I'm home.
Still trying to figure out which end is up. I arrived a little over a week ago, late on Thursday night, weary and shell-shocked. Eight days later, I am just starting to get my feet under me.
People want to know how the trip was. Whether it was fun. How I liked it. Where my suntan is.
Fun?
I'll sum it up, just to make it clear.
My deployment was brutal, but important. Given the different permutations available, I will take that combination, every single time. Gimme important battles to fight with real consequences, and let me see how I can help. The work was hard, and the reasons were complex, and there were battles raging on all sides. Some of them were overblown (including an honest-do-goodness "fake news" story - see below). Some of them were unnecessary. And then some of them were
critical. Keeping track of which battle was which was a difficult task.
Battles
First off, my office was fighting to get the money to do the work. FEMA wanted to have accountability in the process, and we shared that goal. From my second week there, we set up weekly meetings to discuss what we were doing, how we were doing, what the results were, and what the next steps were. We started out with the wrong approach, in my opinion, in providing only high-level information and not sharing the details. When people are talking about accountability, they are not wanting to know about the goals. They are wanting you to open your books. Our counterparts at FEMA were the accountants (I always think that they simply misspelled the word when they say Comptroller). The bean counters wanted us to provide the books.
We eventually did some of that. Some of the time, we simply could not - an entire part of contract law deals with why we have to protect some of the information, and we were protective of those data. But the early knife fights we had with FEMA had to do with their expectations.... and how we addressed those expectations. Once we brought them in as partners (rather than clients who only needed to see the finished product) we got more of what we needed.
We fought battles with the local energy company. Partly it was a culture difference. Partly it was a game of CYA. Partly it was poor communication. And some of it was ego. Repeatedly, we asked for the assignment of lines to provide to our folk, so that we could get work started. If the Corps were completely in charge of the effort, we would have broken up the work and attacked on as many fronts as possible (Army, after all....). But instead, we were working in partnership with the local energy company. And they assigned the lines.
They want to be seen as effective. They want to be the heroes that turn the power back on. The Corps will eventually leave; they have a damaged reputation to rectify and build upon. That rectification cannot be done if they are seen by the public as ineffectual.
I understand that. But whatever the reason, the line assignment was parsed out piecemeal, and was often changed. The result was that we had numerous occasions where a transmission line would be assigned to our contractor, who would go and assess it, and begin work.... then be reassigned. It seemed capricious and was frustrating to the contractors.
One of the results was that there was repeated accusations of sabotage. The thought was that one group actually sabotaging the other to make them look more effective by comparison. No official charges were ever filed, and I heard no credible source. But the accusations were continual. That part of the battle did not need to be there, and it was hard to hear.
We did fight with our contractors. At first, our priority was to get the money in place so that contractors could get their people and equipment to the island. But once they were under contract, we were focused on their productivity.
For what seemed like forever, the contractors had no productivity. Some of the problem was with the lack of stuff. But some of the problem was that we did not get any invoices. We built numerous spreadsheets in November, with thousands of lines detailing what we expected to spend. We kept explaining to FEMA what our expectations were, what we expected to get done, and what we were buying with their money.
But without an invoice, it was all just a guess. By the time I left, a week ago, we had received invoices for a pittance. Of more than a billion dollars in contracted out, we were getting invoices for less than the cost of travel. The uncertainty of it was driving us crazy. We demanded, wheedled, pleaded, threatened, and battled with the contractors to provide us with more information. The battles were needed, but frustrating. Eventually, we cut the funding to one of the contractors, and gave part of their work to another contractor to complete. The resulting delays hurt.
Unfortunately, we also battled with one another. In every disaster, it seems that the infighting between the money guys (represented by my office) and the execution guys is ferocious. Money guys get unnecessarily into the weeds, because that is where the sexy work is, but they also need to be able to defend the decisions that are being made. The execution guys are too busy to take on any extra work that the money guys are asking for - what are your estimates, what are we buying, how do we get the work done, etc. They don't want to do that - they are working to restore power, after all - just give me the money I need and leave me alone. The commander of that office reinforced the importance of execution, and in the case of the Puerto Rico emergency, he reacted forcefully against any intrusion. I had several colleagues who were subjected to harangues and public embarrassment for doing something they were told to do. These battles are not important, and detracted focus from the work that we were all supposed to be doing.
