Peter used to call me now and then just to keep me in the loop. He had no idea what exactly was going on in DND and I wasn’t going to tell him what I had learned from my friend there.
I was keeping myself busy with my work as well as I was publishing articles all over the map about BPR as well as Smart Card.
Mom was enjoying the summer with us and Lynda was busy with her sorority activities, including going out every week with her close friends from sorority.
One Friday I came home early to take my family out for a nice supper and went up to our bedroom to get changed into casual clothes. Lynda shouted Peter from CGI is on the phone for you.
I picked up the phone and Peter was almost shouting and said are you sitting down.
I said what’s up, Peter.
He said congratulations; we won the contract with DND.
I shouted, you’re not kidding, are you, Peter?
He said he wasn’t. He said thanks for your partnership. That enabled us to win this contract. Plus, this is my first and only major contract that we won with your help since I started working for CGI. Now they think that I had something to do with the winning. What they don’t know is that you and your company are the main reasons for our winning the contract.
I said I appreciate what you’re saying Peter, but that’s not true. I can guarantee you that we would not even have come close to winning the contract had we not combined our efforts with your company, simply because they were looking for a multi-million-dollar company to do business with. I said let’s not worry about who and why. What’s the next step for us?
He said I know tomorrow’s Saturday and I don’t know what your schedule is but I was wondering if we could meet around 10:00 AM to just rehash the contract. I will buy you lunch at the end of the meeting.
I said how can I refuse an offer like that? I will see you tomorrow.
Lynda didn’t hear the telephone conversation as I was speaking to Peter from our bedroom. As soon as I hung up, she shouted what’s going on?
I said we won the contract with DND, babe.
Lynda shouted congratulations. She said you didn’t even expect to win the contract. How did it happen?
I said sometime things do happen whether I expect them to happen or not. I remember saying that this is the biggest project we ever won working with CGI. She said it calls for celebration. I agreed with her and took everybody out for a nice meal.
When we came back home, Lynda wanted to know more about the contract. Until now I only had some small contracts with DND which never involved multiple functional areas. All I knew was that the Department of National Defence was one of the biggest, if not the biggest department in the Canadian government. It’s headed by the Minister of National Defence, a federal Cabinet Minister. The Associate Minister of National Defence supports the Minister of National Defence and is also a federal Cabinet Minister. The Deputy Minister of National Defence is the Department’s senior civil servant.
I said all I know from my meeting with my friend from DND that I had lunch with is that this project is huge. They are selecting personnel from all major branches of the department to be involved with the focus on learning BPR methodology.
Lynda said how many people do you think work for DND.
I said I remember somebody mentioning when I was doing a project for DND before that more than 100,000 people work for DND.
Lynda said how many branches are there?
Said I only know the following:
- Royal Canadian Navy;
- Canadian Army;
- Royal Canadian Air Force;
- Military Personnel Command;
- Canadian Special Operation Forces Command; and
- Canadian Joint Operations Command.
She said perhaps tomorrow you may find out more about the project when you meet with Peter. While Peter had friends in DND, they seemed to be extra careful not to release any information on the project. I didn’t blame them for that.
I said to Lynda I expect we will have to meet with the folks at DND to go into details, which we need desperately.
She said why we don’t sleep on it.
The next day I met with Peter and had lunch. He wanted me to go to his office and look at the arrangements he was making to accommodate my team. Nevertheless, I believed that DND might provide us with the office space we needed to run our project. My preference always was to be close to the users just in case we needed clarification which required more than one person.
When I met with Peter, he didn’t have any additional information on the project as we were supposed to meet the DND folks the following week to go into details. But he spoke to his buddies at DND, and CGI was one of the four companies which were selected for the project. He only knew that the project was huge, and it was going to cost DND millions.
The following week we met with DND. Everybody appeared to be excited with the scope of the project. A presentation was made to explain how the project was going to be organized.
My name was mentioned as the project manager for our project. There was a Lt. Colonel John Kuchuk, who was assigned to work with me representing the user group of the scientific community, but he wasn’t a scientist. Furthermore, a bunch of user representatives from uniformed and civilians were assigned to our team to represent certain functional areas in the department.
John Kachuik was currently working for the Scientific Branch of DND, Defence Research and Development Canada (DRDC). DRDC was the science and technology organization of the Department of National Defence (DND), whose purpose was to provide the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF), other government departments, and public safety and national security communities with knowledge and technology.
As expected, the focus of the contract was to transfer the knowledge of BPR to a selected group of users who represented the civilian as well as uniformed personnel. However, at this stage of the project I wasn’t supposed to go into any specific function. When we completed the process of transferring skills, we would be assigned to a specific functional area to do the real BPR.
Once the meeting was over, John took me to see the two cubical offices next to each other which were assigned to the two of us. Then I saw the several other relatively smaller cubical offices for our team. John wanted to know how I would like those offices to be arranged for my team. I told John that I wanted my consultants and the user representatives, regardless whether they are civilian or uniformed, to be integrated as that was the only way I knew how to share our expertise. I said, furthermore, John, I wouldn’t treat the civilians any differently from the uniformed resources. I believe that every resource assigned to this project is equally important and I look forward to working with all of them.
When I was doing a project at DND Headquarters I had heard the rumour that the uniformed folks always thought that they were more important to the department, that they considered the civilians just as support or administrative folks. I wanted to make it clear to John that I didn’t want that to happen when they were working with me.
I was surprised by John’s reaction. He told me he knew exactly what I was talking about. He would make sure that kind of stupidity would never happen to our group while they were assigned to my project.
I was ready to take off but John asked me if I had time to have coffee. I said of course.
We went to the cafeteria, grabbed our coffee and sat down away from other folks. John said Mir, once I found out that I would be working with you closely, I did some digging into your background.
I said WOW! What did you find out, John.
He said I was pleasantly surprised with the opportunity to work with you as everybody I spoke to had unanimous respect for you, and specifically, what you had accomplished in the field of BPR. Furthermore, even your competition had something nice to say about you, not to mention your articles on the subject.
I said I hope you don’t believe everything you heard, John.
He said I like the modesty, Mir, but I was the guy who was assigned to check your references. I spoke to the folks you had worked with and everybody without any reservation told me that you’re tough on your staff, but you never let any of them down. You delivered good results on time and within budget every single project you ever were involved with.
I said, John, it looks like we are going to be working together for a while. We have an opportunity to find ways of complementing our skills. I am going to learn from you and if you find anything worthwhile learning, I will be delighted to work with you. The only thing I need to ask you is that our focus should be the department, not necessarily individually power ranking folks. My job is to do something meaningful for the money the department is spending on us, rather than please folks in uniforms or not.
John said I couldn’t agree more, Mir. He said I will make you a promise. I will deal with that kind of bullshit, and you concentrate on what you are being hired for.
I stood up and shook hands with John.
That was an excellent start for me.
