Refurbishment of the house for further education: Great anger about explosion in costs

Created: 06/24/2022, 09:45 am

By: Harald Hettich

The house for further education is open to the public again.

So far, however, the result of the renovation has not been very satisfactory.

© Harald Hettich

The increase in costs for the renovation of the house for further education (HfW) caused displeasure in the Neubiberg municipal council.

No wonder, because what project manager Erwin Kuhn and architect Georg Ecker presented was further bad news.

Neubiberg

- On the history of millions: After a long argument about the pros and cons of renovation and new construction, the budget for 2018 was still fixed at around 5.07 million euros.

But as early as 2020, the cost package had to be corrected significantly upwards and tied at almost six million euros.

Now Kuhn presented even higher prices in the municipal council.

The construct is currently leveling off at a good 6.615 million euros.

litigation ongoing

However, the end of the road has probably not yet been reached: In the context of the dry construction work, cost increases are now "the subject of dispute".

Together with the electrical engineering division, further additional costs of up to 200,000 euros could be incurred according to the municipality and project management.

The vocabulary of the "grave of millions" was already doing the rounds in the Unterbiberg elementary school.

The municipal council met here provisionally.

technique is not correct

While those responsible for the project, Kuhn and Eckert, attributed the reasons to a list of the horrors of necessary rectification of defects, delays in construction as a result of Corona and Brexit or additional costs due to a difficult market situation as well as additional services desired by the municipality, there were doubts in the municipal council.

Norbert Strama (FW.N@U) cited a partially failed technical development, such as the automatic sliding doors that had to be reworked later.

CSU local council has “stomach ache”

Hartmut Lilge (CSU), in turn, prepared the cost increase by a total of 1.5 million euros "great stomach ache".

Greens parliamentary group spokeswoman Lucia Kott looked at "horrible numbers".

Like her parliamentary colleague and second mayor Kilian Körner, she emphasized that this should not be repeated.

"The most important question is," says Körner: "What can we learn from this story?" Such a cost explosion must be avoided at all costs for the upcoming large-scale projects such as the already significantly more expensive renovation and expansion of the town hall complex or the new construction of the senior citizens' center.

Körner, Kott and CSU man Bernhard Rott agreed: "More control of the actors involved" from the beginning was required.

Kuhn partially agreed with the councillors.

He was simply only hired in project phase three and was therefore too late for important control issues.

"Right, the project control has to start right from the start," Elisabeth Gerner (SPD) agreed with the construction specialist.

Information flowed regularly

Michael Weigle (FDP) did not feel well informed.

Weigle did not want to accept the objection on the part of the administration, according to which the municipal council had been regularly informed by quarterly reports throughout the entire implementation period.

"Here only Corona and Brexit are to blame for everything." It couldn't be that.

But those responsible persisted.

An overall difficult market situation with a pandemic and war-related shortage of materials is also decisive for the cost explosion.

"What if we don't agree to the supplementary package?" Lucia Kott asked the group courageously against the background of the estimated expenditure for the 2022 budget of 200,000 euros alone.

"Then it will be even more expensive due to delays and possible legal disputes," said Council President Thomas Pardeller (CSU).

The service was finally provided, albeit late and significantly more expensive than planned.

"It was certainly not our flagship project," admitted the Christsoziale.

Then everyone agreed.