The Berlaymonster’s back!

2004
The new Berlaymont has an energy efficient facade that reacts to weather conditions and is reminiscent of the time when the building was covered in sheeting – like one of Christo's wrapped buildings – while asbestos was being removed

After 13 years and one of the longest, most expensive and most tortuous refurbishments in history, the European commission is finally moving back into its distinctive X-shaped Berlaymont headquarters in Brussels. The refurbishment has taken four years longer than expected and has cost £509m, nearly three times more than the original budget. Figures like this immediately bring to mind another government-procured building, the Scottish parliament. The difference is that, for a variety of reasons, the Berlaymont refurbishment has cost about £78m more than the Holyrood new build.

Steven Beckers, the project architect, says it was never meant to cost anything like as much or take so long. “As the architect I was given an original reconstruction budget of 8.5bn Belgian francs [£148.6m],” he says. Problems surfaced as soon as concerns about the level of asbestos in the building forced the commission to leave in 1991. The asbestos cost a fortune to remove and took twice as long as anticipated.

But that is only part of the story. This epic refurbishment was also the victim of some of the worst aspects of the construction industry. Poor management led to legal action at almost every stage. This caused delays, which in turn sparked yet more legal action and so on. While the main parties were battling it out in the courts, the cost of alternative accommodation for the European Commission was running at £13.3m a year. Now, as the politicians and eurocrats settle into their smartly refurbished offices, many in Brussels are left wondering whether it was all worth it.

Inside the Berlaymont

A tour around the Berlaymont reveals an interior that is quietly smart and efficient. Natural materials proliferate, polished York stone floors contrast nicely with timber-clad walls and quietly sophisticated primrose-yellow polished plaster. Large, airy meeting rooms have carpet and leather chairs. Flat screens flush with the top of the meeting room tables rise up at the click of a button and discreetly hint at the technology hidden in the building. Officially the commission has moved back into the Berlaymont but it is eerily quiet for a building that houses 2250 staff. Workmen wander around sorting out snagging problems – for example they have just rehung the heavy doors to the office of the president of the commission because they were drooping and scraping the immaculate wooden floor. The room is empty apart from a single chair, suggesting that the president, José Manuel Barroso, is one who is still to move in.

The overall impression is of a building that is quiet and discreet rather than flashy and ostentatious, but that is likely to further infuriate the Eurosceptics. Where, they will want to know, has all the money gone? Yet such critics should pause for a moment before launching an attack on bungling eurocrats who fritter away public money. The European commission was merely the building’s tenant. Any responsibility for its refurbishment lies with the owner, which is the Belgian government. It was the Belgians who built the Berlaymont for the commission in 1967, so it had been the Belgian taxpayer who has had to foot the bill for the additional costs of housing the commission and paying for the building to be refurbished ready for its return.

The start of the problems

Nobody could see how much asbestos there was or exactly where it was in the building

Steven Beckers, project architect

With the benefit of hindsight, the Belgians might have wished they had knocked the building down and started from scratch. However that option was discounted early on because nearly half of the total area of the building is below ground and is intertwined with a series of tube, rail, road and pedestrian tunnels. The structure of the Berlaymont doubles up as the structure of these tunnels, so demolition would have severely affected these structures as well. “It would have been possible but extremely expensive,” says Beckers. “And you still would have had to go through the same process of asbestos removal because you cannot just allow asbestos to blow all over a city.”

Instead, the decision was taken to remove the asbestos then refurbish the building. The extent of the asbestos problem only became apparent after work started – some four years after the commission left the building. “The Berlaymont was one of the world’s largest asbestos-removal projects. Nobody could see how much asbestos there was or exactly where it was in the building,” says Beckers. “While the Berlaymont was being built, asbestos was being sprayed on the structure as fire protection while other people were doing other jobs like mixing concrete. Because the asbestos was flying around everywhere it was in the screeds, behind the tiles in the toilets and staircases – everywhere.” Meanwhile Beckers and colleague Pierre Lallemand had to design the refurbishment using original engineering drawings because they weren’t allowed access while the asbestos was being removed. “We hoped everything had been built according to those plans,” he says. “We discovered after a few months that there were many differences but none that were huge and nothing we could not cope with.”

