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No Rate or Date, Just some Iraqi Attitude


smee2
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I do some volunteer work at our local community centre and a seniors facility. Recently a family moved into my neighbourhood and hadn't got to know them yet but the wife and eldest son showed up wishing to sign up for volunteer duties. Needless to say I got to know then quite a bit better. We don't just accept everyone and for some volunteer positions the hopeful volunteer has to pass a little screening by the local police.

Anyway, the husband has been working as a consulting engineer for a company that does a lot of infrastructure work in emerging nations, and countries like Haiti where natural disasters have destroyed so much, and places such as Iraq where war is the reason for failing infrastructure and services. We did not talk of the dinar. So, not information on that, at least not yet. I don't know them well enough yet to admit to holding or ask if they are. perhaps if time allows I will down the road.

What I found interesting was the general mid-level management attitude her husband and his workers and partners had been finding once they arrive in Iraq to start on the positioning of resources and personnel and equipment and materiels for the job to be done. The regular Iraqi people are willing to work. They are broke and need jobs. It would seem that upper management stays in their offices, or at home in their guarded security compounds, and led mid-level management handle everything. And this is where the problem are beginning for the foreign companies trying to get anything done.

A lot of the information they have been given is incomplete or missing entirely. Example: company goes in to rebuild say a sports area, that will be multi-use, doubling as a school, and training facility, and overflow for disaster housing or some such. When they bid on the contract part of the information they are given has to do with the ground on which they have to build. Is there any service there now as in electrical, plumbing, everything from sewage to sidewalks. Any building standing that have to be levelled, or part that should be ussed and incorporated into the new design. The designers get all this information, provide details to the site engineers, who go out with workboots, hardhats and survey equipment to find that no, the building that were supposed to be levelled and gone are indeed still there, bombed and burned out but still there and housing otherwise homeless people. Or they show up to find that the building are indeed gone but the hole that is left has trunkated tunnels that carried, and still in some cases carry, live and working electrical cables, sewage drains, recently buried second level electronics and communications cabling. \

The point is that the Iraqi people sit in their offices negotiating with a contractor for certain work to be done, and are not being honest about what they have to do to even reach the point of being able to start actual work. They do not hav ecmo;lete physical surveys, or even reasonable lists of possible employees or sources for employees. Any specialized employees are just a lart question mark on their faces? Government paperwork which is supposed to be supplied and ready so the contractors are at go when they arrive, are not forthcoming, will be along in a week, or next week, or ... like the RV, sometime soon. Once a project gets going they change the rules and regulations and requirements and time lines part way through.

They put up roadblocks that no contractor would be crazy enough to agree to before starting a contract and conveniently leave that stuff out of the contract. They make it difficult for the contractor to just leave, and if they do they may never be recompensed for the epenses they put out.

The woman whose husband is in this position said that he and his father did a lot of this kind of work in Kuwait, and some in Saudi Arabia, and have worked vry lucrative and major reconstruction as well as projects from start all over the middle east. They have never had the problems they have win Iraq where people do not keep their promises, do not feel a contract means anything really, and ignore the legal aspect whenever it is brought up.

I just found this intersting. A small insight from someone from a free economy western country attempting to do business on a world scale with a middle eastern country that supposedly has more money than camel droppings and they cannot operate on a simple business plan to get anything done. Imagine then making all that a political issue.

And once again it seems that not only do the Iraqi powers that be, at whatever level, not feel obligated to keep their word to foreigners, they do not feel they need to keep promises to their own people about what they can expect of their own government. Sad really.

smee2

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We think money will fix anything, but security affects all levels of a community. The fact that management feel they need to stay in their warm beds, while the rest of the country is trying to move on is disturbing to say the least. You would think that being in management they would at least send someone out to take photos of the property, before asking for bids on a project. People in power sometimes forget the simpler things. It will take the people on the ground to make the difference. And that means it will take even longer to rebuild this country. IMHO Too bad too, there is great potential for this to be a great country.

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Iraq is a work in progress.. There are tooooooo many hands in the pie.. They give a new meaning to the phase "Power Struggle". We would like all their problems to be solved over night..NOT possible. We have made tremendous progress over the past 9 months, we are so close. They need to dot the I's and cross the T's. It will happen, just a matter of time...Keep the Faith....

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Iraq is a work in progress.. There are tooooooo many hands in the pie.. They give a new meaning to the phase "Power Struggle". We would like all their problems to be solved over night..NOT possible. We have made tremendous progress over the past 9 months, we are so close. They need to dot the I's and cross the T's. It will happen, just a matter of time...Keep the Faith....

sounds like the contractors are gonna have to do more due dilligence i owned a contracting company and i would never negotiate a contract without me or the customer doing due dilligence, such as surveying civil engineer study etc. all at the customers expense as part of their due dilligence under my supervision at my expense for myself or employees so i can due my part to negotiate a contract. While i would incur some cost in my part to do the contract negotiation that is the cost of doing business.as the bible says anyone who desires to build a tower must first count the cost.

Edited by xdmed
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