The Program

In our last episode, loser Reform Party Vice Presidential Candidate Vice Admiral James Stockdale (Retired) asked, "why am I here?" The corollary to this wizened question might be, "what am I doing here?"

Rebuilding a country, dammit! And, to quote Our Great Leader, "it's a hard job." It must be, or we wouldn't still be doing it after four years.

When we arrived in October 2003, the dozen of us were tasked with developing a program for the reconstruction of Iraq. We had blown up some of it during the occupation, Saddam had stolen lots of it between the two Gulf Wars, and the Baath Party had neglected all of it for the thirty years prior. Reconstruction would be a huge, Marshall Plan scaled effort, for which we would be allowed to spend the paltry sum of just over $18 Billion (equivalent to less than two months of war mongering). At the time, we figured that the country needed five times this amount (about eight months of war mongering) to get the infrastructure into a self-sustaining condition.

We went CONUS six months later as the Programming and Contracting Office was built over our heads, and under the impression that the work would be substantially complete four years later.

Now, go figure, the work is substantially complete. In fact, additional funding has been secured in the intervening years, and over $30 Billion has been spent to date on everything from prisons to schools. This only puts us $60 Billion away from success (or about five months of war mongering).

In the mean time, our group of twelve has morphed into a medusa with some 500 heads, each of them keeping track of something or another. Seriously, I don't know what they all do, despite this very same figuring being what I'm here for.

Raise your hand and cluck like a chicken if you're confused. If not, start clucking anyway, because you soon will be.

At this time, the program management hydra is subdivided into four primary sectors substantially relating to the various Iraqi ministry groups of Oil, Electric, Public Works, and Facilities. Each sector is managed by large multi-national engineering firms. In short, sector management develops projects for a number of design-build contractors, and then manages the projects, analyses performance, and reports as necessary. All of the data goes through a reporting sector which, most coincidentally, is run by the Company and its joint venture with Michael Baker Group and Hill International. [For those outside the Beltway, knowledge (i.e. data) is power.]

Now that the construction programs are winding down, the need for four large program management sectors is diminished. This is where I come in. It's my job this month, with four others, to develop a transition plan to move sector management from four sectors into one "Super Sector", merged with our existing operations. In the process, we'll carve out the dead wood and redundancies (read: hatchet man), eliminate the competition, and reduce total staffing by half, from which the Company will receive all of the profits, instead of just a fifth.

If you're having trouble picturing this, just imagine a pack of mangy curs feeding off the dregs of a bloody battlefield.

I'm the disease-ridden flea on the dog's ass.