Unforeseen problems with the asbestos removal added almost two years to the schedule. The work was originally due for completion by 1997; in the event they were not certified as finished until 1999 at a final cost of £87.8m. Beckers says the asbestos cost three times as much to remove as the original estimate, but adds that this was understandable. “It was difficult to blame people for this because of its complexity and the fact it hadn’t been done before,” he says. Indeed he says the original target completion date of 1 January 2000 was always unrealistic. “We said at the time we didn’t think it was possible because of the sheer amount of work to be done. The fact there was a two-year delay on the asbestos removal helped us do the necessary tests on the facade, look at a range of materials and do the job properly. The other delays should not have occurred. It should have been finished in about 2002.”

Legal battles

The subsequent delays that Beckers refers to centred on battles between the company specially set up by the Belgian government to design and project manage the refurbishment and the contractor. The company that the government set up went by the wildly optimistic name of Berlaymont 2000 and it employed the project’s architects, engineers and project managers. The contract to refurbish the building was won by a joint venture between French contractor Bouygues and German contractor Strabag, which formed a company called EuropConstruct. This was when things turned nasty.

Alain Destexhe, a senator in the Belgian parliament, has followed the saga of the refurbishment closely. He says the creation of Berlaymont 2000 was the root cause of all the problems. “The whole thing was mismanaged; the structure was all wrong. The classical rules of construction normally separate the functions of architect, contractor and client. Here the structure was not clear, as Berlaymont 2000 was the client and the architect. If EuropConstruct had a disagreement with Berlaymont 2000 they couldn’t rely on an independent architect to resolve it.”

The other source of conflict was the degree of control Berlaymont 2000 had over EuropConstruct. “Berlaymont 2000 put the contractor in a position where the contractor had to fight to find solutions,” explains Beckers. “EuropConstruct was forced to accept all the suppliers and subcontractors chosen by Berlaymont 2000. For me, that was not a very healthy situation.

All the time EuropConstruct were suing Berlaymont 2000 and Berlaymont 2000 were suing EuropConstruct. Some of the actions are still going on

Alain Destexhe

It was not very clear who would choose and why they would choose some companies. It was often for the cheapest price, which is not always a good idea and the contractor knows that.” The inevitable result was continual legal battles. “All the time EuropConstruct was suing Berlaymont 2000 and Berlaymont 2000 was suing EuropConstruct,” says Destexhe. “Some actions are still going on.”

A good example of this is the heating and ventilation system, one of the main sources of delay. An initial tendering process failed to find a contractor that would take on the heating, ventilation and air-conditioning contract for the budget allocated by Berlaymont 2000. The job was eventually won by four small companies that formed a joint venture called 4D. This enabled them to pass the rules stipulating the minimum company size to do the work. “When you put four small companies together it doesn’t mean any of them are capable of running the whole thing,” explains Beckers. “I don’t know whether they were competent or not, but they just couldn’t cope. This created a lot of huge delays and fights and the site stopped a few times.”

Eventually 4D got thrown off the job – with £4.1m in compensation. But that isn’t the end of the story – EuropConstruct, 4D and Berlaymont are all still suing each other for what they believe is owed to them, including loss of profit and losses caused by the delays. “Certainly lawyers have made a lot of money out of this,” says Destexhe.

These problems have had a detrimental effect on the rest of the project. “Many companies had given a price and even started production of all the goods from chilled ceilings to raised floors to facade elements, and they were told they would have to wait a few more months, if not years, before they could fit them on the building,” says Beckers. “Because of this there were a lot of claims for delays. Most of these have been paid, I believe, and they greatly increased the cost of the building.”

Interestingly, Beckers says the actual construction costs were close to the original budget. The extra expense comes from the legal battles and the cost of alternative accommodation for the Commission, as well as smaller costs such as penalty clauses for late delivery of the building.

The winner out of all this is the European commission, which negotiated a pretty good deal – in 2002 it agreed to pay the Belgians £387.4m to buy the completed building. Destexhe is sanguine about the situation: “We could say the real estate market has saved the situation as now the building is worth as much as all the costs of the refurbishment,” he says. “The European commission has got a building for less than it is worth on the real estate market and at the end of the day it’s not so much for the Belgian government.”