As the country gears up for the likelihood of war against Iraq, U.S. military and civilian officials also are plotting strategy for rebuilding a post-Saddam Hussein war-torn country. Such a strategy will take almost as much careful planning as the military campaign. It could also mean billions of dollars in work for engineering and construction firms.

The Bush administration's plans for reconstructing Iraq have a two-part goal–win additional support for the war by showing the humanitarian effort that will follow and getting the rebuilding started as soon as possible.

To underscore its commitment, the White House since September has quietly put together an interagency team to coordinate those efforts. "We have never had nearly five months advance time before a major emergency, should it happen," says Andrew Natsios, administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development and a veteran of the first Bush administration. "We don't know what's going to happen, but contingency planning is what this is all about."

The agency already has in place a 60-member rapid response team charged with providing sanitary waste disposal and wastewater removal systems, monitoring the transportation infrastructure and providing plastic sheeting and tents for emergency shelter. In late February, USAID also asked a select group of U.S. engineering firms to bid on a contract that could be worth $900 million to rebuild a postwar Iraq. Special procurement laws allow for the select bidding and also prohibit the government from discussing details about which firms were asked to respond.

"The firms all have a proven track record" in similar type of work, says a USAID spokeswoman. Industry sources claim they had just eight days to respond. "It required full-blown submissions of qualifications," says one company official. "It was a very intense drill."

USAID declines to say when the main contract would be awarded. "That is unpredictable because there are a lot of moving parts," the spokeswoman says, referring to the uncertainty over whether or when a war would begin. Agency officials also are preparing requests for proposals for secondary contracts, but the official would not comment on when firms would be asked to bid. The Bush administration wants "to move quickly but specific dates have not been designated," she adds.

Bechtel Corp., San Francisco, and Washington Group International Inc., Boise, say that they are responding or have responded to the initial RFP. A spokeswoman for Halliburton Co.'s Houston-based Kellogg Brown & Root declined comment.

Only a handful of U.S. construction companies have experience demilitarizing weapons of the type likely to be found in Iraq and it is likely all will be needed. Washington Group is talking to federal agencies about destroying chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. The only other U.S. companies with similar credentials are Bechtel and Parsons Corp., Pasadena, Calif. If intelligence reports are accurate, all three firms will get contracts.

"We can speculate with confidence that it would make sense to have a coalition of companies," a source with one of those firms says. Publicly, other firms including Parsons and the Louis Berger Group, East Orange, N.J., decline to comment on whether they are responding to the AID contract. But Parsons President Frank DiMartino says, "If we were to bid, we would bid as a team, given the size of it."

The Army Corps of Engineers Transatlantic Program Center also has sent out to a limited number of firms an RFP for an indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contract concerning some phase of reconstruction, according to an official with a company invited to respond. "But the Corps did not identify a specific country, only the region,'' the official says.

U.S. companies shouldn't expect a monopoly on the work. After the last Persian Gulf war, many contracts went to non-U.S. firms. "I would expect that if these contracts are related to an aid program that the U.S. is going to finance, then those contracts would go to U.S. firms," says one lobbyist. However, if the United Nations or other international aid organizations provide financing, the work may go to other countries, he adds. "It's not just a matter of U.S. firms going in; You have a highly trained Iraqi engineering force that can do [the work]."

Reaction to U.S. plans for rebuilding Iraq has been guarded in the U.K. "There is some appreciation that the Americans are being a bit premature to talk about a country that has not yet been flattened," says Kurt Calder, spokesman for the London-based Construction Confederation, a main contractor trade group. Marjorie Hooper, spokeswoman for Balfour Beatty Construction Ltd., London, notes that after the last Gulf War, reconstruction was managed by the Corps and most work was awarded to U.S. firms. "We don't see it being any different this time," she adds.

The flow of information from the Bush administration has slowed in recent days as tension has mounted. USAID's Natsios and Jay Garner, director of the Dept. of Defense's new Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance Office, declined to appear before a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing March 11 on rebuilding.

At the session, private-sector witnesses estimated reconstruction costs could range from $25 billion to more than $100 billion over five to 10 years. Foreign Relations Chairman Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) suggested that the U.S. should work to create a broad reconstruction coalition, just as it tried for a broad war coalition.