The project was expected to be completed in June 2010 at a cost of $5.1 million. It wasn't finished until this month, 14 months late, and it was about $1 million over budget.

The Air Force project's problems, outlined by the project managers during a presentation last week at the Afcom data center conference here, were wide-ranging -- so much so that one person in the audience asked if the project was cursed.

For instance, even though the site was surveyed twice in an effort to discover all buried utility conduits, a TV cable went undetected. And during construction, a previously unknown spring was discovered, causing delays. The list goes on: Three breakers kept failing because of moisture that poor sealing couldn't keep out; the mechanical room needed more work than originally expected to support new equipment; and a worker fell off a ladder and broke both wrists.

Some of those problems could have been addressed quickly, but in many cases they weren't. That's because the Air Force used a design-bid-build contract for the project, meaning it had separate contractors for design and construction, instead of a design-build contract, where one contractor is responsible for both.