Feral Jundi

   From what I can gather, the IPOA/GIS conference in Miami is going well.  I also want to emphasize that for you owners of small companies, who want to get involved with opportunities in Haiti, then these are the types of conferences you should be attending.  It is also advisable to go to the conference prepared, meaning you have the licenses and you have your company squared away to actually deliver on promises.  Do not be the schmuck that goes to one of these things, and is not prepared or hasn’t a clue on how to put action to words and get boots on the ground.  All eyes are on you, and if you screw up, it gives the entire industry a black eye.

   What will be cool, is if Doug can give an AAR on this conference, and provide some details that the readership might be interested in.  I think it is noteworthy that they only had three weeks or so to put this together, when normally these events take months to plan.  That to me only highlights the flexibility and speed of what the private industry is capable of if properly organized and mobilized.  I witnessed the same reaction of private industry during the Katrina Hurricanes back in 2005, and it is definitely a strength of the industry.  So the next step after this conference, is to see who goes where, and what they are doing. I will keep a watch on it, and see what pops up. –Matt

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Private Sector Eyes Opportunity in Haiti Rebuilding

By Pascal Fletcher

March 10, 2010

Rebuilding Haiti after its catastrophic earthquake should generate major contracts for private companies specializing in construction, logistics, transport and security, but U.S. executives say they need a clear reconstruction strategy to shape their business plans.

Private sector firms that focus on post-conflict or disaster relief operations gathered at a meeting in Miami this week to consider the business opportunities offered by Haiti’s recovery from the January 12 quake that devastated the capital Port-au-Prince and surrounding towns.

With Haiti’s government saying up to 300,000 people may have died, some economists are calling the Haitian quake the deadliest natural disaster in modern times. Relief experts and business leaders agree the mammoth task of rebuilding what was already the Western Hemisphere’s poorest state will be impossible without private sector participation.

“I don’t think they have any option but to get private companies in to help reconstruct Haiti,” Kevin Lumb, CEO of London-based Global Investment Summits Ltd, which organized the Haiti Reconstruction meeting in Miami, told Reuters.

“I think it opens up a great deal of business opportunities. Most of their infrastructure is destroyed, their roads, communications, buildings, it’s obviously affected water supply, electricity, so that all needs rebuilding,” Lumb said.

The Miami summit was also organized by the International Peace Operations Association, a trade group of companies working in conflict, post-conflict and disaster zones.

IPOA President Doug Brooks cited $13 billion to $14 billion as estimates of the scale of damage inflicted by the Haitian quake, which could provide some measure of the business opportunities created by the reconstruction effort.

Brooks called the Miami meeting a “nuts and bolts conference” bringing together service providers, major humanitarian groups and other stakeholders in Haiti’s rebuilding. The aim was to fit needs to potential contract opportunities ahead of an international donors’ conference for Haiti scheduled for March 31 in New York.

“When the policies come down and the money starts flowing for the reconstruction, we’ll be ready to go,” Brooks said.

Companies looking for business at the Haiti reconstruction meeting included Georgia-based Harbor Homes LLC, which offers self-assembled PermaShelter houses for those left homeless by the quake, and Virginia-based Agility Logistics, which already supplies food rations to U.N. peacekeeping troops in Somalia.

LOOKING FOR “MASTER PLAN”

More than one million Haitians were left homeless and displaced by the January quake and Harbor Homes’ Richard Rivette said his company could provide easily assembled, storm- and quake-resistant galvanized steel homes to create the new villages expected to be set up outside of Port-au-Prince.

But he and other executives at the Miami meeting said they needed to have from the Haitian government and its relief partners a clearer idea of the planned rebuilding strategy.

“Without a master plan, it’s hard to cost estimate it,” said Rivette.

“I think everyone’s looking for the direction, where’s it going to go, how’s it going to work,” said Agility Logistics’ Thomas Shortley, who runs the firm’s business with the United Nations.

Other speakers said any survivors’ resettlement or relocation program could be bedeviled by land ownership issues. “Land rights are the elephant in the room,” said Ian Ridley of World Vision International, an aid group.

Weather forecasters are already predicting a more active than normal Atlantic hurricane season in 2010 and storm-swept Haiti could face a fresh humanitarian disaster if the hundreds of thousands of quake homeless are not under adequate shelter by the time the season starts on June 1.

