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Friday, December 16, 2011

Industry Talk: US Military Steps In To Man Gates In South Korea As G4S Struggles To Fill Slots

Filed under: Industry Talk,South Korea — Tags: G4s, Industry Talk, Joeun Systems Corp., security contracting, south korea — Matt @ 10:22 PM

U.S. officials said Joeun Systems was paid a total of about $118 million over the past five years for its services, but G4S was the lowest acceptable bidder for the next five-year contract at a price of about $109 million.
As G4S took over gate security at most U.S. military bases in South Korea at the beginning of this month, only 60 of the 850 guards who worked for Joeun Systems had agreed to sign on with the new contractor, according to officials with the guards’ union.
On Thursday, G4S said it has hired about one-third of the 600-plus guards it will need to secure all the posts. Many of those hired are former Joeun Systems employees, G4S officials say.

Here is an interesting little story from South Korea. We have a case here where the US military rebid the contract for base security, and G4S beat out the incumbent firm named Joeun Systems Corp. From the sounds of it, it looks like this contract was another Lowest Priced, Technically Acceptable contract mechanism victim. Meaning G4S was the lowest bidder, and paying the price for being the lowest bidder. The US military is also paying the price now for going cheap.

Joen Systems Corp. of course is protesting, and all of the guards that worked for them are union and are not willing to move over to G4S to take a lower salary. Which is totally understandable.

The interesting thing here is that our military bases there are using local security folks. Which is fine, but if the US military cares to have quality folks protecting these camps, then pay the extra amount and contract with American companies to do this work. Or use the Best Value mechanism of contracting, and not necessarily go with the lowest bidder for these things. Because if you are going to use local companies or local workers, then you will more than likely be dealing with that host nation’s unions. Or folks will organize naturally to protect their salaries if they do not have a union. We saw the same thing happen in Iraq with the TWISS contracts. LPTA is a crappy way to go, and has all sorts of problems associated with it.

Also, because they are local, they will also have more impact in the local media stations and get more sympathy from their fellow citizens. Either way, dealing with unions and contract disputes will always be an issue when trying to modify contracts and pay less for the same services. All I have to say is that paying the industry standard is the safe way to go, because you definitely do not want disgruntled guards tasked with force protection. Especially with the threat of North Korea, or any number of other threats that are unique to overseas posts. –Matt

GIs still manning gates in S. Korea as contractor struggles to fill slots
By JON RABIROFF AND ASHLEY ROWLAND
December 15, 2011
U.S. soldiers continue to man the gates at U.S. military bases in South Korea more than two weeks after a new security firm failed to hire enough employees to get the job done.
Despite the fact that the firm, G4S, continues to be short-staffed and in violation of its contract, U.S. military officials say they are willing to give the company more time to get up to speed.
Both sides insist the situation will soon be resolved, that security at the bases has not been compromised and disruptions have been kept to a minimum.

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Sunday, September 26, 2010

Industry Talk: Dept. Of State Daily Briefing–Contractors And The Challenge Of Iraq

Filed under: Industry Talk,Iraq — Tags: contractors, daily briefing, DoS, Iraq, security contractors, south korea, WPPS, WPS — Matt @ 3:30 AM

QUESTION: Does the Department intend to hire enough private contractors to make up the shortfall of what the military now provides in terms of security, transportation, communications, and all the other services?

MR. TONER: Well, Charley, the responsibility of security, obviously, on the ground there falls under our Bureau of Diplomatic Security. And it’s up to them, obviously, to provide a safe and secure environment. And that’s going to involve, obviously, the use and participation of contractors. These contractors will provide protective services, advice, training, support. And in terms of actual numbers on the ground, I’ll leave that for them to sort of decide what’s appropriate for the security situation.

*****

Despite the grilling that congress gave DoS the other day about this very ambitious new phase, it sounds like they are still pressing forward. Some of the issues they are coming up against is that DoD has not committed to giving them the stuff they want (Blackhawks, MRAPs, etc.). Their past history with managing contracts is giving congress a pause as well. And finally, the missions that contractors could potentially be presented with is causing congress to raise some inherently governmental questions. David Isenberg had a post on the matter.

No word yet on who got what for WPPS/WPS. If this is the current position of DoS though, I would assume that it is all systems go. Although I am sure they would like to do as much as they can to give congress some confidence in their mission. Good luck. lol –Matt

——————————————————————-

Mark C. Toner

Acting Deputy Department Spokesman

Daily Press Briefing

Washington, DC

September 24, 2010

(a portion of the briefing is posted below)

QUESTION: Can we stay on Iraq for a second?

MR. TONER: Yeah. Go ahead. Yeah.

QUESTION: Yesterday on Capitol Hill, the State Department came up against some pretty sharp criticism about its ability to oversee reconstruction once the U.S. military pulled out. Special Inspector General Bowen said the State Department had failed so far to oversee a lot of these projects. And today he repeated that and said as far as he could see, the State Department did not have the core ability to oversee reconstruction at, say, tens of billions of dollars of taxpayer money. What’s the State Department going to do?

MR. TONER: Well, we cooperated, actually, on that report and have made every effort to keep Congress informed of additional resources needed or required, rather, for the transition. That is, in fact, ongoing. Certainly we recognize the enormous challenge of, and are devoting considerable effort to, the military-to-civilian transition, working in close collaboration with the Department of Defense. And we’re – obviously, our overarching goal is to ensure the safety and security of our personnel in Iraq, but also ensure an appropriate level of contract and operational oversight, and then thirdly, to make sure that the mission there – our mission, rather, succeeds.

And then finally, I just would say that this is a tremendous challenge, but the State Department does have experience in this. Looking back from an historical perspective, from post-war Germany and Japan, to the unrest in Central and South America in the 1970s, to more recently East Timor and Bosnia, we’ve put staff, personnel in these challenging locations. Their goals were to stabilize the governments, provide foreign assistance, promote stable and functional host governments. And so we believe that we are up to the challenge in Iraq.

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