Berlin's new airport? Planned for 5 years, finished in 14.

Stuttgart's central station? Still under construction after 16 years.

Hamburg's concert hall, the Elbphilharmonie? Nine years instead of three.

And the costs? Sometimes 10 times higher than promised.

Or take Cologne's opera house. Built in the 1950s as a symbol of modern democracy, it was a cultural jewel. By 2012, it needed renovation. The plan sounded simple: three years of work, reopening in 2015.

Fast-forward to today: The building, which comprises the opera itself, a theater with two stages, and a children's opera with its own stage, remains a construction site.

Opera singer Emily Hindrichs recalled her optimism upon joining in 2015. "At the time, I thought, 'Okay, that's something they will figure out quickly.' I was optimistic."

Ten years later, Emily hasn't set foot in the building. Performances have been scattered across temporary venues, and frustration runs deep.

The original budget of €250 million ($297 million) has ballooned to €850 million. Add interest rates and the cost of interim venues and the bill reaches €1.5 billion.

"It makes me sick," said Hindrichs. "It feels like throwing good money after bad over and over again."

In the decade-long construction time, actor Andreas Groetzinger has been going through a range of emotions: "Hope, despair, anger —and increasingly ridicule. New dates were announced time and again. They just never turned out to be true."

The most troubling aspect for Groetzinger was that no one ever told him why the project derailed.

"Nobody knows," he said, "nobody can pinpoint what exactly went wrong. It's all a big, confusing, super-complex web of causalities."

What causes the delays in Germany?

Jürgen Marc Volm became project lead for Cologne's new opera house in 2024 when it was already nine years behind schedule. He points to the project's sheer complexity: 64,000 square meters (approximately 689,000 square feet), 2,000 rooms, 58 companies across 72 trades, and 22 planning agencies. 

"A lot of rework had to be done because permissions were not given appropriately, and defects occurred in design and in construction," Volm told DW.

Add to that a rigid tendering process that often favors the cheapest bidder. When contractors go bankrupt, work stops, new tenders are issued, and delays spiral.

"Companies went into insolvency," Volm says. "We then had to bring in new companies, and they had to get into the project while the project was running, so things continuously changed."

In essence, communication breakdowns were the root of the problem in Cologne. "We are very good at solving technical problems, but not so good with communication."

Significant delays occur in projects across the country.

"Germany has a massive problem here," said Reiner Holznagel, president of Germany's Taxpayers Federation. "Big projects are no longer built quickly, efficiently, and in line with requirements. That good old positive image of Germany is no longer true."

Holznagel points to layers of regulations, from environmental to safety, that slow everything down. 

"Construction in Germany is very, very expensive, not because of materials or wages, but because we have so many regulations. They cost enormous amounts of money, time, and effort."

Complications arise when responsibility and oversight for these regulations rest with different departments within a large administration.

Cologne Cathedral, the city's other construction eyesore

Cologne's opera isn't the city's first epic delay. The city's famous cathedral, Germany's most-visited monument, took 600 years to finish.

Construction started in 1248. When the city ran out of money, an abandoned crane atop an unfinished tower became a landmark for many centuries.

Only much later, in 1880, was the church finally finished. The completion had become a national mission when Germany was uniting its many small kingdoms and duchies into a single nation-state for the first time.

"It took them 600 years to finish," says actor Andreas Groetzinger and smirks, "I do hope we outperform that."

Construction lessons from Notre Dame

In the center of the French capital Paris, 500 kilometers (310 miles) southwest of Cologne, stands another famous cathedral: Notre Dame. It was completed much faster than its Cologne counterpart, in 1345. It may also serve as a model to overcome Germany's current problems with deadlines and budget overruns.

Notre Dame's spire and much of its roof were destroyed in a fire in 2019. Shortly after, French President Emmanuel Macron announced that the church would be rebuilt within five years. And it was — on time and on budget.

Jean-Louis Georgelin, a retired army general, oversaw the project with military rigor. "He called it the 5-year-battle," recalled Philippe Jost, who took over after Georgelin's death and led the project to completion. 

Jost argued that a sense of common purpose created the "Spirit of Notre Dame." "We work as a big family, together," he told the bosses of all the companies involved in the project.

Jost also told them he was there to help them should they run into problems. "Money spent to solve a problem fast is money well spent. It's like fighting a fire before it can spread," Jost said.

He was prepared for the worst. Almost a quarter of the reconstruction budget was provisions for price increases, unforeseen events, and scheduling risks.

Instead of finger-pointing, the French prioritized trust and communication. And they kept the team small. Jost was running an organization that never had more than 35 people and was specifically designed for this purpose.

They spent more than a year finding the right contractors. "We had to choose the best," says Jost. "The best is not always the cheapest."

The result was a €700 million rebuild, completed as promised within five years.

Infrastructure takeaways for Germany

It is high time that Germany learned from best practices elsewhere, Holznagel, the taxpayers federation president, said.

"When I look at the state of some bridges, or roads — don't get me started on the trains — the German state has a massive problem, and you can understand why people are so extremely unhappy."

Hindrichs, the Cologne opera singer, is surprised by what she feels is a lack of flexibility in Germany.

"There's always that stubborn, rigid mindset: 'We have a plan, we wrote it down, it's supposed to go this way!' But there is no plan B."

Actor Groetzinger adds that for decades, Cologne's opera and theater buildings have not been maintained properly, aggravating the problem:

"Germany has so underinvested in its infrastructure that when they finally get to it, the problems become overwhelming."

The good news? Cologne's opera is scheduled to reopen in the fall of 2026. For Hinrichs, it will be emotional.

"If I get to sing there, that's the homecoming. That's what I've been waiting for."

Edited by: Rob Mudge

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