Financial fiasco in Bonn Crisis deepens at the Beethovenhalle construction site
Bonn · The GA has learned from a project participant that the roof above the large hall cannot support the ventilation system. Threatened terminations by more companies are making the renovation even more difficult.
Another new problem for the Beethovenhalle: the GA has learned from a project participant that the roof over the large hall is not stable enough to support necessary ventilation system. The cause is apparently a planning error that will drive up the costs of renovation even higher. The council groups, who want to discuss the construction crisis at a special meeting this Monday at 6pm, have not yet been informed.
“It has turned out that the ventilation system ordered is around twice as heavy as planned,” reports the informant. “The support structure cannot bear the load. It has been exceeded by more than 30 tonnes.”
The press office confirmed the major error. “A recent check of the load measurement for the roof structure over the large hall showed that the load measurements differ considerably from the design plan,” city spokesperson Monika Hörig explains. “The planning offices were repeatedly asked to explain why the load measurements from that time are so different from today. On the face of it, these are planning deficiencies in the preliminary and design planning.”
The technology is now to be placed as far as possible in the edge zones of the roof, where the loads can be borne by the reinforced concrete walls below. According to the structural engineer, the roof could also still be strengthened. Hörig said a new calculation of the support structure is now underway. The consequences of the error would first be quantifiable once the planning was finished. However, it will definitely be more expensive.
Contractors terminating
But this is by no means the biggest problem at the Beethovenhalle. More serious are the threatened terminations by further contractors because of the delay to the renovation, which the city mainly blames on the project planner Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos GmbH from Berlin. As reported, two engineering companies have already exercised their right to terminate their contracts after a halt in construction of three months.
The termination by the two engineering companies will now cause a disastrous chain reaction. This is the main reason why there is “currently a risk of interruptions in construction work in numerous contract areas,” the city administration told the council in writing. Further terminations have been notified and are feared. The city states what this means in a confidential submission available to the GA: “It can therefore not be ruled out that there will be significantly more delays to the completion date.” So even later than 2022. The city also expects the “very real” risk of a price increase of 5.5 million Euros through the threatened terminations by construction companies alone.
(Original text: Andreas Baumann. Translation: kc)
