But while the process in Germany is well defined, that also means strong, old procedures are locked in place.

However, the end results are good, Corps project managers say. Craftsmanship is excellent. Some of the methods are admirable; others puzzling. Some things turn out to be nearly impossible to translate, like building to U.S. Green Building Counsel’s LEED standards, which don’t line up very well with German standards, methods or materials (see p. 106).

Corps officials in Europe often say the most vexing problem they have is conveying any sense of urgency to the builders. Germans build their structures to last a century. Craftsmen take the long view—and they take their time. U.S project officials say they expect to wait, even if an item has to be finished in a hurry.

“I’m not sure they are as concerned about scheduling as quality,” says Neil Ravensbergen, resident engineer at Wiesbaden Army Airfield, one of the sites in which the Army is consolidating its long-scattered forces. Ravensbergen says the Corps has little leverage to speed up work under indirect contracting. Even liquidated damages are weak—1⁄10 of 1% per day, maxing out at 5% of the total project cost. “And once you don’t pay a contractor, he can walk,” he says. German firms don’t use bonding, either, although work is insured against defects.

But there is a trade-off in terms of quality, says John W. Norman, a Corps civil engineer in Wiesbaden. “The quality of construction is higher, and making sure you get a good product doesn’t seem to be as hard to do as it is in the States. Is faster really better? It’s not that easy….They have buildings that are still here after hundreds of years.”

Methods

Peter Barth, the Corps regional program manager for base construction in Grafenwöhr, says wooden or metal studs and gypsum or particleboard are not found in Germany. Walls and interior partitions, even in homes, are built with 25-cm x 11.5-cm x 6.5-cm “Reichsformat” standard masonry units instead. A machine called a minikran is used to handle blocks weighing more than 25 kg—the weight limit for manual setting under Germany’s labor laws.

Barth says that, from 1960 to 1980, when there was a building boom and a labor shortage, stone size was increased to optimize workflow. Labor councils argued for the weight restriction on manual materials handling, which was passed into code in the 1990s. The industry quickly invented technologies to cope. “Mauersteinversetzgeraete,” or “stone-wall-putting tools,” were invented and are widely used.

Another common building component is the “schwimmen estrich,” or floating screed. It is a floor system that sandwiches a vapor barrier and a block-foam core between a poured slab base and a fine-aggregate screed that is several inches thick. The screed is isolated from the walls by foam block as well. The purpose is for insulation and sound transmission control, which is one of Germany’s high-performance building criteria. Also used for sound control are precast stair units, which are similarly isolated from walls and bearing surfaces by foam and rubber gaskets.

Much To Do

There are many projects on the drawing board as the U.S. Army continues to consolidate its once strategically scattered facilities in Europe, follow through on the Base Realignment and Closure Act of 2005, as well as support U.S. diplomacy in Africa and Eastern Europe with humanitarian construction.

In Germany, one of the largest projects is a multiyear, $650-million program to revamp a Spartan, 100-year-old, 375-sq-km, live-fire training range at Grafenwöhr to incorporate a base for 16,500 soldiers and families. The project is called Efficient Basing Grafenwöhr. Barth says construction on the first of 134 contracts began in 2003, and new construction is to be completed this spring.

The project has site challenges. As a live-fire training facility that opened in 1910 and which suffered heavy and repeated bombing by the Allies in World War II, the facility’s unexploded ordnance team is part of the standing organization. The site of the new lodge had to be grubbed of 100 bomb craters that had been filled with debris. Excavators for the tank-wash facility dug up a Panzer tank and a large anti-aircraft gun. There also is a problem with seven endangered species of frogs that have acclimated to the much-churned soil left by tanks. They have come to depend on it.

One environmental impact that does not seem to be a problem, however, is the noise. Soldiers from many countries train at Grafenwöhr; the air is constantly filled with the tremendous boom of cannon and artillery, the thud of big machine guns and the rattle of small-arms fire. The human residents, 8,000 deer, dogs and neighborhood cows ignore it. Only the visitors’ curiosity is raised, which serves to remind one that it is an Army facility after all.