...What we were supposed to be doing. It is an important concept, and when you are involved in a knife-fight every single day, it is hard to survey the battlefield.
Fake News
The fake news story is funny. Or it would be, if it had not been for the enormous amount of time that everyone spent trying to manage it.
I mentioned the story in a previous blog entry, but the general gist is this: The local electrical company has warehouses across the island. In one of those warehouses, there were items that helped complete work that had been stalled for lack of material.
That is the story. The fake news that is associated with it is the battle that supposedly raged between the local and federal partners. To hear it played in the medial, this is the story:
Makes for great TV. But not true.
There WAS a tense argument. And we did hand out material from the warehouse. But I was there for the second 'raid', and a friend of mine was there for the first one. There WAS stuff in the warehouses. But it was mostly dead-project materials - stuff that was ordered and then crated when additional funding didn't come through.
A contractor who went with us was looking for the 'hidden materials' - the stuff that Puerto Rican officials were trying to hide. (The guys was a total jerk, but that is a different story). But he was salivating over the possibility of finding the huge caches of hidden materials. We, of course, were simply there to do an inventory.
The manager of the warehouse had copies of the inventory that we might be interested in. Handed them over, and when we asked for more, he gave it to us.
Is that evidence of incompetence? Not really. Is it intentional misdirection? No. Mostly, it is good folk, having a job to do, and not having all of the web of connections established that is needed to do the full job.
But when the media get a story like that, it doesn't work well. It needs a villain. And so for the next week, we spent too much energy working to ensure that we were not cast as the villain, and that we did not simultaneously destroy a partnership that was based on trust.
Benefits
The end result of what we were doing was amazing. People - even the ones who were still in the dark - were kind and generous and grateful. We saw huge improvements in the restoration of the power grid in the two months I was there. Perhaps even more importantly, we set the stage for more much-needed work in the future. There is a long way to go, and Puerto Rico has a lot of work to do to make the system resilient. Underground lines. Redundant generation systems. More renewable energy sources. Updated infrastructure.
The hardest part was walking away. For sixty one days, I put my shoulder to the wheel, straining along with everyone I knew, trying to get the information and money and people and effort going the right way, with the goal firmly in mind that we were doing good.
Sixty one days later, the goal is not accomplished.
I am also hopeful. The effort on the flywheel is enormous at the beginning, as inertia fights the building of momentum. But as we got momentum, the inexorable force continued, and stuff started to flow, lines got repaired and replaced, and lights got turned on. The work that remains is critical, but a lot of the heavy lifting was done by the first responders. By my predecessors. By me and my team.
I do not regret having put my shoulder to the wheel, even with the long days, the stressful meetings, the sudden and unexpected changes in focus and mission. Even the 4am laundry loads are worth the effort. Because the end result is a satisfied customer - an energized Puerto Rico. That is why we were there from the first.
To paraphrase Tom Bodett, we'll turn the lights on for you.
Still trying to figure out which end is up. I arrived a little over a week ago, late on Thursday night, weary and shell-shocked. Eight days later, I am just starting to get my feet under me.
People want to know how the trip was. Whether it was fun. How I liked it. Where my suntan is.
Fun?
I'll sum it up, just to make it clear.
My deployment was brutal, but important. Given the different permutations available, I will take that combination, every single time. Gimme important battles to fight with real consequences, and let me see how I can help. The work was hard, and the reasons were complex, and there were battles raging on all sides. Some of them were overblown (including an honest-do-goodness "fake news" story - see below). Some of them were unnecessary. And then some of them were
critical. Keeping track of which battle was which was a difficult task.
Battles
First off, my office was fighting to get the money to do the work. FEMA wanted to have accountability in the process, and we shared that goal. From my second week there, we set up weekly meetings to discuss what we were doing, how we were doing, what the results were, and what the next steps were. We started out with the wrong approach, in my opinion, in providing only high-level information and not sharing the details. When people are talking about accountability, they are not wanting to know about the goals. They are wanting you to open your books. Our counterparts at FEMA were the accountants (I always think that they simply misspelled the word when they say Comptroller). The bean counters wanted us to provide the books.
