The technology behind the asset-management system would look familiar to many U.S. IT managers, built around Oracle's database, project software, and 11i business applications. That system is connected through IBM WebSphere middleware to other engineering, construction, and asset-management applications, such as MRO Software Inc.'s Maximo program, and project-management software from Primavera Systems Inc. It's housed on servers located in the Program Management Office in Baghdad and is mirrored at a site in Virginia to permit remote management and updates.
Connecting the various components that comprise the system was relatively easy, Plockmeyer says. The tough part was adding additional code that allows it to accommodate inputs and generate information in three languages. "I've never seen anything like it in all my years of computing," says Mike Gray, CIO at Total Resource Management, which the coalition tapped to build and implement the system under a contract with an initial value of $1.9 million. "It's totally unique," says Gray, a computer-science Ph.D. and 25-year industry veteran.
Four Total Resource Management staffers have been in Baghdad since shortly after the contract was awarded in January, and they have been working with local Iraqi translators to create the system's trilingual capabilities. Ray Brisbane, CEO of Total Resource Management, says software with such sophisticated capabilities ordinarily could take years to deploy. "Yet, we've had to deliver it in months. There's a lot on the line to make something that is rock solid in a very short time frame," he says. Mike McCormick, Total Resource Management's project manager for the system, adds that his staff is working 90 to 100 hours per week to enhance it. "It's in the interest of the Iraqi people for all these things to move forward quickly so that conditions are restored to what they were before the war and beyond that," says McCormick, who spent 28 years as a Marine.
Total Resource Management's work is a small-but-central piece of the effort throughout the country to rebuild--and, in some cases, create for the first time--a solid IT infrastructure. For example, Lucent Technologies has a two-year contract worth as much as $75 million to design and build communications and IT infrastructure in 12 areas in Iraq, including Wi-Fi networks, public-safety information networks, TV and radio systems, and IT for the postal system. BearingPoint Inc. has a $9 million contract to help design government policies and institutions, including financial systems.
Total Resource Management's system automatically tells Program Management Office staffers when a new contract has been approved and what work needs to be scheduled. Plockmeyer hopes that within 30 to 60 days, some contractors in the field will have the ability to input live data and progress reports into the system using PCs that communicate with the main server via satellite Internet links. Later, the system should let users track the status of all construction projects within the country. A coalition or Iraqi engineer working on, say, an oil refinery in the southern port city of Basra could use a PC to input progress updates. Modules could be added that would monitor the health of oil pipelines and alert authorities to a drop in pressure caused by mechanical failure or sabotage, Plockmeyer says.
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