Engineer Memoirs _____________________________________________________________________
They said, "Well, geez, we didn't think of it that way."
We didn't do that as a ploy. We figured out how we would staff various places, and we did
our numbers because we knew we had to go back in and show Drake Wilson and his
programming people that we weren't padding and building an empire that couldn't be
afforded. We were really scrimping and saving on each FTE. Nevertheless, that was the plan
that came in for staffing at Rock Island.
We presented our plan to Drake Wilson, and eventually a decision was made that we'd get
military construction to include the REARM project at Rock Island.
One other interesting issue--and we did adapt the Missouri River Division's basic solution
in this area. We wanted to get into project management, for the question was, how do you
best manage the military construction projects? Where do you put that focus, the people who
are handling the money and doing project management?
Now, this is pertinent now to what the Corps later came to in terms of project management.
We found out that project management was implemented differently all over the Corps. For
some, the engineers managed the project while it was in design, and then the construction
folks managed it when it was in construction. In several districts, though, project
management was an integral part of construction. Construction folks all thought they ought to
manage projects because the big bucks are there, and they could do change orders more
quickly.
When we called the Missouri River Division, Brigadier General Mark Sisinyak, the division
engineer, told me that he had put project management in engineering because the problems
are all up front--in making milestones, getting the design done, and interacting with the user.
At the time the project is passed on to the construction management folks, they're interacting
with the contractor and the user, but the potential for time loss is up front. Engineering folks
with project management can still manage the money. The construction manager comes to
the project manager to get a release, and he may be coming to him for design changes too.
Anyway, it's easier to close that communication gap than it is to transfer and have a break in
project management or give construction folks the responsibility up early when the
engineering folks have to deliver.
So, we adopted the Missouri River Division model for project management when we started
the military construction mission in the Ohio River Division. We set it up and thought it
worked very well because we had project managers from the start each taking part in the
process.
Q:
Well, in addition to the Rock Island, there was the complex hospital project at Wright
Patterson Air Force Base that you either got or took over. I'm not sure which it was. Could
you comment on that? Hospital projects--I know the ones in Germany--tend to be
complicated.
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