Air Force faults poor management in Kaiserslautern mall project

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Jürgen Esefeld trims a small tree outside the Kaiserslautern Military Community Center at Ramstein Air Base.


Air Force faults poor management in Kaiserslautern mall project
By Scott Schonauer, Stars and Stripes
European edition, Wednesday, December 12, 2007

KAISERSLAUTERN, Germany — The PowerPoint demonstration detailing the mistakes made on the Kaiserslautern Military Community Center began with a photo meant to be funny.

It showed two boats tied to a pier. The yacht was named “Change Order,” while the dinghy behind it was dubbed “Original Contract.”

Anyone who has dealt with unscrupulous contractors gets the joke.

But the picture flashed to Air Force engineers at the workshop last August helped illustrate something more serious: the big reason why Air Force officials believe Ramstein Air Base’s mall-hotel complex has gone embarrassingly wrong.

An Air Force task force found the center to be a case study on how not to do a large military construction project. Slides from the Aug. 21 presentation in San Antonio offered a critical assessment of the project — and a sobering outlook of its uncertain future.


Rest of article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=50917