At US base in Germany, a probe as building costs soar

Nearly two years after it was supposed to be completed, the Pentagon's largest single-site construction project is languishing unfinished, due to shoddy workmanship, poor planning, flawed design, spiraling costs, and an ongoing fraud investigation.

The problems are so severe that neither the US Air Force – overseeing the project – nor the construction company it has partnered with can predict the final budget or completion date, according to the US Government Accountability Office (GAO).

"The project is in serious trouble, and there are no good solutions," says Gregory Kutz, the GAO's managing director of special investigations. "Sorting it out could take years, if it can be sorted out at all."

The problem is the unfinished Kaiserslautern community center, that's designed to house 844,000 square feet of shops and lodging. It is part of a $2 billion makeover of Kaiserslautern Military Community, the US military's largest overseas base and a key player in its global troop realignment plan.

As other bases across Europe close, southwest Germany's "K-town" is picking up pieces of their missions and becoming a central gateway for American troops abroad and a logistical hub for Middle East operations.

The rapid pace of the base realignment has pushed many projects onto fast-track schedules. In the case of the Kaiserslautern Military Community Center, or KMCC, the original goal was to complete the $150-million project by December 2005, when a nearby base closed. KMCC's lodging was supposed to replace lost quarters for troops en route to places like Iraq and Afghanistan.

The tight timeline meant construction began before design plans were finished and no general contractor was hired. Instead, LBB-Kaiserslautern, the German state company responsible for construction, opted for a "trade lots" approach, which meant coordinating the work of more than 30 construction companies and their subcontractors.

The Air Force also rejected the help of the Army Corps of Engineers, which normally oversees military construction projects, and "did not conduct thorough project planning or architectural design reviews," according to a leaked report from Air Force auditors.

Investigators said that the result has been serious design flaws, poor coordination, and costly errors, including a new multimillion-dollar roof that will have to be ripped out and replaced because it's falling apart. Some of the building has been ruined by mold and rot.

$6.1 million in costs 'preventable'

One indicator of the hurdles the project has faced is the large number of change orders, issued when work needs to be altered or redone. So far, there have been at least 776. The Air Force, bogged down in paperwork and eager to keep the project going, authorized – and in many cases paid – the orders without reviewing them, making it possible for corruption to go unnoticed.

German police and Air Force investigators have launched a probe into 427 change orders worth $13.7 million, for which the invoices are missing and may have never existed. So far, no one has been charged in the case, and both the Air Force and LBB-Kaiserslautern have denied breaking any laws.

Of the change orders that are available, auditors found that at least 173 of them, worth $6.1 million, "resulted from the inadequate project planning and construction design and, thus, were preventable."

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