In this article, we’ll discuss the 4 lessons from the Berlin Brandenburg Airport Project. Projects exist everywhere in our lives, including development projects, personal projects, business projects, educational projects, infrastructure projects, capacity-building projects, technology projects, innovation projects, and research projects. Millions of projects have been undertaken in the past, and there will be more in the future. Basically, it is projects that got us where we are today.

One of the main objectives of the project was to be one of the busiest airports with a projected passengers of 45 million annually. The airport’s feasibility took 15 years and it took five years to build the airport. The initial opening date for the airport was planned for Oct 30, 2011. It took around 30 years for the airport after initial planning to begin operations in October 2020 after a troubled project marred by scandals and delays.

In this article, we use a simple framework to discuss what went wrong with this project and the lessons learned from the project. The key project areas discussed in this article are the project stakeholders management, project communications management, project scope management, project change management, and project quality management.

Stakeholders

The federal government of Germany, the state of Brandenburg, the city mayor, the citizens of Berlin, the workers, and two Berlin airports were the stakeholders. The more the number of stakeholders, the higher effort required in change management and communication matters. In addition, there are a few stakeholders that will be satisfied if the project does not succeed. We can assume that some stakeholders didn’t mind delays.

Communications

Communication is a crucial task when executing a project. The city’s mayor, who was the project sponsor and the chairman, was accused of pretending that no problem existed in the construction, even after the situation became worse. A lack of acknowledging the situation showed an impression that there was no need to take action. True project leaders are not afraid to address the bad news and to communicate straight ahead.

Scope Changes

The project had significant changes to its scope. Mr. Schwarz seized the increase in the forecast for air traffic and asked to add south and north piers, enlarging the space of the floor. Later, he asked to add to the plan a second level for food courts.

Quality

Quality checks test and ensure the desired outcome. Reports show that 66,500 defects were identified, 34,000 were significant and 5845 were critical. Alarm systems were not built in compliance with the building codes and smoke excavators were wrongly placed. Significant reconstruction was planned to remedy disastrous results.

The project serves as a caution tale for large projects, highlights the need for leadership, effective project management, strict control on quality, transparency of communications, and effective stakeholder engagement to prevent high cost overruns, construction issues, and delays.

The failure of the project started from frequent changes to leadership, poor planning, lack of accountability, and scope creep, emphasizing rigorous controls and a unified process to make decisions and avoid disasters in future projects.