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Can you develop a big infrastructure project using agile methodologies?
I don't know anything about building an airport, but I guess you could try something. We tried to compare software to buildings for many years, maybe in a case like this the learnings from failing software projects can be somehow useful.
But is it only BER? As mentioned int the article - what about Stuttgart 21 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuttgart_21 ) etc.? It is possible that these sites exist as new financial "loopholes", transferring tax-money from the government to private contractors without much oversight.
The complexity of that project is extremely high. My cousin is a civil engineer in Stuttgart, and he showed me a cross-sectional diagram of the affected area and the number of considerations seemed intractably high to me. But more generally, these kinds of megaprojects go over budget in nearly every part of the world -- especially when tunneling is involved. Here in the United States, two examples are Boston's "Big D…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niagara_Tunnel_Project
But now they get to drain the great lakes faster for profit.
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I don't know anything about building an airport, but I guess you could try something. We tried to compare software to buildings for many years, maybe in a case like this the learnings from failing software projects can be somehow useful.
I'm not sure there's any evidence that "agile," in any of its many forms, had a high success rate for very complex projects.
"At the very moment Merkel and her allies are hectoring the Greeks about their profligacy, the airport’s cost, borne by taxpayers, has tripled to €5.4 billion." So, which country does Germany want to borrow money from in order to cover the wasteful spending?
Well, Germany does not need to, as it has a balanced budget: http://www.wsj.com/articles/german-government-achieves-balan...
According to him, you can find the famous German Gründlichkeit in The South, with The North being the exact opposite. He used the Berlin airport as an example: "it was an endless failure". This was in 2011 or 2012. I wonder how strong opinionated South-Germans like him look at this today.
I think for non-Germans the difference in Gründlichkeit is probably not noticeable :)
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The theory that is taken out of the drawer in such occasions is that the airport will have "a positive economical impact on the whole region, so the calculation isn't that simple". Sometimes it works, but in most cases it doesn't.
If "the calculation isn't that simple" how come the politicians think they can figure out the solution, but the collective hivemind of demand and offer by literally all participants of the economy cannot?
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From the third paragraph: "Smoke evacuation canals designed to suck out smoke and replace it with fresh air failed to do either. In an actual fire, the inspectors determined, the main smoke vent might well implode." Assuming the inspectors were correct, the original design, at least as implemented, didn't work. While the "in accordance with the laws of physics" may be overly catty, a bit of searching around suggests…
AFAIK the smoke was pulled in at the ceiling of the floors. And then sent downwards and vented out somewhere on the side instead of on top of the building. The original design was never tested, because the building as originally designed never existed. Each addition ordered up by Schwarz required shifting passenger flows through the terminal. That meant rebuilding walls, exits, emergency lights, ventilation systems,…