How Berlin’s Futuristic Airport Became a $6B Embarrassment | Hacker News Reader

How Berlin’s Futuristic Airport Became a $6B Embarrassment

bloomberg.com

293 pointsadventured205 comments

They seem to completely miss the story about Imtech's involvement that broke this week which sheds some lights on this catastrophe and is a tale of corruption: http://www.zeit.de/2015/29/imtech-flughafen-berlin-ber-verzo...

Unfortunately I'm unable to find an English-language article on that at all. There is only this Imtech response: http://imtech.com/EN/corporate/Newsroom/Highlights/Imtech-re...

Can you provide an English summary?

I try but don't hold me accountable for any inaccuracies.

At the moment three public prosecutors independently investigate that companies practices which is rare in Germany: 1) A gigantic adventure park in Poland which was never supposed to be built 2) A cartel which allowed them to build two power plants 3) Falsification of balance sheets.

Imtech is responsible for parts of the airport's construction – including the two parts which created most problems: the smoke extractor and the cabling. As the airport was close to be finished, opening date just days away, Imtech send fraudulent invoices they knew nobody would double-check. This is a practice that seems really common with such projects.

Similar things happened a few years earlier: When the planning agency went bankrupt and it was known that due to regulatory changes the plans needed to be fixed they nonetheless went on to built the (now obsolete) parts – knowing they will be the company that will be called to fix it again. Additionally the work was done sloppily: Among the quoted examples were control boxes build too close together that you couldn't open their doors.

What was really important for the company was that all invoices should be paid by the end of 2012 to include them in that years balance sheet – while delaying paying their workers until January. As time was running out they resorted to a bribe: In December 2012 an employee of Imtech gave an employee of the Berlin airport an envelope with 150 000 € at the side of the highway. Airport employees spend overtime during the christmas holidays so that all payments of 65 Mio. € could be processed.

The article then goes on the describe the involvement of top management which indicate that this is done systematically. They also describe the two other projects from above. They also suggest that these projects look like a Ponzi scheme: A project's loss is paid by doing even crazier projects.

"Imtech send fraudulent invoices they knew nobody would double-check. This is a practice that seems really common with such projects."

Yeah, this is a bit too typical and happens in the USA also. If you ever have to deal with building something, check every invoice as if it was from Snidely Whiplash.

The article specially mentions a one-page invoice with items like "overhead costs" and "disturbances while building" amounting to millions – billed at a time where they still had 5000 other invoices to check.

That would be the time to try to slip something through. Also, its not like the accounting department knowns what the invoices mean. This is why a lot of places require work orders / purchase orders to match each invoice. No WO or PO #, no pay invoice.

> They also suggest that these projects look like a Ponzi scheme: A project's loss is paid by doing even crazier projects.

This seems to me to be the most interesting finding: the company was not doing all this illegal shit in a diabolical scheme to make the owners or management super rich (though they probably got some fat unwarranted bonuses over the years), but in desperate attempts to stave off bankruptcy.

A bit like Nick Leeson's Barings Bank shenanigans, just with less leverage, so it took a whole company to do half the damage a single person could do in finance...

One of the managers got fired for incompetence, then sued and won over a million euro for being fired without good reason.

Yes, they got a little fat off of it..

At Imtech? Aren't you confusing it with Schwarz who worked for BER? Or did I miss something in the Die Zeit article?

Google translate: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%...

I'm surprised that the quality isn't too bad. Sure, the grammar is way off but you can actually understand what they are trying to say.

I find how well that works is directly related to how closely related English is to the language in question. The further you get from its Germanic and Latin roots, the proportionally less sense a rough translation makes.

Some of that is figures of speech, some of it is colloquialisms, some of it is just weird grammar. For example, Japanese tends to omit the subject, which is incredibly confusing when directly translated if you aren't expecting it.

Germany newspapers apparently use weird grammar conventions that makes translation engines have fits. Google Translate is pretty good on german conversations, anything the EU publishes, and literature, but is really terrible at newspapers.

The translation of the above article is pretty good because a number of people have looked at it and made corrections, but the average German Newspaper article translation is nearly incomprehensible.

> Google Translate is pretty good on german conversations, anything the EU publishes, and literature, but is really terrible at newspapers.

AFAIK Google translate is trained by using corpora of documents that have known-good translations. I could imagine that they are trained using EU documents, as these would usually be available in multiple languages. That would explain why performance on stuff published by the EU is so good...

> anything the EU publishes, [...]

Google Translate grew up on EU parliamentary publications.

I think german grammar is really diferent from english. For example they make a sandwich with verbs. For example:

I have been in Berlin. vs I have in Berlin been. Its not the exact translation and maybe theres a beter example but its the idea.

Ich bin in berlin gewessen.

There is also all the declinations. But yeah its noy japanese.

See, "I have in Berlin been" is 100% understandable at least to me... it might even be archaic but valid English grammar.

> I think german grammar is really diferent from english. For example they make a sandwich with verbs. For example:

> I have been in Berlin. vs I have in Berlin been.

Here's another example: "I took out the trash" vs "I took the trash out".

Compared to Japanese, "I have in Berlin been" almost sounds natural.

In Japanese, you'd say "Berlin ni ita", or translating rather literally, "Berlin in was". You'd omit the "I", which can lead to some interesting misunderstandings.

Needless to say, Google translate borders on useless here.

Humans should be able to mostly understand word-for-word literal translations between English and German (in both directions).

Holy crap, that Zeit article is horribly written.

> "Professor, let me understand this," Loge said. "You are talking about having 800 people wearing orange vests, sitting on camping stools, holding thermoses filled with coffee, and shouting into their cell phones, 'Open the fire door'?" Loge refused the airport an operating license. Schwarz stood up and walked out without another word.

