KBR // Current TV

June 9 (Bloomberg) — KBR Inc., the largest contractor in Iraq, lost all of its potential bonus — $24.1 million — for the first four months of 2008 because it was found partly to blame for the accidental electrocution of a Green Beret.

This is the first time KBR lost its entire performance fee since the company won the contract in 2001 to support U.S. troops, Army Contracting Command spokesman Daniel Carlson said.

Houston-based KBR has received orders from this contract totaling $35.7 billion to date. Its profit comes from a base fee of 1 percent and periodic bonuses based on criteria such as quality of work and its control over cost and schedule.

Staff Sergeant Ryan Maseth of the 5th Special Forces Group was electrocuted while showering on Jan. 2, 2008, in part because the shower’s electrical pump wasn’t properly grounded when installed less than two years before, the Pentagon inspector general reported on July 27, 2009.

The report criticized the Army’s oversight of Maseth’s compound, saying his death “was the catastrophic result of the failure of multiple systems exposing U.S. personnel to unnecessary risk.”

Army commanders, the Army contracting command and KBR were all “responsible for the use and physical condition” of the compound, the report said.

“KBR did not ground equipment during installation or report improperly grounded equipment identified during routine maintenance” at the facility starting in February 2006, thereby “perpetuating electrical hazards,” the report found.

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Boo-hoo, KBR (Halliburton subsidiary, Dick Cheney, CIA) lost 24 mil for killing a soldier. That wasn't the first time a soldier got killed taking a shower. Notice how the 24 mil was only a for a 4-month period in 2008, that's only a bump in the road for the amount of contracts their getting with our tax dollars + their side gig of running heroin out of Afghanistan (but that's for black ops). Such a shame for a hero like Ryan Maseth RIP.June 9 (Bloomberg) — KBR Inc., the largest contractor in Iraq, lost all of its... more

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KBR Gets No-Bid Army Work, as U.S. Alleges Kickbacks

The US Army says that Iraq War contractor KBR Inc. has been selected for a no-bid... more

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Obama administration Gives KBR $568 Million No-bid Contract

By Tony Capaccio May 6 (Bloomberg) -- KBR Inc. was selected for a no-bid contract... more

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KBR BILLS $5 MILLION FOR MECHANICS WHO WORK 43 MINUTES A MONTH

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Defense agreed to pay the megacontractor KBR $5 million a year to repair tactical vehicles, from Humvees to big rigs, at Joint Base Balad a large airfield and supply center north of Baghdad. Yet according to a new Pentagon report, what the military got was as many as 144 civilian mechanics, each doing as little as 43 minutes of work a month, with virtually no oversight. The report, issued March 3, 2010 by the DOD’s inspector general, found that between late 2008 and mid-2009, KBR performed less than 7 percent of the work it was expected to do, but still got paid in full.

The $4.6 million blown on this particular contract is a relatively small loss considering that in 2009 alone, the government had a blanket deal worth $5 billion Just days before the Pentagon released the Balad report, KBR announced it had won a new $2.3 billion-plus, five-year Iraq contract.

What the DOD investigators found in Balad was astounding. Army rules require that its civilian maintenance employees are actively working 85 to 90 percent of the time they are on the clock. Yet KBR’s own records showed that its workers were only engaged in labor an average of 6.6 percent of the time they were on duty. The DOD ran its own numbers, and its findings were even worse. In September 2008, for example, KBR had 144 maintenance employees at Balad, available to work 16,200 hours. Their actual “utilization rate” was a paltry 0.63 percent—which means that each of the 144 KBR employees averaged about 43 minutes of work for the entire month.

The Pentagon investigators found that the Army had no system in place to police how much work its contractors were actually doing. Plus, the unit in charge of KBR’s operation at Balad reported that the contractor wouldn’t reveal how many mechanics it employed there “because it believed the information was proprietary.”

