Berlin Airport's fire safety system designed by fake engineer

The man responsible for designing the fire safety system at Berlin’s new airport - the main reason for the continuing delays to the calamitous €5 billion project - has admitted he is not a qualified engineer.

The failure of the smoke extraction system at Berlin Brandenburg Airport (BER) led to the cancellation of its opening in 2012 and it still has not been fixed, meaning no opening date can be set on the desperately needed terminal.



Now it has emerged that one of the designers of the system, Alfredo di Mauro, who was fired in May this year, is not an engineer, despite claiming this on his business cards. He is only qualified as an engineering draftsman. Di Mauro admitted on Tuesday that he had not told anyone at the airport about his lack of engineering qualifications. “No one asked about my university qualifications; that wasn’t necessary for the work we carried out,” he said.

The ex-employee said his business cards had accidentally stated he was a qualified engineer. He worked for an engineering firm which meant the initials “Dipl.-Ing” appeared on his cards. “An error has occurred,” he said. Complaints were made against di Mauro in 2002 while building an underground garage for a medical centre. Di Mauro allegedly presented himself as an architect at the time, an accusation he has denied.