Easily the best part of the article.

I got a good chuckle out of the sentence:

"Then they turned to the fire prevention system. Smoke now channels upward through chimneys, in accordance with the laws of physics."

Yeah, some politician got some "duh, stupid engineers" points out of that sentence. Completely ignoring the fact that the original design also pulled smoke down and was considered to be fine. Since these systems are active and suck the smoke out up or down doesn't matter all that much.

From the third paragraph: "Smoke evacuation canals designed to suck out smoke and replace it with fresh air failed to do either. In an actual fire, the inspectors determined, the main smoke vent might well implode." Assuming the inspectors were correct, the original design, at least as implemented, didn't work.

While the "in accordance with the laws of physics" may be overly catty, a bit of searching around suggests that smoke evacuation dampers are generally placed on the ceiling, and it's not unreasonable to think that's because, well, smoke rises, isn't it?

AFAIK the smoke was pulled in at the ceiling of the floors. And then sent downwards and vented out somewhere on the side instead of on top of the building.

The original design was never tested, because the building as originally designed never existed.

Each addition ordered up by Schwarz required shifting passenger flows through the terminal. That meant rebuilding walls, exits, emergency lights, ventilation systems, windows, elevators, and staircases. At one point, in 2009, outside controllers urged Schwarz and his engineering chief to shut down construction for half a year to give the architects and contractors time to coordinate efforts.

That never happened, so there never was a complete design for the changed building, and the fire system wasn't properly replanned for the new situation. Which lead to issues like the collapsing pipes: They fitted stronger fans, but no-one realized that the pipes can't hold the higher pressure difference.

IDKSAS, but wouldn't a system like this (electrically powered venting) be prone to failure in an actual fire? If power fails with side/down venting, the smoke would have no where to go.

Sure, so you have to design it so the power supply is reliable enough even during a fire. It's a concern but it's by no means impossible to deal with.

It does sound like a situation where "excessive cleverness" is being applied to an engineering problem, where a simple/robust/passive/failsafe solution may be available.

Having owned several German sports cars, I must say that "excessive cleverness" just might be a German trademark. When compared to the Corvette, the only American sports car I had, excessive, and largely unnecessary cleverness is very much prevalent in german designs.

Yes it would. My assumption is that they were planning on it only needing to hold out long enough to evacuate everyone. Still, it's indeed the better design to fail safely, and still let some smoke waft out the chimneys, than the actual fail mode, which is to burst into shrapnel.

>> "You are talking about having 800 people wearing orange vests, sitting on camping stools, holding thermoses filled with coffee, and shouting into their cell phones, 'Open the fire door'?"

Funny thing is, if they had allowed that there would never be an opportunity to fix it correctly. It would require shutting down the airport for quite some time.

The parallels with software and other areas of engineering are a bit disturbing.

I couldn't help but think of the recent "What is Code" article and thinking they could just swap this one for that.

There is a joke in my country (Poland) about every little town needing:

-an airport

-an aquapark

-a huge sport stadion

All of them as a way to transfer some state/town money to political cronies. The sad part is that some of those make sense as an infrastructure improvement (most doesn't though, at least here) so it's easier to sell the idea to people. The way the business is done is to just pay 30%-50% more than it should cost and pocket the difference.

That's for the Amateurs, Professionals do a whole World Cup

And to get into the hall of fame, you do an Olympics.

And to add a gold seal to your hall of fame certificate do an Olympics in Massachusetts.

Brazil and Russia are going to outdo this. By hosting both World Cup and Olympics within a few years.

Russia also had the Winter Olympics (and Snow when it's 10C outside is expensive)

Look no further than the $2.5 billion debacle that is the new Tokyo Olympic stadium.

A rather lavish expenditure for a country that is deep in debt.

A nation is never too deep in debt to host a sports event (or take part in a war)...

Another example among many: Greece hosting the 2004 Olympics turned out not to be a great financial decision.

They scrapped the plans. http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/07/17/olympics-japan-stad...

We went for smaller stakes by doing Euro 2012. I live in one of the hosting cities and it's easy to tell a lot of construction work was half-arsed and never finished (mainly roads). There is also not enough traffic to make the big stadium close to profitable but hey, that's another opportunity for the town to transfer some money to local football club (a lot of our politicians are connected to football structures).

It would be funny if it wasn't sad. No wonder people avoid paying taxes when they see the money being wasted all around and citizens not ever asked about new crazy idea to build with it. We already have an expensive aquapark, huge stadium and two airports though. I wonder what's next for a town with a population of 600k in one of the poorest EU countries.

Interestingly, it seems that big sporting events that seems to make any money are those where you don't have to be "voted" to host the event. Think Wimbledon, Marathons, FA Cup finals etc.

Sporting events like the F1 Grand Prix, FIFA world cups and Olympics etc seems to be full of loss making money stories for the hosts, but its organisation company seems to do quite well out of it.

This is just a casual observation, and I could be totally wrong.

Ohh.. take a look at the home town of the Hungarian prime minister:

https://goo.gl/maps/JXK9w

The town has a population about 1700, the stadium on the map has capacity for 4500.

This is exactly what you expect to happen when you're redesigning the building in the middle of construction. If the project manager can't say no then it's pretty much guaranteed to be a disaster.

On the plus side, it seems like they've finally found someone competent to fix the mess and move the project forward.

What I don't quite get is that the problem keeping things from being fixed seems to be entirely related to the fire system.

Meanwhile all the other issues like heavy equipment breaking tiles... none of that seems to be slowing it from opening.

So how did all the other systems wind up being more or less ready?

