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Zak wrote:

And there is another difference in public projects. The service providers care rats ass for the client, as the client is a) a politician whom they will never have to deal with again, and b) the taxpayer who doesn't even begin to understand what's going on. So the providers can rip off their clients big time. Which is exactly what they are doing.

We have the same thing here, time and time again. When we have public infrastructure project come in nearly on time and nearly on budget, it is the exception, not the rule.

Looks like it's 2015 now!

BER Berlin Airport Completion Probably 2015, Amann Tells ZDF 91) ☆
By Alexander Kell
Jan. 16 (Bloomberg) -- Inspections have to precede the
remaining works, Horst Amann, Berlin Brandenburg Airport’s
technical director, says in an interview with ZDF television.
• Completion in autumn 2014 would need ideal conditions: Amann
• NOTE Today: Stakeholders of BBI Berlin Airport Fire Board Spokesman Schwarz

It will most likely be 2015 (earliest ), though you will not hear any official statement on a new opening date any time soon.

They plan to use the extra time also to increase the capacity.

As mentioned, the Board spokesman Schwarz was fired today.

Zak wrote:As mentioned, the Board spokesman Schwarz was fired today.

Classic. Shoot the messenger.

ShanwickOceanic wrote:

Zak wrote:As mentioned, the Board spokesman Schwarz was fired today.

Classic. Shoot the messenger.

Not really. He was the CEO of the airport corporation.

Fair play, then

Bump. German "Bild am Sonntag" und "Der Spiegel" report that the list of faults and deficiencies that still need to be remedied carries over 20,000 items. This includes small items such as broken tiles, and slightly bigger ones, like the inoperative fire suppression system.

Sources (German):
http://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/untern ... 83876.html
http://www.bild.de/news/inland/flughafe ... .bild.html

And the hits just keep on comin'....

The good news is, the lights work.
The bad news is, they can't turn them off.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/bur ... d=18630338

The same could be said for the airport's search for a chief executive. In January, Rainer Schwarz, under whose watch the opening of the airport was delayed multiple times, was finally fired. But the search for a successor has proven difficult. Indeed, since Wilhelm Bender, former head of the airport in Frankfurt, declined the position at the beginning of February, little progress has been made.

So, how screwed it must be for people to refuse this position?

Frankly, lighting control system in place or not, you can turn the lights off just by getting into the electrical panel and turning OFF the damn circuit breaker that powers up the lights. If you really can't do this, you got more serious problems that I want to even think about.

Currently, walls and ceilings are being torn open to inspect cables, ventilation and structural details.

If the problems weren't clear enough, the opening up of walls is the final kicker. There is so serious crap going on if this is the case.

AndesSMF wrote:If you really can't do this, you got more serious problems that I want to even think about.

If the simple jobs like fitting a master switch for the lights haven't been done right, the entire electrical system probably needs to come out. That would mean knocking down more than just a few walls and ceiling panels, leaving Berlin with one very expensive climbing frame, complete with 10k ft driveway.

The 'moderate progress' line sounds like a complete rebuild is in the minds of the project's management to me.

JLAmber wrote:The 'moderate progress' line sounds like a complete rebuild is in the minds of the project's management to me.

They may still be trying to figure out what is really going on out there. My SWAG would be that there were significant changes made from design phase to construction phase, changes caused due to 'political interference', and these changes weren't well documented. Sort of like a 787 issue in construction.

It might be hardware or it might be software. Something like BER almost certainly has lighting zones controlled by contactors linked to a SCADA system of some sort. If the code isn't in the SCADA system to trip out the contactors then you can't switch the light off.

You would typically have controllers which will have a relay output controlling an amp or two connected to the primary coil of a contactor, the secondary contacts of the contactor would switch maybe 30-50A to control a section of the building. There would be an application running in the controller that would energise or deenergise the relay as appropriate. If there is no code to switch the output then the only way you can turn the coil on or off is by going in with the programming tool and forcing the coil.

On a side issue to this I was on a cement plant in the US a few years ago which lost its SCADA system (a PC based client-server system where the server and the backup server were taken out by the Blaster worm) where the only way they could control the process was to control it from the PLC programming terminal - they eventually had to go to the MCC and start turning off breakers. It is something that you have to think about very carefully.

