Project Engineer Learns Not to Take ‘Yes’ for an Answer

Engineer learns no
Originally uploaded by Sydney Weasel.

By Norris Jones, Gulf Region Central District, US Army Corps of Engineers

Baghdad, Iraq--“They might say ‘yes,’ but that might not really be what they mean because some Iraqi contractors are too proud to admit they simply don’t understand our lingo,” explains Ghassem Khosrownia, a project engineer with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Gulf Region Central District.

Simplifying the process so that Iraqi contractors know exactly what they need to do to succeed has been one of Khosrownia’s main focuses. “The heart of the whole thing,” he said, “is getting them started in the right direction, sharing and working with them and the communities they’re impacting.”

Khosrownia is serving at Camp Taji north of Baghdad, a base with 12,000 Iraqi soldiers.

“I realized early on that we needed to re-tool our means and methods once the contracts were awarded – basically to say the same thing, but in a simpler way.” {Click on image for details}