WASHINGTON — Under pressure to be faster and fairer, U.S. officials Wednesday unveiled a new system for reconstruction work in Iraq that would award up to $18.7 billion in 25 contracts over the next 10 weeks.
Speaking outside Washington to a conference of potential bidders, retired Rear Adm. David Nash, head of the office overseeing the contracts process, said U.S. authorities would answer critics' charges of cronyism by offering regular public disclosures and would hire six private project managers to help ensure efficiency in the rebuilding effort.
Despite the breakneck pace of awarding contracts, "we will have maximum transparency from beginning to end," Nash said, as he formally kicked off the new program.
With so much money at stake, the sold-out session at a northern Virginia hotel had the fevered atmosphere of a land rush. About 1,300 representatives of more than 650 U.S. and foreign companies attended the daylong session. Among them were executives of large companies and individual entrepreneurs, some of them Iraqi Americans.
The contracts are for building schools, police and fire stations, power and water facilities and other infrastructure, projects that may take four years to complete, Nash said. Last year, the federal foreign assistance budget -- excluding special aid for Iraq -- totaled $17 billion.
Nash's Program Management Office has been scrambling to respond to White House pressure to show quick progress in Iraq. Congress has been prodding the office to assure the fairness of the process, while Iraqis and America's allies in the war have been demanding that their companies be allowed to share in the lucrative rebuilding.
Nash said contractors would be chosen in two steps. Companies would first submit information showing their qualifications, and contracting officers would recommend three of the bidders, from which the winner would be picked.
To answer complaints about the lack of openness, information about the contract proposals and bidders would be posted on the office's Web site.
Yet contractors and procurement specialists at the session said the system would still strongly favor large, experienced government contractors such as Halliburton and Bechtel Group, which won large contracts last spring. Thousands of smaller and less established companies that are clamoring for a piece of the business could be at a disadvantage.