The fire system was the thing that forced them to admit the delays and has gotten the biggest publicity, because failing the fire certification forbids them from doing anything except construction work. I don't think anyone had (or even has now) a clue if the other things actually were completely ready. Stuff like power lines in the wrong cable channels makes one suspect they weren't...

When I last visited Berlin, I heard a joke about the airport's problems that I thought was very funny:

"Niemand hat die Absicht, einen Flughafen zu errichten!"

('Nobody has the intention to build an airport!')

Context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Wall#Construction_begin...

The other popular joke, after all these years and billions spent: "Let's just move Berlin to a functioning airport"

My favorite Berlin airport joke:

"Did you hear about the new grammar reform? It includes a new tense, Futur III, to allow us to speak of the completion of Berlin/Brandenburg airport."

http://www.der-postillon.com/2012/08/neue-zeitform-futur-iii...

I have actually heard many say the same thing about the California high speed rail project -- that it'll end up being a real estate handout after the project goes haywire midway.

But is it only BER? As mentioned int the article - what about Stuttgart 21 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuttgart_21) etc.?

It is possible that these sites exist as new financial "loopholes", transferring tax-money from the government to private contractors without much oversight.

> It is possible that these sites exist as new financial "loopholes", transferring tax-money from the government to private contractors without much oversight.

Yes, absolutely

http://www.zeit.de/2015/29/imtech-flughafen-berlin-ber-verzo... (article in German)

Stuttgart 21 is mentioned in the article, as well as an unnamed concert hall in Hamburg.

The concert hall they refer to is the Elbphilharmonie which tripled its costs and construction time.

Costs for the tax payer are actually more than seven times (789M EUR) the original estimate at the time construction began (114M EUR in 2007). The initial estimate in 2005 was even lower, foreseeing costs of below 100M for the tax payer with donations supposed to cover the difference.

Thanks, somehow I had the wrong number remembered.

Probably this concert hall in Hamburg... terribly over-budget and late https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elbe_Philharmonic_Hall

Here in Australia we have found even more egregious ways of transferring money for failed transport infrastructure:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_West_Link,_Melbourne

In summary: sign $5b contracts for a highly politicized white elephant just weeks before a scheduled election where the government will be booted out of office.

...and write into that contract compensation worth $100s of millions of dollars if a later goverment decides to cancel the project. Also, fail to release the unfavourable cost-benefit analysis.

The complexity of that project is extremely high. My cousin is a civil engineer in Stuttgart, and he showed me a cross-sectional diagram of the affected area and the number of considerations seemed intractably high to me.

But more generally, these kinds of megaprojects go over budget in nearly every part of the world -- especially when tunneling is involved. Here in the United States, two examples are Boston's "Big Dig" and Seattle's viaduct replacement.

It's a bit rarer for an airport to fail a fire inspection 4 weeks before planned opening and then sit empty for years and billions in fixes.

In the interests of being pedantic, and local pride: Seattle's viaduct replacement isn't over budget-- yet.

It's extremely likely to go over budget, but don't count the chickens before they've hatched. The last budget review came to the conclusion that it's still possible to finish the project as budgeted and scheduled.

http://www.king5.com/story/news/local/seattle/2015/04/23/ber...

>The last budget review came to the conclusion that it's still possible to finish the project as budgeted and scheduled.

They should open a betting market on these types of lines. I'd love to see the fair odds. I'd take out a second mortgage if I could bet "This project will go over budget" if it was even odds.

On budget, perhaps. Maybe. On schedule? No. The report even says as much, page 4:

"The tunnel project will not achieve STP’s original completion date of December 2015."

This one didn't go too bad. It even came in under the revised (increased) budget:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niagara_Tunnel_Project

But now they get to drain the great lakes faster for profit.

Another example: Switzerland is building the AFAIK still world's longest train tunnel. It casually went from 8 billion estimated in 1992 to 24 billion and it's still not open.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neue_Eisenbahn-Alpentransversa... (German)

Montreal had a different sort of airport fiasco in the 1960s and 70s: Mirabel Airport was supposed to replace the Dorval Airport as the "Eastern Gateway to Canada" for human travellers.

Today, Mirabel is mostly a cargo airport. And the terminal is being demolished...

Meanwhile, Dorval was expanded several times. Also, it was renamed the Trudeau airport.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montr%C3%A9al%E2%80%93Mirabel_...

Looks like it's perfect time to stop expanding Dorval airport and concentrate on Mirabel future. Montreal area is growing, number of flights is growing. Important reason why Mirabel can't be used efficiently - is a lack of railway connection to it. If Mirabel were reachable by train there would be flights from it. And terminal wan't be demolished by the way, there is big push back for that.

According to news reports, the Mirabel terminal demolition began in November 2014: http://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/mirabel-airports-...

I am a german living in Berlin - and let me tell you, I feel deeply ashamed. Not because I am german, but because I have the impression that a lot of people involved, especially our once-so-admired former mayor Klaus Wowereit, are obsessed with money, and got caught in a swamp of corruption and were misleading the public.

A year ago or so, it turned out that the folks responsible for all the mess (none of the board of course) we not to be found, because they were supporting a system were a subcontractor could hire another subcontractor and so forth, making it impossible for anyone to get a grip on what is going on. And that is not what I would expect from a billion dollar project run by some of the most trusted politicians and executives in our country.

I flew home from Budapest a couple of weeks ago, and I was surprised to see that we were using the actual airstrip of BER. The flight was supposed to go to SXF (Berlin Schönefeld), but instead we landed on the new airstrip, driving by the not-yet-finished new airport. Can anyone tell me why?

There's more to it though - starting with corruption [1] and going all the way to REBULDING the whole thing [2].

I'll stop here now - but I hope that there will be a lot more of critique towards those who made this a completely embarassing desaster.

