
Berlin Airport Fiasco Shows Chinks in German Engineering Armor - youngerdryas
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-13/berlin-airport-fiasco-shows-chinks-in-german-engineering-armor.html
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mschuster91
It's not the engineering which is at fault here, but constant fuck-ups by the
political management. Two federal states (Berlin and Brandenburg), the German
federal government AND the European Union all messing with the project.

I remember the Munich airport, which was finished on-the-day and moved in a
single fucking night. This is what happens when politicians don't mess too
much with stuff they don't understand.

~~~
dalke
"the new site, the smoke ventilating equipment installed throughout the glass-
sheathed structure is faulty even after lessons learned from Germany’s worst
airport disaster"

That sounds like an engineering fault.

"There are deficits in the sprinkler system and a lack of fire protection on
some steel girders used for construction."

Those sound like engineering faults.

"Planners also failed to consider that authorities might balk at an
experimental nuclear reactor located under a planned flight path. ... “The
risk of a plane crash and an aviation terrorist attack and the release of
ionized radiation from the research reactor was insufficiently considered,” "

That sounds like an engineering or planning fault, and not a "fuck-up by the
political management."

In some sense though, most things everything can be traced back to a
people/political problem. The Denver airport baggage handler project some 10+
years ago was due to taking on a very complex task with not enough time, the
Hubble Space Telescope problem was due to a decision to reduce funding for
testing, and so on. Shortage of building materials could be interpreted as bad
planning to acquire the materials and bad management in not allocating enough
funds for the task. Problems with the building ground (eg, an unexpected
underground stream) could also be seen as bad planning.

So if you want to go that route, then you are welcome. Just be aware that that
view means that essentially no project fails due to engineering being at
fault.

~~~
mschuster91
Smoke ventilation/sprinkler systems: the requirements for the airport changed
multiple times due to politicians changing stuff around.

Nuclear reactor: environmentalists and local interest groups forced changed
flight routes, there was no way to predict this...

Certainly, there were engineering problems. But these happen at every project,
it's management job to make sure there's timing buffers.

~~~
dalke
Hence your statement "It's not the engineering which is at fault here" is a
truism, and didn't need to be said. _Everything_ falls on management, so with
any problematic large-scale build site you can always say there "constant
fuck-ups by the political management."

Here's what the court said, regarding the reactor:

Der 11. Senat ist der Auffassung, dass die streitgegenständliche Festsetzung
der Flugroute rechtswidrig ist und die Kläger in ihren abwägungserheblichen
Belangen (Gesundheit, Planungshoheit) verletzt. Der Festlegung des
angegriffenen Flugverfahrens liegt ein Ermittlungsdefizit zugrunde. Das Risiko
eines Flugunfalls und eines terroristischen Anschlags auf den Luftverkehr und
der dadurch ausgelösten Freisetzung ionisierender Strahlung des
Forschungsreaktors wurde nicht hinreichend in den Blick genommen. Eine solche
fallspezifische Risikoermittlung wäre notwendige Grundlage einer Abwägung
gewesen. Die Risikoermittlung war auch deshalb geboten, weil die
Risikobetrachtungen für den Reaktor in Bezug auf den Flugverkehr veraltet
waren und die Beklagte darauf durch die Atomaufsichtsbehörde hingewiesen
wurde.

Reading the decision (through Google Translate), the planners used outdated
information about the crash probabilities, which did not take into account
that the flight path would go over a nuclear reactor which was not shielded
against airplane crashes. The court took into account information from the
Atomaufsichtsbehörde that it was not possible to structurally modify the
reactor. There are other factors as well, but using the wrong information _is_
predictable.

