Vernon
Q ..
"Honest
that what they were for?
A
Yes, "honest broker," or something like that because, obviously, I'm in the hydrology and
hydraulics area and even though I may be sympathetic to these other things, I'm still going
to be wanting to spend all the money, all that money I can on hydrology and hydraulics.
Here's Chuck Corns over in structures, he wants to spend all the money on concrete
research. So somehow you've got to get people who don't have a particular bias, who just
are trying to look out for the general overall good. That was really kind of the role they
served.
Q ..
Was that one of the reasons that underpinned their creation?
A
I'm sure one of the ideas behind it was to have people who didn't have a built-in bias.
Because the way it was--each element had their own research representative, and they
didn't spend
on that. That was just a part-time job for them. Then they would
all get together, and then they would have to kind of bicker over who was going to get
how much money until the
of Research and Development come along.
They then got into some more serious planning ahead and that sort of thing--look at future
years. Then they got into deciding what were your high priorities. You would set up
your most high priorities and then your second high priorities and third high priorities, and
they got into some pretty fancy stuff where, depending on the feedback they got from
OMB as to how much money they were going to get, you may get to have your first three
levels of priority or maybe only your first two levels of priority.
So each research group would have to set up a bunch of priorities. This research project
may be a number one priority, this other one may be number two or three or four.
Sometimes you would go as long as five priority, just in case you got more money, so
you'd have something waiting in the wings to put on research, into the research program.
Q ..
Would you discuss at length with the people from Davis what their proposals were going
to be so you'd have at least some idea of what you wanted listed as priorities when you
went in?
A
They would suggest to headquarters what their priorities were, which ones were their top
priorities. Also they would, of course, ask us [for] any of our ideas on what they ought
to be researching. They would ask the field offices to submit research proposals. Each
Previous Page
