Necessary Roughness

I believe it was Tuesday, when Andy Lane, the Chief Operating Officer and Executive VP of Halliburton Company, held meetings with everyone at the Oak Park Concourse to announce the resignation of HAL-subsidiary Halliburton Energy Services CEO John Gibson, and went over things that past CEOs had done. The primary purpose of the meeting was to reassure everyone that Mr. Gibson’s exit was voluntary; he wanted to be CEO of the entire company, and CoB/President/CEO David Lesar would not delegate Halliburton Company CEO duties to Mr. Gibson.

Mr. Lane did make an interesting comment during the meeting. Before anyone even thought about invading Afghanistan or Iraq, our government and Kellogg Brown and Root, another Halliburton Company subsidiary, entered into a 10-year contract to provide complete logistical services to military personnel, any time, any place, with the expectation that KBR would support about 15,000 people. There is no market competition for these logistical services, which is why some of these contracts were no-bid.

According to UPI, there were 138,000 soldiers and Marines on duty in Iraq, and another 15,000 soldiers and Marines on duty in Afghanistan in June. We know that numbers have been raised since then due to delayed retirement and longer deployments. Considering the original expectations, and given the military activity today, I find it amazing that KBR handles 10 times the expected load under the existing contract.

In light of this, it seems to me that those who complain about procurement, no-bid contracts, and public officials with past private sector experience should cut the only company who makes it happen a little slack. I’m not saying there can’t be improvements, but let’s use the process in place to get things done rather than have the media exploit our fighting men and women to make news.