1992-03-15 Transfer
Three billion dollars is one impressive incentive.
The strength of the chain is determined by that of the weakest links.—Thomas Reid
The coastal facility to which I had been reassigned was almost a miniature of the main plant. The walk from the parking lot to the main gate was much shorter, and the gate itself was smaller. The ocean breeze also carried more pleasant scents than the smog habitually enveloping the larger facility.
"Lee! How you doing?" The person who met me at the gate was a fellow engineer rather than an administrative assistant and was in fact someone I knew tangentially from my previous work. That reassured me slightly, as I was afraid that I'd been exiled.
"Hey Robin. Took you long enough. We've been trying to get you down here for nearly two weeks." My escort deposited me in an unused conference room. "Wait here, we'll get you read in as soon as this morning's round of meetings are over. Pretty much everything you'll be working on is Sensitive/Compartmented, so there's paperwork."
It was going on noon before I was properly read in and had signed all the necessary papers. I had pieced together the news that I was now part of a group working on a very important project with a fast turnaround and an enormous value to the company. My final intake briefing was nevertheless a stunning collection of details.
I would be reporting directly to the program director, Paul, who was one rank below a corporate vice president. I was in one of those little boxes on the organization chart that sprouts laterally from a reporting line: no one to supervise, and no one other than my boss to report to. I would continue at my pay rate but was authorized in advance for as much overtime as my boss might require. This last was a complete change to my experience with the company, as my previous manager would get red in the face at even a quarter hour of billed overtime.
The project had a very definite and extremely close deadline. The client had issued a Request For Proposal (RFP) with a six-month turnaround. The company had just six months to research, design, and document a complete system meeting all the client's specifications. The competition was winner-take-all, with a three-billion-dollar contract as the prize. No friendly competition, you-win-and-subcontract-to-us nonsense. We were up against the biggest and most competent companies in the aerospace business, and everyone was determined to take home that fat check.
The company had assembled some of the brightest and most experienced scientists, engineers, and administrators available. The admin types were veterans of countless RFP processes, which were a nightmare labyrinth of procedures required by a truly Byzantine complex of bureaucracies. The science and engineering would only matter if we could fill out all the forms properly. To my surprise, that's where I would be working: not as a junior engineer, but directly for the program director, to make sure we met the document submission requirements.
The final product of an RFP is, at its simplest, a proposal document. In reality, 'document' is a serious understatement. In this case, it would be more than twenty fat three-ring binders stuffed with text, diagrams, engineering drawings, photographs, charts, and data tables. It would be organized precisely according to the original request. Our chances of winning were directly tied to our ability to follow the client's paperwork rules. That client had also stacked a new joker in the deck: an electronic copy.
Prior to this project, the client (and every other similar client) had required literal paperwork. They specified paper size, bond weight, hole spacing, margins, and every other item of minutiae over which a bored bureaucrat could obsess. Now, the client had decided to demonstrate that they were fully in the late twentieth century by requiring that the entire paper document also be submitted in duplicate as an electronic document. They even specified the electronic recording media to be delivered.
No one had any idea how to do this.
Three billion dollars is one impressive incentive. A call went out for anyone in the company who could help pull this off. My name kept coming up. No one bothered to ask me. My manager was apparently informed by a memo from the VP of Engineering, and that was that.
So my first meeting with my new boss was brief but intense.
Paul stood behind his desk and held out a hand, inviting me to his side chair. "Robin. Glad you could join us." From anyone else, the tone could have been sarcastic and reversing the meaning. Paul was almost painfully sincere and said exactly what he meant.
My response was very much the same. I sat down, then replied, "Happy to be here. Looking forward to working for you. What do you need me to do?"
He handed me a fat document, folded back to a page marked with a yellow sticky note. "Do you think you can make this happen?"
It was the specification for the electronic version of the proposal document. I read it carefully. I recognized all the terms and specifications. It would be a lot of work, much of it fussy and exacting, and doubtless full of problems to resolve, but nothing that I could not handle as long as I had the right resources.
I made an effort to look Paul in the eye and said, "Yes. I'll do my best."
Of course I said yes. I could not very well say no, could I? The man I was talking with was a literal hero, not just within the company but nationally. He was one of the engineers who came up with the fix to bring back Apollo 13. If he asked me to fly a paper airplane over a volcano, I would give it a shot.
My work environment for the next six months was familiar yet different. The cubicle farms were the same, albeit smaller. However, the sound was qualitatively different. There was a quiet intensity to the work. There was conversation, certainly, but it had a tighter focus. There was humor, but less frivolity. Everyone knew how serious this project was, both for the company and for the sake of the national security mission.