Political analysts and aid workers say that social unrest — a feature of the cycle of poverty, corruption and violence that has dogged Haiti for decades — is a also major risk if employment and shelter solutions are not found quickly.

“It will not take long before some kind of civil unrest occurs,” said Derell Griffith of Sabre International, a security company, referring to quake survivors’ impatience over delays in relief efforts.

Present too at the Miami meeting was the U.S. government insurer and lender Overseas Private Investment Corporation. “Haiti has become a very strong priority for the U.S. government right now,” said OPIC’S Suzanne Etcheverry.

President Barack Obama met his Haitian counterpart Rene Preval in Washington on Wednesday, and said many Haitians were still in desperate need of shelter, food, and medicine.

“The situation on the ground remains dire,” Obama said.

Story here.

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Private firms line up as Haiti opens for business

10/03/2010

Haiti’s road to recovery took a new twist Wednesday as a trade group representing private security contractors wrapped up a conference on reconstruction in the earthquake-battered nation.

“You don’t want to look like you’re profiteering off situations like these,” Derrell Griffith, project director at Sabre International, said. “But there is a need and the people need it quick.”

The conference was organized by the Association of the Stability Operations Industry, also known as IPOA, representing some 60 companies working in logistics and security, many of them active in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Co-organizer and IPOA president Doug Brooks said private contractors can offer aid groups and government agencies myriad services — from translation to police training to running supply lines — as Haiti gets back on its feet.

While critics say private contractors have run loose in far-flung crisis zones, supporters point to their larger role guarding officials and convoys, and building infrastructure.

“They go into really austere, sometimes dangerous environments, and provide services that can be quite normal, like power generation and engineering,” said Brooks.

“It’s not so different between essentially a war zone or an area of disaster.”

Donations have flooded into non-governmental organizations offering relief following the January 12 earthquake, and as reconstruction gears up private companies are positioning themselves to get involved too.

Regine Barjon, of the Haitian-American Chamber of Commerce, pushed for streamlined loan applications for Haitian businesses trying to make a fresh start.

“Haiti is very open for business,” she said, flicking through a Power Point presentation with a banner along the bottom that read, “Jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs.” Another slide featured a picture of cruise ships approaching palm-fringed Haitian beaches.

One strategy for creating jobs is to bolster Haiti’s agricultural sector, Barjon said, which would also make the country less reliant on food imports. Haiti used to produce almost all its own food, and now imports most of it.

“We might have to import fuel,” Barjon said. “But we want to make our own chickens.”

Just one of six panels at the Miami conference dealt with security issues; others focused on disease prevention, shelter and jumpstarting commerce after the devastating quake.

The two-day conference was meant to match aid groups with companies they might call on. It comes two weeks before a large Haiti summit of international donors at the United Nations headquarters in New York.

Griffith said his company’s experience in Iraq meant it was poised to deliver aid to Haiti more quickly than most.

Initially focused on security, the company also installs prefabricated living units used by US troops in Iraq, and by internally displaced Iraqi families.

Some relief experts took issue with this fast-track approach.

“We need to focus on process before product,” said Ian Ridley of World Vision International.

Reconstruction is successful long-term when local communities participate, he argued, and that takes time.

Security companies such as Blackwater, now renamed Xe, which has come under fire for its work in Iraq, were not present at the event.

Other strategies for jumpstarting jobs in Haiti focused on sheltering the hundreds of thousands of Haitians left homeless by the quake.

Priscilla Phelps, a finance specialist at development consultancy TCG International, said housing construction could become a huge motor for job creation in Haiti if managed properly.

She favored efforts to help Haitians stay close to their crumbled homes, in temporary structures, while the rebuilding occurs. This way communities remain intact.

“There’s a lot of people offering to do reconstruction in Haiti,” Phelps said. “But it won’t be the best outcome if those offered solutions override local decision-making.”

In afternoon roundtables, companies with no security background at all also met with non-governmental groups, pitching everything from water-purifying wands to portable medical equipment.

Ed Volkwein, president of Hydro-Photon, Inc., swirled a hand-held device in his water glass. The wand, which purifies water using ultraviolet light, is already known to backpackers.

“We’ve been successful in the outdoors, now we’re moving into travel… and trying to figure out how to get into humanitarian,” Volkwein said.

“When you don’t know what you’re going to get into, and these emergencies are a classic example of that, this is the product you should have.”

Story here.