Bechtel ends Iraq rebuilding after a rough 3 years

San Francisco Chronicle ^ | 10/31/6 | David R. Baker

[SmithL]

Bechtel Corp. went to Iraq three years ago to help rebuild a nation torn by war. Since then, 52 of its people have been killed and much of its work sabotaged as Iraq dissolved into insurgency and sectarian violence.

Now Bechtel is leaving.

The San Francisco engineering company's last government contract to rebuild power, water and sewage plants across Iraq expired on Tuesday. Some employees remain to finish the paperwork, but essentially, the company's job is done.

Bechtel's contracts were part of an enormous U.S. effort to put Iraq back on its feet after decades of wars and sanctions. That rebuilding campaign, once touted as the Marshall Plan of modern times, was supposed to win the hearts of skeptical Iraqis by giving them clean water, dependable power, telephones that worked and modern sanitation. President Bush said he wanted the country's infrastructure to be the very best in the Middle East.

But Bechtel -- which charged into Iraq with American "can-do" fervor -- found it tough to keep its engineers and workers alive, much less make progress in piecing Iraq back together.

"Did Iraq come out the way you hoped it would?" asked Cliff Mumm, Bechtel's president for infrastructure work. "I would say, emphatically, no. And it's heartbreaking."

The violence that has gripped Iraq drove up costs and hamstrung the engineers who poured into the country after the U.S.-led invasion.

Bechtel's first reconstruction contract, awarded shortly after Saddam Hussein's overthrow in April, 2003, assured the company that it would have a safe environment for its workers. But, by the end, dozens of Bechtel's employees and subcontractors had been killed, some of them kidnapped, others marched out of their office and shot. Forty-nine others were wounded.

Bechtel responded by hiring more guards, driving armored cars and fortifying its camps.

[CAWats]

SFgate had to run this just before the election.

[thackney]

ping

[dk/coro]

I am an old Bechtel hand; and had the honor of being with the firm as an on-site exec when we did the Alaska Pipeline Project (TAPS) with Alyeska Consortium in 1974-77.

From my experience with the firm (and Steve Bechtel was the President in those days), if ever a specific firm could have given the job a full 110%, it would have been Bechtel Corp.

This admission of failure to achieve its stated goals, indicates to me that we in fact have most serious security issues in Iraq that are anticipated NOT to be resolved in the near to mid term.

Otherwise, Bechtel would have stuck to its guns.

[Bonaparte]

In case anybody's interested, here is Bechtel's side of the story.

[Allegra]

There is a LOT of spin in this article.

I'd probably better keep quiet about what I know on this for now, but the article has a lot of BS dripping from it.

[HAL9000]

I'm sure Bechtel did an remarkable job under extreme conditions, but the slow recovery of Iraq's infrastructure is a contributing factor to the current problems. I have to wonder if an interim solution like district-based power plants should have been deployed while the main facilities were being rehabilitated.

[Lady Jag]

Bechtel, per state orders, is also no longer involved in the Big Dig here in Boston.

[Bonaparte]

That may have been the best approach, but being unschooled in these matters, I hesitate to second-guess Bechtel and US military planners. I can only imagine the many budgetary, security, technical, logistic and (yes) political concerns that factored into the approach they took.