But as Conrad says, surely you can just trip off the breakers. If the lighting zones aren't protected by breakers I don't really want to think about the ramifications and the main electrical engineer wants his arse kicking. This is basic stuff, right at the beginning of the IEC code.

helvknight wrote:But as Conrad says, surely you can just trip off the breakers. If the lighting zones aren't protected by breakers I don't really want to think about the ramifications and the main electrical engineer wants his arse kicking. This is basic stuff, right at the beginning of the IEC code.

I've had some discussions with colleagues and we can't come up with the reasons why this is even a problem, unless the wiring wasn't done in a logical enough way to be able to switch them off in a logical way. Or maybe the wiring is not marked correctly and they don't know what circuit breaker controls what.

AndesSMF wrote:Or maybe the wiring is not marked correctly and they don't know what circuit breaker controls what.

We just had an electrician pass away this weekend who was working on three of our projects. On all three...nothing was written down (that they could find) regarding the circuit panel and what led where. We're even getting phone calls about it here at the office and...sorry to say...what the heck would an architect know about panel schedules?

Fun times.

Ok,back on topic.

To explain it a little further, and I have to assume this applies to building airplanes as well, there are some very important steps when wiring.

First step is to identify the beginning and end of a wire. When you have a large bundle of wires you need to know which one is what at each end. If this is not done, then you have to sit at each each end running a probe to let you figure out which is which by a process of elimination. That this can take a while is an understatement, and of course you can have hundreds of wire runs throughout a space, now you're in deep trouble.

You also have to document WHERE those wires are going.

Indeed, since Wilhelm Bender, former head of the airport in Frankfurt, declined the position at the beginning of February, little progress has been made.

I do hope he told them to bite his shiny metal ass

A new boss for BER has been found: former Deutsche Bahn and Air Berlin CEO Harmut Mehdorn.





I thought they wanted to fix the problems, not make them worse.

Zak wrote:A new boss for BER has been found: former Deutsche Bahn and Air Berlin CEO Harmut Mehdorn.

Da wird mal wieder der Bock zum Gärtner gemacht . Un-fvcking-believable.

Can he really screw up the project even more? Why is he so bad?

Oh dear, what a silly, silly idea. Maybe they should also hire Hunold as his advisor.

I wonder if screws up worse than with the central station in Berlin and its hald roof. Architekt was von Gerkan, too?

Does Mehdorn still sit on ABs board? Conflict of interest?

Mehdorn was a in the German aviation industry from 1966-1995, climbing up the latter high at Airbus. His bad reputation comes from his time as head of the German railways from 1999-2009. He was one of the most disliked managers in the country. That is because the railways are the most unpopular company in the country and he has a personally very un-dpilomatic style. At AB he inherited the mess from Hunold. Anyway, he is 70 years old and a manager from the 20th century. I have little hope for him to succeed on this project. Bender would have been way better, but you cannot pay somebody € 4000 a day here, espeically not to leftist goverments.

So what's Mehdorn going to do? Pull a Deutsche Bahn on BER and trying to fully privatise the airport, leaving the German tax payer with a loss? Now that Mehdorn is in, the airport is really fucked, and we tax payers have to pay the bill for the incompetence of the people responsible, such as Mr Platzeck, Mr Wowereit and Mr Ramsauer and his assistant Mr Bomba. No idea if Ramsauers predecessor, Mr Tiefensee (who worked together with Mr Mehdorn on the full privatisation of Deutsche Bahn, which was never cancelled, but instead is still on hold), should also get a share of the blame as well.

Mehdorn steps down from his AB post. About time.

http://www.airliners.de/management/koep ... -aus/29201

Opening of BER will "hopefully" be in 2015, according to the transportation minister.

Meanwhile, a politician from the free democrats wants to have checked how TXL could be kept open, even after the BER opening. Would be great to see that.

http://www.morgenpost.de/flughafen-berl ... Tegel.html

Thorben wrote:Opening of BER will "hopefully" be in 2015, according to the transportation minister.

Sounds suitably vague, I wonder how many new bosses will have been and gone by then?

Thorben wrote:Meanwhile, a politician from the free democrats wants to have checked how TXL could be kept open, even after the BER opening. Would be great to see that.

I suspect the airlines will be similarly keen - faith in BER as a concept must have hit about zero by now and that's going to take a long time to regain.