BER Airport
A Case Study in Failed Project Management
BER Memorial
Cosmopolitanism, international understanding, and the breaking down of borders: these were the values the new Berlin Brandenburg “Willy Brandt” Airport (BER) was meant to embody. Instead, today it stands for a lack of understanding and boundless mismanagement. It has become a monument to failed project management.
The construction was originally scheduled to take five years. However, by the time it opened in 2020, 14 years had passed. Moreover, the costs skyrocketed. Instead of the planned 2 billion euros, the new airport ended up costing more than 7 billion euros.
From today’s perspective, this was foreseeable. Right from the start, compromises were made regarding professional planning structures. Instead of relying on experienced, independent project managers, the decision was made to use a publicly run operating company that had virtually no experience with comparable large-scale projects. Because there was no central management unit, planning, construction, and oversight were inadequately coordinated—for years on end. Subcontractors sometimes worked without uniform technical standards, project managers came and went, interface issues were neglected, responsibilities were diluted, and planning changes were decided on the fly.
If you don't know which harbor you want to sail to, no harbor is the right one for you.
Project Failure
Furthermore, risk management was inadequate. Early-warning systems were inefficient or nonexistent, a problem that was particularly evident in the fire protection system. Instead of systematically analyzing and resolving problems as they arose, the team improvised partial solutions, which led to a chain reaction of readjustments, re-coordination, and ultimately years of delays. Quality management also failed. Testing processes were uncoordinated, and many errors were not identified until late in the project. A holistic controlling system that would have linked construction progress, costs, and quality was nowhere to be found.
The recipe for successful, robust project management—clear role allocation and stable leadership—was neglected at BER. Its failures in planning, coordination, and communication continue to have repercussions to this day. They demonstrate what happens when project management is relegated to a secondary concern.