Federal auditors are concerned with more than just KBR’s inflated contracts. In fiscal 2009 alone, the Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA)identified $20.4 billion in questionable billing, and another $12.1 billion in unsupported cost estimates, by contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Title: KBR Bills $5 Million For Mechanics Who Work 43 Minutes a Month

Source: Mother Jones, March 25, 2010

Source URL: http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/03/kbr-idle-hands-iraq-balad-contract-waste-pentagon-report-hearing

Author: Adam Weinstein

Faculty Evaluator: Peter Phillips

Sonoma State University(The+Media+Freedom+Foundation)&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher Defense agreed to... more

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Nearly All of $5 Million KBR Contract Wasted

According to a new piece in Mother Jones magazine, military contractor KBR squandered... more

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GORDON DUFF: ORCHESTRATING A PHONY WAR IN AFGHANISTAN / IS THE ENEMY OUR OWN STUPIDITY?

America’s recent attack, augmented by top line Afghan army troops, against the... more

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KBR gets $5 Billion for 43 Minutes of Work

The Department of Defense agreed to pay KBR $5 million a year to repair tactical... more

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KBR Denied $20 million; Less than a Time Out but More than a Slap on the Wrist

DCBureau.org - The greatest risk for Staff Sergeant Ryan Maseth in Iraq didn’t come from enemy fire. Maseth was electrocuted to death due to U.S. private military contractor KBR Inc.’s shoddy electrical work. Now, for the first time, KBR is losing millions of dollars as a consequence. The Army decided to deny KBR bonuses, which were routinely awarded to the firm for “excellent” work.

According to KBR’s Security and Exchange Commission 8-K filing, they have been denied $20 million so far. Barry Piatt, press secretary for Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND), said, “The AP reported the figure at $25 million, but we are not sure where they got that figure.” If KBR’s SEC filing is accurate, $20 million could be just the beginning. If this review process continues, they’re expecting to lose $132 million in award fees for their work from January 2008 through December 2009. A press release from the Democratic Policy Committee on Thursday said that this is the “right call,” but only a “first step.” Senator Dorgan, the soon to retire chairman of the DPC, sat through 21 hearings about waste, fraud and corruption in military contracting since 2003. His countless hours listening to accounts of KBR’s “widespread sloppy contracting work that killed soldiers,” impacted KBR little, until now. Dorgan said that the Army’s decision “will send a long overdue message to military contractors that they will be held accountable for their performance, but the Army needs to send that message much more powerfully.”

He isn’t satisfied with the $20 million. The Army previously paid KBR $34 million for its past electrical work, and Dorgan thinks the army should get a refund. If the Army takes Dorgan’s advice, it will review the $34 million and potentially take away KBR’s bonus. This $34 million payback would be on top of KBR’s projected loss of $132 million.

How does KBR feel about this? KBR Director of Communications, Heather Browne, did not return our phone call or e-mail. KBR did say in their SEC filing that the firm had to take a second look at their projected earnings. In the SEC report, KBR says, “[Due to] our inability to obtain assurances to the contrary, we concluded that we can no longer estimate the fees to be awarded.”

The safety review began after Dorgan and Senator Robert Casey (D-PA) formally requested that the Army review KBR’s work following the electrocution death of Staff Sgt. Ryan Maseth. Task Force SAFE found KBR exposed soldiers to life-threatening risks with their electrical work. According to Piatt, separate independent inspection teams from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Army Combat Safety Center faulted KBR’s “gross incompetence,” including a Level III CAR – a serious action just one step below the possibility of suspension or termination of a contract – from the Defense Contract Management Agency in September 2008. Dorgan says that KBR’s electrical workers were “often unqualified, poorly trained and poorly supervised.”

When DCBureau asked Piatt about other KBR negligence issues, he named a number of government organizations currently inspecting KBR. DCBureau’s investigations involving sodium dichromate at Qarmat Ali and the use of burn pits at Joint Base Balad are two of the issues under review. Piatt tells us that the U.S. Government Accountability Office is investigating the use of burn pits. The Department of Defense Inspector General is looking into the sodium dichromate issue.

What will these investigations mean for the KBR? Piatt says that Senator Dorgan “certainly expects the Army to continue to hold KBR accountable but believes it will take continued and aggressive oversight by Congress to ensure that it happens.” It remains to be seen whether or not denying KBR bonuses will improve their safety standards in Iraq and Afghanistan. At least it seems to have gotten their attention.

Reporting by Katie ManningDCBureau.org - The greatest risk for Staff Sergeant Ryan Maseth in Iraq didn’t... more