[sorry guys, links are in german. I'll try to find english ones] [1] http://www.tagesspiegel.de/berlin/berlin-schoenefeld-korrupt... [2] http://www.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/acht-milliarden-euro-b...

> I was surprised to see that we were using the actual airstrip of BER. The flight was supposed to go to SXF (Berlin Schönefeld), but instead we landed on the new airstrip, driving by the not-yet-finished new airport. Can anyone tell me why?

They repurposed the south airstrip of SXF as the north airstrip of BER. As the north airstrip of SXF was dismantled for a highway this is the only remaining airstrip at SXF. For BER they built another additional one.

Here's a map: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f8/Karte-_F...

I wasn't aware of that - but did they increase the number of planes starting and landing on SXF? It wasn't until a couple of months ago since they started taxi'ing around the building, or am I wrong?

I visited Berlin in 2012, and I remember taxiing near the BER terminal.

If you're in a position to hand out $5B of other people's money, do you think some people might want to bribe you to get it?

What if you can only hand out $1M? Will someone still want to bribe you? -Of course, but he'll be a "smaller player" then.

All public spending involves some sort of "corruption" [1] because it's always other people's money being spent, and there's always someone in charge of spending it.

If you could pay $10 to get $100, wouldn't you do it? A bribe is an investment, and the tax money received in exchange is the ROI.

[1] I put "corruption" in quotes because it's just the system working as intended. If the system were actually corrupted, it would somehow start working for the masses' benefit instead.

Think about it. How do you benefit from someone else spending your money for you? Your money serves a means towards an end for whoever spends it, meaning he will be trying to benefit from spending it.

"How do you benefit from someone else spending your money for you?"

1. Economy of scale 2. I can get 5% on my own but they can get 8%. If he invests my money for me for 1.5% then we both prosper.

So there's at least 2 ways. There are more. Yes it's more complicated, but you asked and I answered.

> 1. Economy of scale 2. I can get 5% on my own but they can get 8%. If he invests my money for me for 1.5% then we both prosper.

First of all, "he" is not interested in your well-being, so he might as well get a good deal with a total price of X, but mark down X + Y as the expenses, and then pocket the difference.

And second, free competition drives quality up and prices down, so you'll get a good deal that way too. There's plenty of "economy of scale" in millions of people seeking out the best deal on whatever.

> If you could pay $10 to get $100, wouldn't you do it?

Certainly not, if the $10 is a bribe. Would you?

> A bribe is an investment...

No, it is a criminal offence, in most places. And for good reason. Corruption does horrible things to the economy.

>> A bribe is an investment

> No, it is a criminal offence, in most places.

You say that like criminal offences can't be investments.

> Certainly not, if the $10 is a bribe. Would you?

Probably not, even if only because I'm not the kind of person who'd even get into a position to bribe someone for personal gain.

But there's this thing called "psychopaths", and they do seek out bribing opportunities and they don't have any problem whatsoever with paying bribes too.

> No, it is a criminal offence, in most places. And for good reason.

Sure, but the people taking the bribes are part of the organization that's supposed to punish people for taking bribes (i.e. "criminal offenses"). See a problem there?

"Think about it. How do you benefit from someone else spending your money for you?"

What is convenient and rational for an agent from the perspective of that agent could be not the more convenient action if all the other agents in the “game” take the same action at the same time.

In a sense, this is the root of the separation between microeconomics and macroeconomics.

In other words, you can benefit from somebody thinking with a global perspective. Of course, finding the incentives for that is a hard problem.

What is this I can't even..

But in case it helps, let's make this a bit more accurate: How do you benefit from someone forcefully taking your money from you and then spending it for you?

(Hint: If you actually did benefit, they wouldn't have to take your money by force - you'd be happy to hand it over!)

> All public spending involves some sort of "corruption" [1] because it's always other people's money being spent, and there's always someone in charge of spending it.

In an ideal democratic system, opposing parties would seek to expose corruption in public officials and use it to their advantage, thereby dis-incentivizing the misappropriation of public funds. Obviously no democracy is perfectly ideal, but your armchair analysis hasn't exactly blown a hole in modern governing theory.

In any event, this article specifically makes the airport's woes out to be more of mismanagement than corruption, and you haven't linked to anything else in your response.

> In an ideal democratic system, opposing parties would seek to expose corruption in public officials and use it to their advantage, thereby dis-incentivizing the misappropriation of public funds.

Look, "misappropriating public funds" is exactly why someone would work hard to get into a position where he's in charge of public funds. No one does anything without some personal gain involved.

> Obviously no democracy is perfectly ideal, but your armchair analysis hasn't exactly blown a hole in modern governing theory.

On the other hand, you haven't exactly blown a hole in the fact that people act according to incentives, and people in charge of vast amounts of other people's money presents a massive incentive for both bribing them and them accepting bribes.

> more of mismanagement than corruption

How do you tell them apart, especially considering "mismanagement" would be an excellent cover for blatant bribery. "Oh this silly city official guy chose a completely shitty service provider for this project. Maybe he'll check their track record next time!"

"At the very moment Merkel and her allies are hectoring the Greeks about their profligacy, the airport’s cost, borne by taxpayers, has tripled to €5.4 billion."

So, which country does Germany want to borrow money from in order to cover the wasteful spending?

As with any country monetizing debt, they auction bonds to the highest bidder.

The 'highest bidder' being the bidder accepting the least interest.

German EUR bonds have the second lowest yields globally, with Switzerland being the leader. Also their ratings are higher than f. eg. the US bonds. So the German government does not really have to worry about borrowing money.

For now. Things change.

Japan's are lower than Germany's.

