Engineer Memoirs
had to start work if we were going to get this thing done on time. By the time Congress got
its money straight, we had less than three years to do a five-year job.
We looked around the Corps for people who had cost-plus experience and we found three
people. There must have been more out there but we could only find three, and I happened to
be one. I must say here I really gave thanks for Fred
rock in this project. Those
who have dealt with cost-plus know that it's a complete flip on the normal fixed-price
contracting officer and contractor responsibilities. Instead of the contractor being responsible
for doing the job within a fixed price, under a cost-plus job the owner becomes responsible
for managing the contract to be sure that the costs stay in line. Cost-plus requires stronger
control.
Then we had to select a contractor for each airfield. We couldn't use a contractor that was
working in Saudi Arabia. We ended up using Guy F. Atchinson and Perini. We were
extremely fortunate to have two such outstanding contractors. We actually started work
almost on a handshake because we couldn't definitize the contract till we knew more about
the details.
We finally got the contract definitized in January 1980 or about eight months after we started
work. In the meantime, the two contractors spent well over 0 million and I don't think they
spilled a dime. I really was impressed by their patriotic, All-American, get-the-job-done spirit
and their reliance on the Corps to treat them fairly.
On 14 July 1979 we dedicated New
Dam. Guy Atchinson built it. I attended the
dedication with Joe
president. Joe came up and said, "Jack, this thing's not going
to work." I thought he was talking about New
Dam. He was talking about the Israeli
airfields. I said, "Why?" He said, "Well, I can't get any answers." I asked him to provide the
questions. I took 14 questions back to Washington on Saturday. On Tuesday morning I called
and we gave him all the answers. He said, "Well, I guess we can get the job done if we get
that kind of service." That reinforced the need to have excellent control and management and
led to another key issue-how to manage this job.
I mentioned earlier the goals and policy to keep the Corps headquarters out of the operations
business. I thought the headquarters had plenty to do in the policy and the programming
arrangement. Based in part on my own experiences in Labrador, we selected North Atlantic
Division as the operating division. Their job was to get the job staffed, manned, get the
materials rolling, get the contracts set up, et cetera, et cetera. My intent was that whenever the
center of gravity of the work moved to the field, in other words when the contract was
awarded and we had the staff in place and everything was working, then we would remove
North Atlantic Division by setting up a small-division type of operation under a general
officer stationed in Israel. In the meantime, I was satisfied a colonel would be satisfactory,
especially since he was under Major General Jimmy Johnson, the division engineer, North
Atlantic Division. When General Johnson came down to be deputy, Major General Ben Lewis
took over. There was considerable discussion later as to whether I should have sent a brigadier
general at the outset directly to Israel.
Ben Lewis did an outstanding job definitizing the contract. I don't think anyone else could
have done as well. He ran the project with firm control out of New York, which caused a
certain amount of tension at the other end. Sometime in the spring of 1980 Bill Wray, General
Wray, came to me by memo saying, in effect, "We've got to do something about the
organization. We ought to put a general out there." I said, "Well, if you do, we're going to
take North Atlantic Division out of the net, and I don't want to do it until we are sure it won't
be an operational burden on OCE." He indicated, "We'd better do it." So we picked out John
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