Rebuilding Iraq - A Virtual Enterprise

More than 5,000 concurrent construction and reconstruction projects are underway in Iraq, thanks in large part to a virtual enterprise known as the Iraq Reconstruction Management System. The system was developed by a team of companies managed by Total Resource Management (TRM) for the Iraq Projects and Contracting Office, and Oracle® plays an essential role in this massive undertaking.

This fully integrated enterprise system supports infrastructure lifecycle management as well as project and financial management of resource and assets for all of the official “Rebuilding Iraq” construction and non-construction efforts. It touches the entire program and project lifecycle – from planning to bidding and acquisition; project and construction management; installation and implementation. It encompasses asset management efforts in terms of maintenance, repair and/or disposal. The system also offers a variety of capital investment reporting tools to enable better decision-making. While TRM’s customers throughout the U.S. commonly use its lifecycle management systems to track everything from truck fleets and facilities to the scheduling of maintenance and logistic activities, this effort is believed to be the first of its kind used for an entire country.

“Our biggest challenge was to create and deploy the first phase of this complex enterprise in just 60 days, even as the project contracts were being awarded,” said TRM Product R&D Director Georgia Harlow, who serves as the technical lead and assistant program manager on the Iraq project. “Our success with rapid implementation is, in part, based on the seamless integration of Oracle Portal, Oracle Collaboration Suite, Oracle eBusiness, and Oracle Spatial applications. The capabilities that Oracle offers, and its ease-of-use with other third-party tools, have been essential to this project.”

The Iraq iLearning Center – an enterprise eTraining solution supported by TRM, complements the Iraq Reconstruction Management System and is used to train a large number of transient managers and contractors. Due to the nature of the rebuilding process, project learners typically are cycled in and out of Iraq after a few months or even weeks on the job. The easy-to-use iLearning courseware, developed by TRM’s training experts, is delivered in short but informative segments, and reflects the business process while improving the users’ application skills.

In time, the virtual enterprise known as the Iraq Reconstruction Management System will be transitioned to the Iraqis, who will use it to successfully sustain the reconstructed infrastructure provided by the U.S. and its coalition partners.

Click here to view this case study as a pdf