Sustained gross incompetence is usually a mask for corruption. Without the corruption, normal corrective mechanisms that minimize products of incompetence elsewhere are allowed to operate.

Sustained gross incompetence is the norm when it comes to megaprojects like Berlin Airport. Late and very over budget is the norm for projects originally budgeted to cost over $1 billion. You don’t need bribes or backhanders.

I think this amount of money should imply certain existential risk: if you have that power then you are inherently liable.

It’s like Putin - you could call him a democratic asshole, but you would never call him incompetent in politics - because if he was, he wouldn’t be alive by now.

>you could call him a democratic asshole

Is this an idiom wherewith I'm unfamiliar?

That’s not even incompetence. Dit is Berlin!

I would not blame incompetence. Same things happen in SW projects all the time. It was wrong planning and organization.

The client was constantly allowed to adjust plans.

I've worked as architect on similar sized projects. You can't allow clients and esp. committees to change direction at all. This a breach of contract. With hospitals, universities, concert halls and airports you need to be strict to the local government, which is the client in such cases. They are no experts, they change every 4 years, they exhibit irrational behavior sitting in a committee.