Engineer Memoirs
Q:
She seemed very frustrated in negotiating with the Corps of Engineers. I've seen some
of the notes that went back and forth. It seemed to cause her a lot of trouble.
A:
She was, because she approached the thing from the legal point of view. We
approached the thing from the practical, construction management point of view.
There's a difference. Any good lawyer believes that the truth is what you can convince
12 people to believe. It doesn't matter what the physical world is. If you can get a jury
to believe in something, that's true. In terms of an agreement, it doesn't matter how
impractical the agreement is, if the two parties agree to it, that becomes the control.
The construction manager comes at this problem differently. He tries to think about
really two things. One, what's practical to do in terms of time and money and effort.
And the other is unity of supervision.
Lawyers don't mind at all writing an agreement to which six people have to agree
before anything can be done. That's just more business for them, if people can't agree.
But the practical construction manager, or manager of any large program, is very
anxious to have one person in charge and have that person's word control, because he
knows that then you can hold that person responsible for the results, and that that
person will be motivated to get on with it.
You can look and see some of this litigation. They don't, in most cases, care whether
the thing is ever built or not. We need both types in this world. But Toni brought to this
problem a different view from the practical people. If her memos reflect some
frustration, it's because people like me, who had been doing this for 30 years, weren't
to be turned away by her approach. The United States had committed itself to build
these fields in three years. People like me knew what it would take to get that done.
Toni had a different focus.
Q:
What was General Morris's role at this time? Did he consult with you a lot? Did you
consult with him?
A:
We talked a lot about how to do the management. He thought at one time that he might
have some success with Toni, as he's had with many people. But I think he came to
realize that she had a somewhat different set of priorities.
Q:
It seemed to me that you wound up with the same kind of situation you just described
with the Israelis--where you set up an agreement finally. And yet afterward, there are
constant efforts to modify the agreement--I guess primarily coming from her, right?
A:
Yes, and I didn't get involved in that too much because my view was that it wasn't
going to be modified. It had to be modified by mutual agreement, and there wasn't
234
Previous Page
