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Project Management Gone Bad: The Berlin Airport

Project
Posted on November 4, 2018 by tobiasp

West Germany had its’ major air hub in Frankfurt, back then conveniently located in the center of the country. But
after reunification in 1989, Germany’s geography had changed, and the capital was moved to the pre-war capital city
Berlin. Successively, many government offices and major corporations followed. Berlin had plenty of buildings and
space for new construction, but one thing was missing: a major capital city airport. In 1989 Berlin had three relatively
small airports that were becoming increasingly congested in the aftermath of reunification: Tegel, Schoenefeld and
Tempelhof (closed 2008). Discussions began to replace them with a new large commercial airport to serve Berlin. A
holding company with the mission to realize the new airport project was founded, and in 1996 the decision was
taken to build the new airport in close proximity to the existing Schoenefeld airport, so that it could use existing
infrastructure (Schoenefeld airport runways, roads and railway lines). Construction began in 2006 and the airport
opening was scheduled for October 2011. But that didn’t happen. In fact, now, seven years later, the airport is still
not open.

What went wrong?

Or maybe we should ask: what did not go wrong? The list of issues that led to numerous postponements of the
airport opening is almost endless and includes (partially excerpts from the sources cited below):

The fire alarm and smoke exhaust system was improperly planned and constructed, built to exhaust smoke
underneath the floor (against the laws of physics: hot air rises)
In response, the airport planned to employ hundreds of nightclub bouncers to sound alarms and open doors to
exhaust smoke manually
90,000 m of cables were incorrectly installed
4,000 doors were incorrectly numbered
Several escalators were too short
There were not enough check-in desks
The floors in the car park, even without cars, began to sag because they didn’t contain enough steel girders
750 display screens that were switched on years ago already need replacement
Thousands of light bulbs run non-stop since officials can’t work out how to turn them off
Hundreds of freshly planted trees had to be chopped down because they were the wrong type
Every day, an empty train goes to the unfinished airport to stop the tracks from getting rusty and prevent mold
in tunnels
Willy Brandt’s (a former chancellor) family have requested his name be removed from the airport due to not be
associated with the ongoing embarrassment
Flight paths and sound protection zones were incorrectly calculated
The emergency line to the fire department was faulty
The airport’s roof was twice the authorized weight

Until now, around $7 billion has likely already been spent on the airport. There are rumors that the opening may not
be before 2021 or even later, if ever. A Lufthansa board member was recently quoted as saying: “My prognosis: the
thing will be torn down and built anew”.

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11/6/2020 Project Management Gone Bad: The Berlin Airport Project | Project Management in Action

From a project management perspective, the main issue that has contributed to this ongoing disaster was the
absence of a central project management to oversee the entire project as a whole. Portions of the project were given
to many individual contractors, and there was minimal coordination between them. Two different federal German
states and the Federal government formed the public partnership that oversaw the project, and politicians with
minimal project management knowledge were on the supervisory board. The lack of project management knowledge
or technical expertise was complemented by a lack of incentives to take on issues, since the politicians could expect
to have already moved on before the problems became public.

Here are some links in case you want to read up more:

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Brandenburg_Airport
2. https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/berlin-brandenburg-airport-debacle/index.html
3. https://onemileatatime.com/berlin-brandenburg-airport/
4. https://www.irishtimes.com/business/transport-and-tourism/top-lufthansa-boss-says-new-berlin-airport-will-
probably-never-open-1.3432911

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4 THOUGHTS ON “PROJECT MANAGEMENT GONE BAD: THE BERLIN AIRPORT PROJECT”

rswalker
on November 5, 2018 at 1:23 pm said:

This is fascinating and terrifying. One would think that some of these issues would be self-evident,
particularly the height of the escalators? Or the car park being poorly constructed, that seems incredibly
difficult to justify; is it not just one company responsible for that part of the build? Some of the other pieces of
the project can be understood by different companies not talking to each other, but this just seems like a
problem of one company not building correctly, which is less a problem of program management and more a
problem of faulty construction. On the bright side, at least they do not really need to worry about the faulty
line to the fire department; surely once every door is opened by staff and creating a cross-breeze, the
gravity-defying smoke will alert them to a problem.

Vennela Ancha
on November 5, 2018 at 6:09 pm said:

That list of issues definitely looks like there were more than project managment issues going on, though
having a centralized, qualified project management team would have definitely helped with cost and
timelines.

Issues such as the roof weighing twice more than they should or not being able to turn the lights off (cant find
the light switch??) feels more like technical issues. Which makes me think they did not get the right
resources allocated to the project via the various contractors the sub-projects were contracted to.

Samantha Casey
on November 15, 2018 at 9:50 am said:

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This article is really fascinating. I don’t think I’ve heard of a project being managed so poorly for such a
longer period of time. This is a great example of how projects can be seriously effected by poor management
decisions. I can’t wait to see how the airport actually turns out at completion.

Lashawnda Rufino
on November 24, 2018 at 1:59 pm said:

Tobias
Since you are from Germany, I can see why you did a blog on the Berlin Airport project. It was astonishing to
see a project of this size and visibility fail, especially in Germany. When I think of Germany, they are well
known for its effectiveness, efficiency, and planning capabilities. However, when a project is known as the #1
Project Failure, I had to read a few more articles to see why and here is what I found:
• Project Rationale – Wrong Purpose and Wrong Priorities
• Project Stakeholders – Too Many and With Different Interests
• Communication – Important to Report the Real Status
• Berlin Airport Scope – Several and Major Changes
Over the semester we reviewed the important of all the items listed above. However, I never could imagine
how costly it could be. The value destruction of the Berlin Airport project are hard to estimate, but according
to some experts, they must be close to 7 billion euro.

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