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When Rep. Henry Waxman takes over the House Government Reform Committee this month, it's a sure bet that the hearing schedule is going to include some pointed inquiries into the Bush administration's reconstruction program in Iraq.

The California Democrat's dogged investigations into administration operations over the last several years have earned him the enmity of many Republicans. Armed with the chairman's subpoena power, he might become more than a thorn in their side. And thanks to rules adopted by Republicans during the Clinton administration, Waxman won't need the support of other committee members to issue those subpoenas.

Dubbed "the scariest guy in town" by Time magazine in December for his tenacious approach to congressional oversight, Waxman has made no secret of his suspicions that Texas-based contractor Halliburton has been bilking the taxpayers for its work in Iraq.

More recently, Waxman leveled his sights on Parsons Corp. The California-based international engineering and management services firm has been cited by Stuart Bowen, the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, for delays and other problems in the construction of dozens of health care centers across Iraq, and for work so shoddy in the construction of police academy barracks that raw sewage leaked through ceilings onto recruits.

James McNulty, chairman and CEO of Parsons, doesn't dispute the problems the IG has cited with his company's work, but he says the projects have been far more difficult than anyone anticipated.

The primary reason has been the deteriorating security situation, which has made it impossible for Parsons to conduct the kind of project oversight required for meeting U.S. construction standards. The company was forced to rely on Iraqi subcontractors, who were difficult to vet and, as it turned out, not always qualified to do the work.

"When solicitations were issued, the directions, both verbal and in writing, were to assume a permissive security environment. It was anything but," says McNulty, a retired Army colonel and program manager who served two combat tours in Vietnam.

Additionally, "dysfunctional" management of the reconstruction projects by federal officials made the job far more complicated, he says. Over the 28-month period Parsons held the health care centers contract, 10 government program managers and 10 contract managers cycled through.

"Their average tour of duty was six weeks to three months. Some were there for a few days," he says. "There was no consistency."

In March 2004, Parsons was told to begin designing generic health care centers (the number and location of the centers hadn't been decided). The company came up with plans for relatively simple one-story facilities, but government program managers rejected that idea and said the buildings would need to be two stories.

"I don't know what the rationale was. Probably the Iraqi health ministry said, 'We want two-story buildings,' " McNulty says. Eventually, CPA provided GPS coordinates for 151 facilities. But when Parsons began researching the sites, they discovered that 40 were in impossible locations -- on the site of a mosque or in the middle of a lake or in a landfill, for example. About 30 of those sites were relocated, and 10 were dropped because no appropriate location could be found, he says.

Parsons recommended building 15 facilities initially -- five each in the northern, central and southern regions of Iraq, but that recommendation was rejected. Instead, the company was told to begin work on all 141 facilities at once.

"That put us in a bind. We didn't have the resources or the staff to supervise 141 sites concurrently," McNulty says, so Parsons trained Iraqi supervisors. But the security situation was so dire in some places that work became all but impossible. One Iraqi supervisor, for example, was executed -- shot in the head while he sat at his desk.

Parsons' experience isn't unique in Iraq. McNulty, who is generally happy to keep his employee-owned company out of the press, says he wants people to understand what Parsons was up against: "I don't know Mr. Waxman, but I want to meet him and at least tell him about Parsons." He will likely get the chance.

COMMENTS

• To answer the question - are our troops lives being taken by hiring unqualified contractors - absolutely. Custer Battles and other war profiteers get these huge dollar contracts because they have friends in high places and then defraud the government (and thereby the American taxpayer) by providing substandard goods and services (or in some cases not providing anything they were contracted to provide) resulting in the death and injury to who knows how many US military and innocent Iraqi civilians. And, the Republican senators who held hearings regarding Blackwater's failure to provide proper security resulting in the death of four of its employees, had the nerve to berate the families of these dead employees during these hearings. And, then said we should be careful about questioning how these contractors operate! How much lower can we, as a nation, go? GovExec.com reader Posted February 8, 2007 11:02 AM
• Not only are Iraqis’ not qualified, also us contractors are not qualified. Tax dollars spent on unqualified personnel to support our troop is out of hand and based on the buddy system. Here at Camp Victory/Liberty Baghdad Iraq jobs are not based on qualification but who you know. We repair small arms weapons here for soldiers who go outside the wire into downtown Baghdad to patrol. We have a new foreman who is not qualified to work on weapons but got promoted because his buddy is the direct support maintenance manager. The army has complained to the site manager and everything was turned around. Are our troops’ lives being taken by war or contractors who are not experienced? GovExec.com reader Posted February 7, 2007 11:49 PM