Friday, January 02, 2004

18:00 - Baghdad. Notice: Impending whining.

Someone in this space once wrote that the “increasing bureaucracy makes me think that the Americanization of Iraq is almost complete.” I guess that was me.

Anyway, I just received notice of some near term incoming personnel to the PMO. Out of twenty newbies, we expect one Major General, three SES (members of the Senior Executive Service), one Colonel, two Lieutenant Commanders, one Major, two Captains, two Lieutenants, two GS-15’s, two GS-14’s, and one each of GS-13, GS-12, GS-11, and a lowly GS-9.

It’s likely that a GS-14 is equivalent to a Lieutenant Colonel. And commonly, a GS-15 is equivalent to a full Colonel. And, uh, generally, an SES is equivalent to a General. With Lieutenant Colonels and above considered management, the new guys will consist of nine Indians and eleven Chiefs.

Add this to the four SES’s, four Colonels, one Major, one Captain, one GS-14, four GS-13’s, and a GS-11 already deployed here, and we’ve got twenty-two Chiefs and fourteen Indians.

Oh, and we contractors (although worker bees at heart) are all GS-14’s and 15’s, bringing the totals to thirty-seven Chiefs and fourteen Indians. It’s no wonder I have to make my own coffee.

Next on the ungrateful whining - the new space. When these new executives arrive, they will undoubtedly want the rooms with windows that we belly crawling contractors currently occupy. We’ll be evicted, of course, and relocated to the ballroom, the ghetto, the Frisbee court, the place where we have rallies with the little remote controls cars I got for my birthday. Whatever it’s called, it’s a big space, over five thousand square feet, and soon home to over seventy desks.

But the place needs adequate lighting. Sure, there’s already a few sconces about the room, even a line of small cans recessed into the perimeter of the ceiling, but the three Ronco Chandeliers had never worked, so the Major and I developed a supplemental lighting plan, and brought it to KBR/Halliburton for a quote. Of course, there’s no bidding. KBR is the sole source for this type of work in Iraq, so we swallowed hard at the $45,000 cost and waited two weeks for them to get into the task.

A fairly simple process, really. Just drill a few holes in the concrete ceiling, spaced every six feet or so, and anchor some steel rods on which will hang wiring tracks and nearly one hundred fluorescent fixtures. The only problem with the installation so far was that there was too little light in the room for the workers to see what they were doing.

The solution, reconnect the switch that controls the Ronco Chandeliers. That gave them plenty of light. So much, in fact, that there is really no need to install the fluorescents at all. Except KBR won’t stop what they’re doing, because they have a signed work order.

Grrrr. As it turns out, KBR electricians disconnected the light switch when their guys had lived/slept in this space, so that the overly bright additional lighting wouldn’t disturb their sleep. The electrician we worked with in the development of the project assured us that he “had never seen those lights working.”

Not surprisingly, we just spent forty grand to install shop lights in a palace ballroom.