Not quite sure if it is still the case, but not so long ago Germany was borrowing money at negative interest rate.

No, you got that wrong. Either their interest rates were compared to their growth, which may yield a positive return or you're mixing things up with the European Central Bank's decision to reduce the interest rate on deposits.

Edit: mea culpa. Looks like you're right : http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/84a1ddc8-bce5-11e4-9902-00144feab7...

That was true for the federal government however I would expect the rates for states and local governments to be quite different.

Lands, at least the better ones, are also borrowing at zero/slightly negative yields: http://www.boerse-frankfurt.de/en/bonds/lfa+f+b+bayern+is+r2...

This happens not (only) because it is safer to keep piles of German bonds than piles of EUR, but because of the unorthodox ECB monetary policy. We certainly live in some very interesting times.

Well, Germany does not need to, as it has a balanced budget:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/german-government-achieves-balan...

The calculation probably includes new debt and projected repayment options, e.g. a rising growth factor, so it's not to be taken as fact.

It is about 2014, how can it include projected repayment options?

Not all national debt is foreign debt; in the US, a vast majority of the US debt has historically been held by domestic investors.

As somebody from Berlin, I'm always happy when my hometown is on HN! Makes me feel proud.

"Proud" - you read the article right?

It's all about exposure :D

All PR is good PR!

That's what i thought in the beginning of the crisis but now i'm reconsidering. (I'm Greek)

Yep, the proud feeling about Berlin's grandiose track record when it comes to corruption and incompetence in major construction projects.

Aside from the airport, I don't think Berlin is worse than any other major city. There are huge construction debacles for various reasons everywhere.

No, there's been a concentration of construction-related scandals with corruption, bribery, etc. in Berlin over the last 40 to 50 years.

I realize that higher standards of fire and other safety measures make these systems more complicated, but you would think that with all the technology we have today for planning, engineering, communication, documentation, modeling and simulation - that these types of fiascos would become rarer and rarer.

I wonder if anyone has looked at large scale projects like these over the last 100 years and determined what implications (if any) technology has had in reducing these issues.

We have a lot of powerful software for building design these days, Autodesk's Revit suite being the big one. But as in software development, better tools just ends up meaning that clients demand things faster and cheaper, rather than better.

There are some classes of problems that it definitely helps solve, like keeping the structural engineer and HVAC engineer from design conflicts where a beam and a duct go through each other. But everything needs to be done yesterday, so I'm not surprised that problems that can't be automatically identified are able to slip through.

> “The people responsible for technical oversight were saying, ‘We cannot do this within this amount of time,’ and Schwarz would answer, ‘I don’t care,’ ” he says.

Pretty much sums it up.

EDIT: There's no excuse for the exposed high voltage wiring alongside the low voltage alarm systems though, that sounds like a contractor screwed up. I don't know the German electrical code, but generally in the US anything over 60V is classified as "class 1" wiring and it goes in a conduit. Typically this is a grounded metal tube so that you can't accidentally pound a nail through it, and if anything shorts to the conduit there's a safe path to ground until overcurrent protection trips.

And if for some reason you have lower voltage "class 2" wiring running in the same conduit, those wires (and whatever else they split off to) are now considered class 1, even if they're only low current 24V signal wires or similar. They can no longer leave conduit and go anywhere else, on the off chance that it shorts to the line voltage wires it's sharing conduit with.

AFAIK as long as you're only carrying a couple of 230V lines (3x1.5qmm NYM-J and friends) you're fine to use plastic tubes or tack them onto the walls, but as soon as you're mixing in non-power wiring you're required to lay them in separate tubes.

Commercial construction or residential? Small residential buildings in the US get by with unshielded Romex wiring, but I'm pretty sure NEC doesn't allow it for commercial projects here.

I'm on the lighting side of things, so I'm tangentially familiar with electrical requirements but I don't deal with them regularly.

But as in software development, better tools just ends up meaning that clients demand things faster and cheaper, rather than better.

Exact same thing in the arts field - not all clients of course, and I can't think of a recent equivalent to a fiasco of this scale, but the general trend is that clients feel when the cost of technology goes down so should other costs.

Swear to god, I've had inquiries come in that sat dead for years and suddenly it's "Please revise. I need the updated version tomorrow."

Since email is 1000 times faster than shipping drawings back and forth, that means everything I do takes 1000th the time that it used to. Apparently.

We have also upped our standards, and require safer buildings, less chance of fire, and in the event of a fire, less deaths. This is a good thing.

From what I've heard from the official inquiry into it the fire system design was fine for the original plan. But then they pushed massive changes (original design had 2 stories of arrivals area below 2 stories of departure areas (or the other way round, not sure), they then changed that to a sandwich of arrival/departure/arrival/departure), and as the article notes didn't give time to let the architects actually do a redesign of all components. From that point on no full plan existed and people drafted up local redesigns as they became necessary, often not talking enough to other groups or missing the entire picture.

IMHO it is a great example for structural failure of the organisation running it, being set up in a way that it couldn't properly communicate or force it's leadership to deal with problems. There even are reports that banks that had been asked to provide guarantees declined to do so after reviewing the management structure, because they thought it would be unable to react to problems properly.

Construction is a much more fragmented and there is no standardised software or mature data interchange format. Unlike say, aerospace, where the client is the organisation that mostly designs and builds the thing and is a gorilla that can force all the subcontractors to use CATIA v4 or whatever. I've worked on mega construction projects and just getting all the stakeholders to agree on where the building is located in the coordinate space of the CAD system is a major pain...

One of the current running gags in Germany :) Simply make a reference to that airport and something that will never work and you are good to go.

Edit: one of my favorite articles on that topic (German) http://www.der-postillon.com/2012/08/neue-zeitform-futur-iii...

