me: ....
Sometimes the customer is wrong.
Sorry, I'm having a much better day today.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday July 02 2019, @04:01AM (5 children)
Welp, apparently, there is danger of reverting to the alleged baseline.
(Score: 3, Funny) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday July 02 2019, @12:37PM (4 children)
Not a theoretical danger, I (and everyone whose workplace is depicted daily by Scott Adams) live this every day:
BCS (Big Company Syndrome). The only reason that much concentrated stupidity, inefficiency and disorganization continues to exist is because of its overwhelming advantages in the marketplace. Kind of like the Woolly Mammoth before h. sapiens came along.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday July 02 2019, @01:04PM (3 children)
Here, it was the German government making bad choices without consequence.
The only reason such "concentrated stupidity, inefficiency and disorganization" exists is because of the absence of a market, not because it has some advantage in a market.
My view on this is that we've worked hard to eliminate the benefits of foresight, wisdom, and the usual organizational efficiencies from our lives, businesses, and institutions. Now, we're reaping the rewards.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday July 02 2019, @01:09PM (2 children)
Just like government jobs, I will say that there is a whole lot less stress and demands to perform in the bigger company jobs - mixed with bizarre nonsensical requirements and random blindsiding, but that also applies in the small scrappy companies.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday July 02 2019, @01:19PM (1 child)
We should think about why that is the case.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday July 02 2019, @06:05PM
Any big organization provides places to hide, I think it can be as simple as that.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end