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Berlin-Brandenburg Airport: chaos according to plan

2020-10-31T11:47:37.992Z


Better, bigger, even bigger: the fact that the new capital city airport became a permanent construction site was also due to the frequent changes requested by the clients. A chronicle of the jumble in graphics.


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Permanent construction site capital airport (2012): constant plan changes

Photo: Patrick Pleul / dpa

The capital airport BER has damaged Germany's image as a land of engineers, functioning medium-sized craft businesses and reliable administration in the public perception.

How did it come to this?

An honest consideration also includes looking at the history of the various change requests that the planners had to deal with over and over again during the 14-year construction phase: apart from the political tug-of-war - about the location and equipment of the airport, about its role in the competition with the other major airports in the republic - even before construction began, the dispute over whether the capacities would be sufficient to cope with the growing demand from tourists and business people.

The planners were constantly confronted with new ideas from politicians, which dealt with additional check-in halls, piers and piers.

The fact that every expansion entails a large number of additional changes to the plan was obviously ignored.

The change requests did not concern any cosmetic details - it was more about the very big in the literal sense: According to the original plans by the architect Meinhard von Gerkan from 1998, the terminal should have an area of ​​220,000 square meters.

Fourteen years later, the usable space with a new pier in the south and one in the north, with mezzanines and additional retail space, adds up to more than 340,000 square meters.

"Because changes were made, that additional buildings were made, such as these piers, the TGA [technical building equipment] - among other things - was of course also enlarged, and that always had to be adapted," describes the technical director at the time Manfred Körtgen the situation in 2016. By this, Körtgen was not least referring to the smoke extraction system, which is crucial for fire safety, the capacity of which was by far no longer sufficient for the enlarged area.

The wish of supervisory board chairman Klaus Wowereit to create passenger boarding bridges for the A380 also had a particularly serious effect.

That meant enormous additional structural rescheduling, but should also bring additional exclusive sales locations near these gates.

Several months later, when the relevant rental agreements were concluded, the A-380 entrance was suddenly to be built elsewhere - and the architects were forced to completely redraw the plans for the shops, ventilation shafts, lines for electricity and water.

In retrospect, the effort seems downright ludicrous - but even then there was great skepticism that an A380 gate would make sense.

"My statement at the time was crystal clear: You are welcome to build there, but it will not be used for the next 15 years because the A380 will not come to Berlin forever," recalled Thomas Weyer, head of technology at the time, in front of the House of Representatives' committee of inquiry .

From January 2010 onwards, further change requests were strictly prohibited.

Nevertheless, according to many participants, the management of the airport kept ordering new things: spaces, rooms, lounges or retail spaces.

Many a wish were even justified, after all, the airport's business model changed fundamentally in the course of the development phase of BER.

But there was no thought of how the new requirements would be technically implemented - and how much time and money that would cost.

The large number of plan changes were hardly coordinated in the hectic pace of the supposed final spurt.

This meant that several construction plans were in circulation at the same time and the craftsmen often carried out orders that were long out of date.

Horst Amann tried to get the consequences of this systematic chaoticization by management, politicians, but also planners and construction companies under control. After the spectacular failure of the opening in May 2012, he took over the technical management.

His inventory lists 120,000 defects, of which 4,000 are "relevant for approval".

Overall, the State Audit Office of Brandenburg found in retrospect, the BER 2012 was only 56 percent operational.

The elimination of defects turned out to be extremely complicated.

The smoke extraction system, for example, went down in BER's history as a "monster"; it had to be divided into several individual systems.

Cable ducts had to be re-dimensioned in order to be able to get the building's electrics to work and, moreover, to meet fire protection requirements.

Enormous effort was also required for the expansion of the pipe system for the sprinkler system.

Because suddenly much higher water pressure was necessary to be able to supply the most distant places.

Initially, however, the larger distribution pipes could not withstand such pressure.

Similarly, every serious deficiency triggered a chain of subsequent problems.

The current airport manager Engelbert Lütke-Daldrup had no ear for special requests under such conditions.

On the sidelines of the renovation work in 2018, he only commissioned Terminal 2 in order to be able to cushion the foreseeable capacity bottlenecks.

As it stands, at least in this case, those involved have learned their lesson.

They awarded the contract for the - "turnkey" - construction to the company Zechbau as general contractor.

It actually delivered on time.

Icon: The mirror

Source: spiegel

All business articles on 2020-10-31

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