Building an airport always is. Often it takes more money and a few decades to appreciate it. D/FW airport was a nightmare when it was built but it's pretty nice today. Denver's airport had tons of issues as well.

Then again this seems on a much higher level of disaster, but should be familiar to anyone building large government software systems.

Denver still has the issue that it's a 20 mile drive from downtown out of some misguided belief that the city was just going to instantly grow out to it.

That seems to be slooowwwwwwly improving, but honestly the biggest improvement for me will be the light rail from downtown.

And all the crazy artwork. The conspiracy theorists go nuts over it.

http://mysteryoftheiniquity.com/2011/03/20/denver-internatio...

I was really intrigued by the comment about how the Queen of England bought property near the airport which is apparently proof that the United States has never been an independent country but a pawn of good ol' England.

I love conspiracy theorists that see anything marked New World, and then immediately start in on how the new world order wants to kill/chip all of us. As if the existence of an elite group of puppet masters is just an established fact, and it's just the end result that the group wants that is up for debate.

Delusions are terrifying.

I had no idea there were so many conspiracies about the airport, despite the fact that I fly out of it all the time. http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Denver_Airport_conspiracy_theor... debunks several, though all it can really say about the art is, "Huh, yeah, that's weird. So what?" which isn't particularly dispositive.

That demon horse scares the crap out of me, though.

> "That demon horse scares the crap out of me, though"

We call him "Blucifer". He killed his creator (really -- a piece of the sculpture fell on the artist's leg and severed an artery.)

http://www.slate.com/blogs/atlas_obscura/2014/03/17/the_blue...

At least they're finally building a light rail link to downtown Denver...

Honestly it's a PITA when you fly, but how often do you fly? I'd rather the airport be far from downtown than have the approach/departure routes right over populated neighborhoods. That gets really annoying really quickly.

> Honestly it's a PITA when you fly, but how often do you fly?

I was a Delta Gold Medallion flyer for years (50k+ miles), and couple of times flirted with Platinum (75k+ miles). So...basically on a flight a couple of times a week, every week. There are large numbers of us. Denver is a pain in the ass.

A couple of times a week? That doesn't really add up. I flew London to San Francisco and back just once a month - not several times a week - for a year and that was 130k miles.

Atlanta to Charlotte is about 215 miles. Atlanta to Tampa is 415. Atlanta to Denver is about 1200. Not everyone's commute is half way around the world.

Flying into Colorado Springs is a bit sketchy, there is often turbulence from the mountains when you're descending. I wouldn't be surprised if DIA being located so far east has something to do with that.

DIA was built so far away due to complaints of noise from the locals. The distance was intentional, however dumb.

When you build an airport near the city, it becomes impossible to expand. San Diego is a good example of this, a single-runway airport that's surrounded by the bay, I-5, the Marine Corps Recruit Depot, and a residential neighborhood. It's running near capacity and impossible to expand. There's simply nowhere to go.

Tijuana!

Actually, I thought it was just a proposal to link the airport with a foot bridge to the U.S., but it sounds like it is already under construction:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross_Border_Xpress http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/2015/feb/16/skybrid...

They can expand into the water, adding an extra East-West strip.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Artificial_island_air...

Ordinarily yes, but the bay might not be wide enough to fill in part of it, especially when you're trying to fit aircraft carriers through it.

That's unlikely an option due to North Island, though.

DIA was also designed to be a high volume hub airport with a huge number of fights and massive expansion capacity without running into noise issues. I believe the vast majority of passengers are changing flights at DIA and never leave the airport. You can switch most flights without changing terminals.

DIA was built far out specifically for noise and expansion -- with the understanding/hope that the city would never get particularly close to it.

The big mistake was not connecting it to the city's light rail sooner.

The road is a high-volume direct route and they are adding a rail line that goes directly to the airport. It's trivial to drive there and wouldn't be much different than if the airport was closer.

Even if Denver doesn't grow to the airport, I don't see the downside of having an airport a few miles out of town.

Not a fan of DFW's terminal setup and roads. All that space and that tangle of off-ramps and on-ramps and bridges is the best they could do?

Satellite shot: https://goo.gl/peXr25

I think one of the key problems with the overall layout was the desire to run a toll road that connects TX-183 to the northern highways through the airport, and to use this road as the two entrances.

They still could have designed the individual terminal layouts better though, as the road and garage layout of Terminal D shows.

Hmm, this multi-terminal, spread-out, "park right by the gate" design reminded me of Kansas City International airport. Turns out this was a trend in airport design in the early 1970s - KCI opened in 1972 and DFW in 1973. TWA, among others, pushed this design.

Interestingly they used a similar approach at Berlin Tegel airport, with the current terminal building opened in 1975 (which is supposed to be closed down after the airport featured here is ready).

In my opinion Denver is a shitshow and my least favorite airport to fly into. I actively avoid layovers there.

This reminds me of the immer funny David Zuelke explaining the difference between "North Germany" and "South Germany" to a group of non-Germans. It was at an after-phpDay drink a few years ago.

According to him, you can find the famous German Gründlichkeit in The South, with The North being the exact opposite. He used the Berlin airport as an example: "it was an endless failure". This was in 2011 or 2012. I wonder how strong opinionated South-Germans like him look at this today.

I think for non-Germans the difference in Gründlichkeit is probably not noticeable :)

Thank you -- I don't speak German, and have just added Gründlichkeit to the list of German words I love. It joins Fingerspitzengefühl, Fremdschämen, Weltschmertz, Sitzpinkler, and Fernweh.

I really need to learn your language.

I love aufheben and Zug, which both have roughly a billion meanings. Btw, you might like "The Awful German" by Mark Twain.

http://usa.usembassy.de/classroom/Mark%20Twain/Mark%20Twain%...

