There was a great documentary piece on ZDF (public German TV, Channel Two) last night (around 10:40 PM)....entitled: "Expensive and planned - cost trap state construction projects". I recommend the documentary and you can view it at the site I noted above. Unfortunately, it's all in German.
What they did was lead off with a study that had been done by the Hertie School of Governance. The topic? They demonstrated that of a 119 German state-owned large-scale projects completed since 1960....they've exceeded the anticipated cost by 73 percent.
Why the cost problems? The experts point out that most projects today are only vaguely planned into details, then they get drafted into documents to help the politicians explain this to the public and pass them via local, state or national legislatures.
Reality then seeps into the picture as the construction crews arrive, and find that things are like the original concept laid out. So the escalation starts to pick up and about half-way through a project....you've spent your allocated funding and need to go back and get more money.
In just about every single state (sixteen of them total).....you can find projects like this.....either completed, underway, or anticipated to start in the next year or two.
Projects on the private side.....like the Terminal Three situation at the Frankfurt Airport (underway)? That's different....they have architects working down to the ninth-degree and these rarely go to some massive overrun. Course, you have the Berlin Airport project (seven years delayed)....mostly because of zero project management by the city folks (remember, it's not a private airport like Frankfurt).
The sad thing here is that these projects are soaking up vast amounts of tax revenue, and no one ever gets any blame for the overrun situation. The 29-minute documentary is worth watching.
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