John W. Morris
high-class quality. That was under great pressure, not only externally but internally. So you
have to admire the results, and then you have to compliment the people that got us there.
There was no adverse publicity. You didn't read adverse comments about this job in
Engineering News Record or in the
Street Journal. Most jobs of this nature attract public
attention. This one didn't. So I'm pleased with the way the Israeli airfield job came out. I am
especially gratified to General Bill Wray, Fred
and Lee Garrett of his office for
their excellent management of the entire project.
Q..
One follow-up question related to this and having to do with the cost-plus contract. In the
Corps' past there had been some very bad publicity associated with cost-plus contracts, so that
was an additional pressure on the organization.
A ..
Yes. The circumstances that normally lead to using cost-plus usually generate problems. The
reason you go with cost-plus is because of uncertainties. You want the government to protect
itself rather than have the contractor put into his bid exorbitant amounts of money to cover
the known risks and some he can't foresee. So in and of itself, a cost-plus contract has
controversial characteristics and uncertainties, but there's definitely a place for it. My
philosophy is that the best answer is fixed-price. If you find there are enough uncertainties or
other specific reasons to warrant a different type of contract, whether it's cost-plus or
price with incentive or whatever, then you adopt a deviation from the standard justified by
specific situations.
Q ..
Let's begin this morning by talking about the MX program that appeared on the horizon
during the Carter Administration.
A
The MX was an on-again, off-again program because of discussions about whether it would
be built on a track that ran across a large part of a country, a mobile system, or whether we
had multiple mini-sites, the mini-MX program. The Corps' role would have been to supervise
the construction of whichever plan was finally adopted. A large area of the Southwest had
been identified for the mobile train, and our greatest efforts were oriented towards organizing
to do that job.
We used the lessons learned from the original ballistic missile program which was placed
under an existing division. Soon the new missile program was taking so much attention that
the division couldn't execute its basic program efficiently. In that instance, the Corps decided
to set up the Corps of Engineers Ballistic Missile Command. Some slippage resulted as a
result of the change in the organization and management.
We didn't want to repeat that situation. On the other hand, to get started, we needed to put the
organization and management and a certain amount of the startup under one of our divisions.
The South Pacific Division was chosen with the Los Angeles District as the primary
management office. That's also the way the ballistic missile program started. In this case,
however, the start-up plan for executing the MX program was to describe the circumstances
which, when fulfilled, would indicate that the time had arrived to set up a separate command.
We didn't want the change-over to happen as a result of deficiency in performance. Rather,
we wanted to have a preprogrammed plan to initiate the new MX construction command and
relieve the division. From the outset, the South Pacific Division knew that it was not going
to build all the MX requirements.
General Delbridge, division engineer in San Francisco at that time, was personally directed
to develop such a plan for handling the MX program.
183
Previous Page