Gemütlichkeit is another word to learn.

If you come to Germany you can take part in any conversations just knowing genau and ach so.

Genau - Exactly, I understand, I agree. Used to express agreement. Germans like to agree. Use freely in any conversation at any time. Ach so - really, I see. Can be used to express agreement, astonishment, realization, understanding, questioning depending on intonation and stress. Na - hello, how are you, hey. Can be used at any time to start or avoid a conversation.

Bavaria is a dream come true for corrupt politicians and their cronies ("Spezlwirtschoft"), but at least there is not as much staggering incompetence. Still, I expect a major financial catastrophe if Munich ever gets the olympic games again.

I guess he is south German? That would also explain why he is calling Berlin "north Germany". While geographically, Berlin is more north than south, it has nothing to do with the cultural region we call north Germany.

Btw, if anyone is interested, here is a map of what people call the region they are living in: http://www.atlas-alltagssprache.de/wp-content/uploads/2012/0...

Bent Flyvbjerg studies these "megaprojects" and offers various explanations why a) they are being conducted in the first place despite the fact that b) they are usually any combination of over budget, behind schedule or below expectations in terms of their benefits.

Here is an interview with him on EconTalk about the subject: http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2015/05/bent_flyvbjerg.html

Bribe the inspectors and open up on time - then somehow patch the problem later. Everyone wins. That's what they would do in a lot of places in the world.

If a German airport, with a huge budget, has 150.000 defects of which 85k are serious, then what about airports in other countries, which don't make use of the world-famous german high quality standards ?

What about airports in countries were things are solved with a bribe, a handshake and an evil smile ?

World-famous german high quality standards were a thing fifty years ago, from my experience this is often not the case any more.

No, at least not in consumer products.

But I heard, big machines and weaponry are still export hits

>german high quality standards

are not a thing when you subcontract to imtech

I am not sure what exactly you are insinuating but I would counter that more of thid world should aspire to German standards of engineering excellence rather than Germany falling to the standards of "other countries, which don't make use of the world-famous german high quality standards ".

I was insinuating that airports in those countries might be tragic and dangerous.

All I do is remembering EDDM, Munich's airport, which was finished on the day it was supposed to - and even better, they moved the entire technology of the old airport in a single night (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flughafen_M%C3%BCnchen#Inbetri...).

I wonder what kind of austerity will be imposed on the poor Berliners for wasting so much money /s

It's a bit more complicated since the airport is a joint venture between Berlin, Brandenburg and the Federal Government which all hold roughly a third of the shares. And while it's an embarrassing waste of money the german constitution stipulates in Art. 109 Abs. 3 Satz 1 GG that starting 2016 the federal government cannot exceed 0.35% of the GDP in new debts and and starting 2020 the state governments are not allowed to take on new debts at all. So we'll have the austerity you're asking for soon enough.

Well ... enjoy the show :( Too bad that this stupidity persists so much.

False equivalence. Germany actually has the money it's wasting.

Berlin sure doesn't.

Unlike Greece, Berlin is state in Germany :)

I saw a ZDF TV docu about Berlin Airport last year. Very low-ceilinged halls and rooms means the cannot integrate gas purge and fire safety pipes and equipment. It seems so serious that an international experts in the docu suggested to rebuild parts of the airport buildings. And it seems weird that the airport will be already too small for the passenger traffic in 2017. Given that it should replace the former largest airport in the world Berlin Tempelhof and two other airports near Berlin. Several politicans have already been replaced because of scandals and multi-year delays. Shop space was already leased in ~2011 and employees already waited to begin their new work. It seems really a lot has gone wrong with BER. It would probably be cheaper to blow up the already too small buildings and build completely new ones or reactivate Tempelhof.

Also the guy who designed the smoke extractor system wasn't actually an engineer. Stern broke the story last year.[1]

My German is pretty basic, but "Geschasster BER-Planer war nur technischer Zeichner ... Doch di Mauro ist kein Ingenieur, wie angenommen wurde" amounts to "Ousted BER-Planner was only a technical draftsman ... but di Mauro is not an engineer, as was thought".

[1] [German] http://www.stern.de/wirtschaft/news/stern-exklusiv-geschasst...

Why do airports always need to be so ambitious? Usually the simple airports are best anyway.

The worst thing about BER is that it's designed to replace Tegel, which is easily the most sensibly built major airport in Germany. Space-efficient, cheap to operate, high-throughput, built very quickly with limited resources to solve a specific problem.

The problem with Tegel is, that they neither built the second terminal ring nor the subway station. And there is no room for another runway.

Tegel has the charm of an old bus station, but efficient it is. My record was Berlin Schönhauser Allee to Munich East in 3 hours and 20 minutes. It can only get worse from there. The commute to BER alone will be at least 30-40 minutes longer.

Who gives a shit about "charm". Last year I had a connection that due to delays on the incoming flight left me with 8 minutes from the time we got shuttled into the terminal to the time my outgoing flight gate closed, and it wasn't even in the same terminal. I ran over to the other terminal, went through the insecurity controls, and made the flight, with several minutes of time to spare. I know of no other airport where something like that would be possible.

They rarely get built, and everyone involved wants feathers for the nest.

More embarrassing is to build an airport with no demand and have it abandoned several years afterwards without any flights. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castellón–Costa_Azahar_Airport

I don't understand why the state funds airports. If people want airports, there is a demand, and that demand is either big enough to fund an airport and is satisfied, or it isn't because people don't want to spend that kind of money. Seems to me like something the state shouldn't be involved in.

The theory that is taken out of the drawer in such occasions is that the airport will have "a positive economical impact on the whole region, so the calculation isn't that simple". Sometimes it works, but in most cases it doesn't.