We eventually did some of that. Some of the time, we simply could not - an entire part of contract law deals with why we have to protect some of the information, and we were protective of those data. But the early knife fights we had with FEMA had to do with their expectations.... and how we addressed those expectations. Once we brought them in as partners (rather than clients who only needed to see the finished product) we got more of what we needed.
 |
| Sunlight behind a power line with reused pieces and parts. |
We were also fighting to get the stuff to the island. That particular fight is ongoing. Getting the BOM into the hands of the contractors would - and will - make every other battle easier. The tenor of this fight colored every other fight we had.
The simple truth of the matter, though, is that the items that are landing in Puerto Rico this week have December stamps on them. There is no lag at all between production, shipping, delivery, and installation. We are getting stuff there as fast as we can, and stringing the lines while the lines are still warm from the assembly line.
We fought battles with the local energy company. Partly it was a culture difference. Partly it was a game of CYA. Partly it was poor communication. And some of it was ego. Repeatedly, we asked for the assignment of lines to provide to our folk, so that we could get work started. If the Corps were completely in charge of the effort, we would have broken up the work and attacked on as many fronts as possible (Army, after all....). But instead, we were working in partnership with the local energy company. And they assigned the lines.
They want to be seen as effective. They want to be the heroes that turn the power back on. The Corps will eventually leave; they have a damaged reputation to rectify and build upon. That rectification cannot be done if they are seen by the public as ineffectual.
I understand that. But whatever the reason, the line assignment was parsed out piecemeal, and was often changed. The result was that we had numerous occasions where a transmission line would be assigned to our contractor, who would go and assess it, and begin work.... then be reassigned. It seemed capricious and was frustrating to the contractors.
One of the results was that there was repeated accusations of sabotage. The thought was that one group actually sabotaging the other to make them look more effective by comparison. No official charges were ever filed, and I heard no credible source. But the accusations were continual. That part of the battle did not need to be there, and it was hard to hear.
We did fight with our contractors. At first, our priority was to get the money in place so that contractors could get their people and equipment to the island. But once they were under contract, we were focused on their productivity.
For what seemed like forever, the contractors had no productivity. Some of the problem was with the lack of stuff. But some of the problem was that we did not get any invoices. We built numerous spreadsheets in November, with thousands of lines detailing what we expected to spend. We kept explaining to FEMA what our expectations were, what we expected to get done, and what we were buying with their money.
But without an invoice, it was all just a guess. By the time I left, a week ago, we had received invoices for a pittance. Of more than a billion dollars in contracted out, we were getting invoices for less than the cost of travel. The uncertainty of it was driving us crazy. We demanded, wheedled, pleaded, threatened, and battled with the contractors to provide us with more information. The battles were needed, but frustrating. Eventually, we cut the funding to one of the contractors, and gave part of their work to another contractor to complete. The resulting delays hurt.
Unfortunately, we also battled with one another. In every disaster, it seems that the infighting between the money guys (represented by my office) and the execution guys is ferocious. Money guys get unnecessarily into the weeds, because that is where the sexy work is, but they also need to be able to defend the decisions that are being made. The execution guys are too busy to take on any extra work that the money guys are asking for - what are your estimates, what are we buying, how do we get the work done, etc. They don't want to do that - they are working to restore power, after all - just give me the money I need and leave me alone. The commander of that office reinforced the importance of execution, and in the case of the Puerto Rico emergency, he reacted forcefully against any intrusion. I had several colleagues who were subjected to harangues and public embarrassment for doing something they were told to do. These battles are not important, and detracted focus from the work that we were all supposed to be doing.
...What we were supposed to be doing. It is an important concept, and when you are involved in a knife-fight every single day, it is hard to survey the battlefield.
Fake News
The fake news story is funny. Or it would be, if it had not been for the enormous amount of time that everyone spent trying to manage it.
I mentioned the story in a previous blog entry, but the general gist is this: The local electrical company has warehouses across the island. In one of those warehouses, there were items that helped complete work that had been stalled for lack of material.
That is the story. The fake news that is associated with it is the battle that supposedly raged between the local and federal partners. To hear it played in the medial, this is the story:
- Puerto Rico had hoarded these materials, hiding them in the warehouses.
