Berlin Airport Case

Mistakes Were Made

Project Rationale
 Wrong Purpose and Wrong Priorities
• The initial rationale of the Berlin Brandenburg Airport project, as set by
the local government, was to serve as a backup and help fix the capacity
problems of the other two airports in the city, Berlin-Tegel and Berlin-
Schonefeld
• The real purpose of the Berlin Brandenburg Airport should have been to
enable air traffic to meet the increased demand of visitors to Berlin
Project Stakeholders
 Too Many Stakeholders With Different
Interests
• The state of Brandenburg, the German federal government, the city major, the
airlines, the passengers, the workers, the Berlin citizens, the two other Berlin airports
were all stakeholders
• The more stakeholders, the more complex the project and the more effort required in
communication and change management matters
• In most important projects, there are often one or a few stakeholders that will be
happy if the project fails
• This could be assumed that some of the key stakeholders at Berlin’s Tegel and
Schonefeld airports didn’t mind the huge delays
Communication Issue
 Important to Report the Real Status
• Communication is the most important task when the project is being executed
• Communication means sharing the right information and the correct status of the project
• The city’s mayor, Klaus Wowereit, who acted as project sponsor and chairman of the
supervisory board, has been accused of pretending that there were no problems during the
construction of the airport, even as the situation grew worse and worse
• The lack of acknowledgement of the critical situation gave the impression that there was
no need to act
• In 2013, Mr. Wowereit was removed from his post. True project leaders are not afraid of
communicating and addressing the bad news straight ahead.
Berlin Airport Scope
 Amateurs at work
• The main cause of the BER disaster in the fact that inspectors and those
responsible all collectively failed:
• Alfredo di Mauro, chief planner for BER's fire protection system, is not a qualified
engineer
• Technical chief Horst Amann, hired in August 2012 as project savior, was apparently
not the right choice after all
• His colleagues considered him completely out of his depth, and he too lost his job
• His successor, chief planner Regina Töpfer, was let go in February 2014
 Several and Major Changes

• The more the scope (i.e., design, requirements, functionality, features, characteristics)
changes, the more challenging it is to deliver the project successfully and according to the
initial plan
• One of the key stakeholders, Mr. Schwarz (general manager of the airport management
company), seizing on increasing forecasts for air traffic, asked the architect to add north and
south “piers” to the main terminal, turning it from a rectangle into a “U” and dramatically
enlarging the floor space
• At a later stage, Mr. Schwarz, with the vision of making the airport a Dubai-like luxury mall,
asked to insert into the original plan a second level jammed with shops, boutiques, and food
courts
Quality of Operations
Insufficient Tests To Ensure High Standards

• Quality checks are planned throughout a project to test and ensure that the final outcome will meet
the expectations
• The Berlin Airport project encountered significant quality issues, which is surprising in a country so
focused on excellence and high-quality standards
• Reports indicate that 66,500 defects were found, 34,000 are described as “significant” and 5,845 as
“critical”
• Critical defects included a non-functional fire protection, an alarm system that was not built in
accordance with appropriate building codes, wrongly placed smoke extractors, conducts without
isolation, and walls built to the wrong fire rating
• Significant reconstructions have been planned to remedy the disastrous situation.
 Faulty fire protection
• The biggest obstacle to BER's opening is the faulty fire protection system,
a problem that has been known about since May 2012:
• The ventilation system still does not work, and its flaw is fairly basic: Unlike in
other major projects, the architects had planned to funnel smoke - which usually
rises - underneath the airport's halls.
• This piece of technical insanity now has to be completely redesigned and rebuilt
• Companies Bosch and Siemens are working on this.
 Bad planning
• Other major problems and mistakes:
• The cable shafts are dangerously over-burdened, and there aren't enough check-in counters and
luggage retrieval systems
• The cooling units are too weak, creating the threat of overheating and emergency cut-offs to
the entire IT system, which would leave Berlin's new airport without computers
• Flight paths and sound protections zones were incorrectly calculated
• BER airport has been planned for a capacity of 27 million passengers a year, but
experts say that won't be enough in the long run - in other words, as soon as the
airport opens it will have to be extended.
 Cost explosion
• Before construction began in 2006, the costs were set at 2.5 billion euros
• Currently total cost is increase for around 8 billion euros
• Martin Delius, member of the Pirate Party and chairman of the Berlin's
parliament's BER investigation committee, doesn’t know what the final
cost of the airport will be
• At the moment up to 4.7 billion euros, but without the parking facilities
and the transport connections
Other Problems
Looming
 Corruption suspicions
• BER chief Hartmut Mehdorn filed the lawsuit himself in November 2012,
when he was Air Berlin's CEO
• Jochen Grossman, airport's former technical director is facing corruption
charges:
• Accused of having accepted around half a million euros ($680,000) in bribes
• Being investigated for price fixing
 Financial Issues
• EU Commission is now investigating whether subsidies of 30 million
euros will have to be paid back
• Air Berlin is already demanding 48 million euros in damages caused by
the multiple postponements
 What Must be done from now
• Quit throwing good money after bad and stop construction immediately
• Berlin can keep using its ragamuffin Tegel and Schönefeld airports until a fitting and
comprehensive solution is created from scratch
• A prerequisite for success would be taking the planning out of the politician's hands and
giving it to professionals who would be above the squabbling local and federal governments
• Burdensome tendering processes need to be made easier - The lowest bidder should not
automatically get the job, because this often leads to substandard work, the contractor's
insolvency or a renegotiation of terms
• Burning money on prestige projects is always unacceptable