If "the calculation isn't that simple" how come the politicians think they can figure out the solution, but the collective hivemind of demand and offer by literally all participants of the economy cannot?

They probably don't think that

Why would you believe thousands of people participating in an economy would come to a better solution than a few people making plans?

About the only thing large masses of people ever seem to accomplish is throwing fuel into various metaphorical fires.

Economical advancement mean more jobs, more taxes, happier citizens. A privately controlled/financed airport doesn't care about those things, thus the mixed calculation leads to different results for state and private actors. Unfortunately, the numbers projected by the state actors are often unsound.

Airports are shared infrastructure, just like roads. As such they are serving a common purpose, and don't have to make money by themselves (rather indirectly through enabling business). That's exactly where the government should be involved in. E.g. It makes more sense to have a single airport rather than several competing ones, airports shouldn't go bancrupt and be closed, and building them might require changing laws or evicting/relocating 1000s of people. These are all in the sphere of public responsibility.

There, I turned your statement around to show you how flawed your reasoning is:

The internet is a shared infrastructure, just like roads. As such it is serving a common purpose, and doesn't have to make money by itself (rather indirectly through enabling business). That's exactly where the government should be involved in. E.g. It makes more sense to have a single provider rather than several competing ones, providers shouldn't go bancrupt and be closed, and establishing them might require changing laws or evicting/relocating 1000s of people. These are all in the sphere of public responsibility.

Absolutely there should be competition, it's the main driver behind efficiency and quality!

I think you see for yourself where your example falls apart.

Good to hear that the pirate party member Martin Delius is the head of the parliamentary committee leading the investigation. I'm wondering if we would be that informed if a member of another political party would be in charge, because one of the main programmatic points of the pirate party is transparency.

some discussion about this a few months ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9658581

and this: http://istderberschonfertig.de/

My favorite feature of BER is that they have to run ghost trains through the subway tunnel underneath the airport.

Because if nothing moves inside, no air circulates and they get a mold problem.

I didn't read the article (too long and it's late) but something caught my eye.

If you keep scrolling down, you hit the next article and the URL changes. How did they do that? Kudos

It's a HTML5/JS thing - 'pushState'. If you search for that, you'll find plenty of resources explaining it in better detail than I can.

Great, thank you!

This is what happens with many software projects following crazy customers and waterfall approaches. Clearly we never speak about 6 billion, but hey, shit happens...

Can you develop a big infrastructure project using agile methodologies?

IT doesn't seem unreasonable to plan a project in stages, focusing on the most critical components in order, and only starting on the next once the first is ready. For instance with an airport you could build one terminal at a time. Obviously this would have limitations, but it could be a better system than trying to build a gigantic airport all at once, when it's already somewhat modular (i.e. terminals)

I don't know anything about building an airport, but I guess you could try something. We tried to compare software to buildings for many years, maybe in a case like this the learnings from failing software projects can be somehow useful.

I'm not sure there's any evidence that "agile," in any of its many forms, had a high success rate for very complex projects.

For what it's worth, after the original monolithic plan for the Berlin airport needed to be changed there was no other grand plan but rather small teams each independently and locally applying changes on-the-go. Let's say as we see it didn't go too well.

Actually, Boston's infamous Big Dig project used so called "fast track construction," wherein construction on earlier segments was started before the design of later segments was finished[1]. This required frequent modifications of already-constructed segments, and it's unclear how beneficial this methodology was in the end.

[1] http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10629&page=16

Rhetorical question or not? I've often asked at Agile conferences, it seems Agile can't be applied to hardware industries.

I can't imagine the first sprints: First the infrastructure for A320 then iterate through to A380? First the police checks the iterate through to baggage claims? First the roof then the air conducts? It seems the closest to this mind set is: First Tegel Airport then upgrade Tegel again...

The root reason is certainly, we've invented Agile because software industries have hundreds of competitors with fast moving markets and we needed to lower the overhead costs. Even though the article explains how Schwartz pursued moving targets, airports have quite steady markets, competitors (train, etc) aren't massively agile, and there's a lot to gain by studying things ahead.

Yes, absolutely - you would end up adapting them to the point that they were quite unlike building agile software, but that's built into agile.

I suspect that waterfall properly applied would have worked though. This sounds like a failure to nail down the requirements early, combined with a methodology that assumed the requirements would be nailed down early.

The idea of agile is to launch early, then iterate new features once you've seen how the existing features are performing in production.

Essentially, you'd need to establish the MVP for an airport. An airport without a runway would be useless. How about an airport with baggage conveyor belts? OK, we could manually carry the bags until we've established what desks are busy, how many bags we're carrying, etc. How about shops? Well, maybe the cafés are more important, so lets build those first, and add duty-free shops later. But in other airports, the duty-free shops generate more profit, so maybe those should go first, and then you get a conflict of users needs vs organisational needs.

Most big infrastructure projects are just that - big - because the cost of breaking them down into smaller projects and iterating would be massively more expensive.

Given our various economic and political systems, is it just not possible to build something this large and complex, and have it all ready to go on the same day (whether on time or late)?

I wonder if it would be better to build and contract these things in stages, in blocks of usefulness.

I love that there's 150,000 defects, 80,000 of them considered serious.

I don't know how you even count that high, unless it's through extrapolation: "this nail was pounded incorrectly and there's 10 nails in a board and 1000 boards in this area, so 10,000 defects."

Ridiculing Spain stillborn airports.

<... and in the end Germany wins>

What people have to understand, for context, is that this project is kind of a pinnacle of failure and corruption that was born and fostered in the post-unification "reconstruction" of the formerly East German territories.

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