- FEMA paid for the new materials to come in, but delays kept people in the dark
- Puerto Rico insisted that they did not have the materials.
- FEMA and USACE threatened PR that they would storm the warehouses
- PR denied that they had anything, obfuscating the cache of treasures that would have energized lines
- FEMA and the Corps stormed the warehouses with armed US Marshalls, seizing all of the PR assets and handing them out to the contractors
Makes for great TV. But not true.
There WAS a tense argument. And we did hand out material from the warehouse. But I was there for the second 'raid', and a friend of mine was there for the first one. There WAS stuff in the warehouses. But it was mostly dead-project materials - stuff that was ordered and then crated when additional funding didn't come through.
A contractor who went with us was looking for the 'hidden materials' - the stuff that Puerto Rican officials were trying to hide. (The guys was a total jerk, but that is a different story). But he was salivating over the possibility of finding the huge caches of hidden materials. We, of course, were simply there to do an inventory.
The manager of the warehouse had copies of the inventory that we might be interested in. Handed them over, and when we asked for more, he gave it to us.
 |
| Old, dusty electrical equipment on the warehouse shelf. |
Eventually, The Jerk had to admit that the cupboard was pretty bare. "We could use a bunch of this stuff in the field, but the truth is, it would not last a day with my crew. There just isn't much here.
Eventually, the story in the media changed. Breaking News: Puerto Rico had told Federal officials about the material in the warehouses, and the Feds had ignored it until it was time to stage a raid for PR purposes.
Problem with all of the stories is that there is an element of truth to them. Our communication, in any emergency situation, is terrible, and the right hand never knows what the right hand is doing. Over and over in my own office, folk would express frustration about not being able to get some piece of information, only to have someone in the same room say "Oh, I have that report. I get it every day." I have been on both sides of that conversation. So it is more than conceivable that the warehouse manager told everyone who would listen that he had some stuff that could be used. But they were not the right person to have the information, and did not pass it along.
Is that evidence of incompetence? Not really. Is it intentional misdirection? No. Mostly, it is good folk, having a job to do, and not having all of the web of connections established that is needed to do the full job.
But when the media get a story like that, it doesn't work well. It needs a villain. And so for the next week, we spent too much energy working to ensure that we were not cast as the villain, and that we did not simultaneously destroy a partnership that was based on trust.
Benefits
The end result of what we were doing was amazing. People - even the ones who were still in the dark - were kind and generous and grateful. We saw huge improvements in the restoration of the power grid in the two months I was there. Perhaps even more importantly, we set the stage for more much-needed work in the future. There is a long way to go, and Puerto Rico has a lot of work to do to make the system resilient. Underground lines. Redundant generation systems. More renewable energy sources. Updated infrastructure.
The place is so beautiful, and the people so wonderful, that I can't help but root for them, and cheer them on. They are worth our investment. Across the island, there were signs on billboards, on vehicles, even on water bottles: Rise Up, Puerto Rico! And it was happening, a little bit at a time.
Leaving it on the table
The hardest part was walking away. For sixty one days, I put my shoulder to the wheel, straining along with everyone I knew, trying to get the information and money and people and effort going the right way, with the goal firmly in mind that we were doing good.
Sixty one days later, the goal is not accomplished.
The people I worked with have taken over the effort, and are continuing to strain with shoulder to the wheel. It is hard to know that people are pushing, working, giving of their time and talents to do work that was not completed by the time I left. I feel a little like I have abandoned my post.
I am also hopeful. The effort on the flywheel is enormous at the beginning, as inertia fights the building of momentum. But as we got momentum, the inexorable force continued, and stuff started to flow, lines got repaired and replaced, and lights got turned on. The work that remains is critical, but a lot of the heavy lifting was done by the first responders. By my predecessors. By me and my team.I do not regret having put my shoulder to the wheel, even with the long days, the stressful meetings, the sudden and unexpected changes in focus and mission. Even the 4am laundry loads are worth the effort. Because the end result is a satisfied customer - an energized Puerto Rico. That is why we were there from the first.
To paraphrase Tom Bodett, we'll turn the lights on for you.
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