“The song is ended but the melody lingers on …” (Irving Berlin).
As soon I hung up the phone with Peter, Lynda popped in the family room where our phone was located and said supper is ruined. I remember saying to her, let’s go to Broadway for a quick supper as I wanted to talk to her about my conversation with Peter.
Once we ordered our meals, Lynda said what’s going on?
I said I was talking to a guy who works for CGI and he thinks that there’s an opportunity for us to team up against other big companies like IBM and Systems House.
She said but we are not a big company.
I explained to Lynda that he was talking about subcontracting our small company to write a proposal and manage the project, if we got it. I continued, if we won the contract, he thought I would be able to use my consultants as well as some CGI employees. The idea is to transfer some of the skills to their employees so that CGI would be able to respond to the next BPR opportunity without our help. CGI has no experience in BPR. They thought this way they would acquire some relevant experience and thus be able to handle the next BPR project independently.
She said doesn’t it bother you that they are trying to use you and your consultants to get the business? Then as soon as the project is done, they will kick you out?
I said that’s the name of the game in our business, babe. To be totally honest with you, no, it doesn’t bother me at all.
Lynda said what are the chances of winning the contract?
Based on what Peter told me, IBM and Systems House will try desperately to win the contract. I think the possibility of winning it is limited, but this would give me an opportunity to work with the big boys. Who knows what happens in the future.
Lynda said how much time would you have to invest in writing the proposal?
I said at least a week.
Lynda said do you think it’s worth giving it a try?
I said I think we can afford to invest one week. I am only working on two projects right now.
Lynda said do you think you should go after this project directly?
I said in that case, our chances of winning the RFP would be less than 5 percent.
Lynda said perhaps you should consider teaming up with CGI.
We finished our supper. When we got back, Adam was at home. I thought I should brief him about my conversation with Peter.
He was supportive of the idea of working with CGI.
The next day was Friday. I met Peter for lunch. He appeared to be quite happy with the conversation that we had on the phone the night before.
He said he briefed his boss, and his boss wanted to meet with me that afternoon.
After lunch Peter took me to his office. He showed me the office area which could be allocated to the project. He also showed me an office which could be allocated to me as project manager.
We didn’t spend more than 10 minutes in his boss’s office. The meeting was very formal. His boss said he had seen my resumé. He thought I definitely qualified for the project manager’s position for the piece of business they were going after. In the end, he said how you got into BPR business, Mir.
I recall telling him “accidentally”. Then I explained to him that I knew somebody who worked for Texas Instruments who wanted to market their BPR modelling tool to DND. Unfortunately, the contract wasn’t big enough for them to bring somebody from Texas to demonstrate doing the contract here in Ottawa. He found out that I knew enough about the BPR methodology, and asked if I would be interested in working as a subcontractor with him at DND. That’s how I got involved–and the rest is history. He appeared to be happy with my explanation.
In any case, they gave me a copy of the RFP and asked me to review it and give Peter a call to discuss it.
I worked all weekend on the RFP. I drafted a response which I thought was a reasonable start.
Instead of speaking to Peter on the phone, I took the draft to his office first thing on Monday and left it with his secretary for his review.
Peter called me around 10:00 AM and sounded so excited on the phone. I said what’s going on, Peter.
He said you drafted a response to a complicated RFP on the weekend?
I recall saying to Peter that it’s a first draft and it needs some cleaning up, but I am happy with the methodology I proposed and the resource requirements that I identified. I also said, you may have noticed that I proposed five BPR-trained consultants with experience from my shop, and five resources from your company, assuming that you may have senior resources available for this project.
Peter said, of course, I will give you five excellent senior consultants, Mir.
I said the idea is to let each of your consultants work with mine in teams of two. This will provide them with all kinds of opportunities to learn about BPR while helping each other.
Peter said it sounds like an excellent approach. He supported it wholeheartedly.
If I remember correctly, it took a week of me working with Peter to finalize the proposal, which we submitted before the closing date.
I went back to my projects.
Lynda was very busy with her sorority. She was elected as president of the sorority for the chapter she was working with. I thought that was an excellent accomplishment.
At the same time, she was busy spending money on new drapes, furniture, and everything else she wanted for the house.
Once she was reasonably happy with the decor of the house, she wanted her mother to come and stay with us to show off the new house and the furniture. We ended up going to Brampton to get mom to stay with us for a while.
There were no new opportunities for proposals or marketing to different departments on the horizon, but I was keeping myself busy with the current projects. Adam seemed to be happy working with us, which was very important to me. My team of consultants accepted Adam as a smart kid, not necessarily as my son. Adam continued to learn the tricks of the trade. His MBA classes in the evening were going very well, too.
One Monday morning when I got to the office, I had a message from somebody I knew when I did some consulting in DND. It was relatively a small contract but I spent a lot of time doing some extra work for them when he was overwhelmed. He told me he would always remember that.
In any event, I returned his call. He sounded very excited on the phone. He wanted to share some information with me over lunch.
We met in a local restaurant. Once we ordered our food, he said the information that I want to share with you is kind of confidential. I don’t want you to share it with anybody else.
I said you know how trustworthy I am?
He said there is a movement in our department about the BPR project. A full colonel is assigned to be in charge of the project, but several senior officers from various parts of the department also are assigned to the team to work together. It is perhaps the first time that uniformed personnel and civilians in the department have an opportunity to work together. Furthermore, some of us were selected from different areas to help review and evaluate each proposal that has been received for this project.
I asked if he knew how many proposals they had received.
He said the answer to that question is no. But what I know is that we are trying to select four big companies with appropriate experience in BPR.
I said – WOW! I had no clue that DND was taking BPR that seriously.
He said you don’t know the half of it.
I said, however, what does this have to do with me?
He said don’t play dumb, Mir.
I said what do you mean?
He said I know that you teamed up with CGI to respond to this opportunity. What you don’t know is how the project is set up and how the selected companies will work with a huge DND staff.
I said what do you mean by selected companies?
He said there will be more than one company with expertise in BPR to work with us. Then each selected consulting company has to transfer the expertise to personnel assigned to that team. That particular team would be assigned to do BPR for a functional area with their resources as well as the DND folks who are assigned to the team.
I said wait a minute. I am having difficulties understanding the concept.
He said it’s easy. We don’t want to always be dependent upon consulting companies. This way we would learn the tricks of the trade working with people like you teaching us the methodology. Then we would do our own BPR in each and every department with or without your help.
It was a huge jump for me and I was still trying to comprehend.
He said I am not supposed to talk about this to anybody but I trust you and I am sure you are not going to share this information with CGI.
I said I guarantee you that nobody is going to find out from me.
He said I am not going to say another word on the subject but your name did come up more than once during our meetings which may or may not mean anything. I hope you are buying my lunch.
I said indeed.
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 Kachuik, 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 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.
