People inspire Contracting Chief Todd to be ‘consumed’ by the mission
By Dave Harris and Brenda Beasley, Public Affairs, Louisiana Recovery Field Office

Memphis District Contracting Chief Jean Todd hit the ground in Louisiana almost as soon as the hurricanes did. Early on, the LA-RFO set up in Baton Rouge.

 “I had the back end of a Ford Explorer fully loaded with contracts, not only our clothes and stuff like that, but contracts,” she said, and then she drove five hours to face a bare-bones office situation.

The Contracting job began with getting the building wired and ready for the Corps, Jean said. “We walked into the office and blue carpet and that was it. No desks, no chairs, no tables, no computers. We did contracts to get the telephone installed, to get the copiers and printers and computers purchased by the office.”

“Back in October 2005, I had been here three weeks before I ever saw any of Baton Rouge in the daylight,” Jean recalls. “With all the work, I never got off until 9, 10, or midnight. Until Thanksgiving Day, I had never seen Baton Rouge. I, literally, went from the hotel to the office and back again, in the dark.  So, I didn’t know my way around. Thanksgiving Day was a day we were closed and I went driving.”

Where does one eat?

 “There were restaurants open, but sometimes you waited a long time if you went during prime time, because there were a lot of evacuees still there.”

Now she’s back in Louisiana, this stint in New Orleans after a two-month hiatus, and conditions have improved, except for one thing – a shortage of currently qualified contract officers who can spell her.

Retirees are usually not anxious to return to work in Contracting. And since Memphis District is charged with cleaning up Louisiana, the lifeblood of getting the work done – contracting - is her responsibility “until mission completion, meaning contract closeout.”

She welcomes any reinforcements and acknowledges the essential contribution of teammates. “I could not have been successful without giving full credit to my staff at the RFO and my staff here,” she says. “This is definitely not a one-man show!” Yet, she is bonded with the mission and says she doesn’t know when she’ll go home as she says she now will “take up my residency” here in January.

Meanwhile, Jean looks at a number of goals, end results and bottom lines.

One of these is enabling herself and everyone else to “remain legal and ethical,” she says. “I’ve always said I look really good in orange, but the stripes get to me.”

And so she focuses on making sure contracts and the resulting work on the ground is “efficient, effective and legal, and what we’re doing here reflects positively on the Corps as we assist the recovery process in Louisiana.

”Success in any endeavor always has a few bumps in the road, and Jean sizes up the challenge.

“In being diligent in following the acquisition process, in full compliance with the law, often it just takes time,” she says, and time isn’t usually what people have too much of when responding to emergencies.

Jean cites as success the sheer volume of work performed by the Corps with the unique staffing anomalies.

“Cleaning up more than 25 million cubic yards of debris and roofing some 81,000 buildings after two major hurricanes, not just one – it’s never been done before,” she says. “You’ve got to look at that as success. It’s a tribute to the Corps of Engineers’ ability to get the work done, on the contracting side of the house and the engineering side of the house. Bringing together such a diverse group with the kind of turnover  we have (generally 30 days) is a phenomenal success!”

Jean points with pride to her quest to engage local workers – both prime and sub-contractors – resulting in stimulating the economy toward recovery.

“The mission consumed me,” she says. “It’s very important to me. It has become something I want to do, and I feel strongly it is something we as a nation and the Corps need to do. I’ve done things I never dreamed of doing.”

Jean tells of ribbon cuttings and dedications after the Corps installed trailers to support schools in East Baton Rouge Parish. “Children told how proud and happy they were to be sitting in a classroom at desks with their books instead of sitting on the floor in makeshift temporary quarters. One child expressed her thanks with the help of a story about Clifford the Big Red Dog.

“The bottom line is the people piece of this – helping people recover – to see their faces light up,” Jean says. “That’s why we do this.”

Jean is serious about seeing faces light up and looking you in the eye. She says returned here to “get my arms around the mission – the day-to-day intricacies that aren’t communicated in e-mail.” She wants face time.

“It’s all about relationships when it comes to the end of the day.”  She displays a panoramic photo of the devastation in the Lower Ninth Ward on her LA-RFO office wall. “Every time I get upset about why I’m down here, I look at that picture.”

She tells more of the early days, of the awful smell of death. She recalls a co-worker who tried unsuccessfully to wash away the smell by showering four times. “You’re remembering the smell,” Jean says.

She tells of colleagues working despite overwhelming circumstances.

“One man didn’t know where his wife was,” she recalls. “Another knew where his wife was but couldn’t communicate with her. Still another went back to his own house and had to kick his door in. I told him, ‘It’s just stuff. You’re OK and your wife is OK.’”

But, she says, it’s far more. “It’s home! You’ve got to understand the power of home. That’s why people come back. People ask, ‘Why would you come back when it will just flood again?’ The power of home.”

Jean says it’s hard work here. And yet, despite the pain she’s gone through, she is somehow bonded to the mission.

“I thought I could detach from the mission here,” she says. “But this is where I need to be. I like what I do. If I didn’t love this, I couldn’t be here. I certainly wouldn’t wish another emergency like this on anyone. God forbid. But I love the op-tempo. This kind of contracting doesn’t floor me because of my background” – background that included shots of adrenalin she got as contracting officer with the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) at Fort Campbell, Ky.

And yet, Jean finds fulfillment in what are still long hours. “I want to help the guy who wants to help himself,” she says.

 “The Chief of Engineers says Louisiana recovery is the Corps’ Number Two Mission,” she says. “Number One is the Global War on Terrorism.”

Will she see anything bigger than the mission here?  “Not in my life,” she says.   “This is life-changing.”