prospective user of plant facilities is seldom the one best qualified to construct them and is often unable to lay down properly their general plan and characteristics. About six months elapsed before it was fully realized that if those engaged in purchasing, producing, storing, or handling Army equipment and supplies were as skilled as they should be in their own lines of work it was unlikely that they could also qualify as construction experts. Consequently the transfer of their construction work to the Construction Division was no reflection on their ability. It was rather a correction of the earlier error of letting them take on work which would of necessity entail a division of their energies and abilities. It seems certain that the necessary results could not have been effected successfully in any other way.

The construction work done by or under the War Department covered:

1. Troop housing, including 16 cantonments for the National Army and 16 camps for the National Guard and Regular Army; similar camps and flying fields for Military Aeronautics; hospitals; troop embarkation depots, etc., consisting generally of rapidly built wooden structures.

2. Port and terminal facilities, involving generally the construction of storehouses, docks, and wharves of more permanent character.

3. A variety of plant facilities for the production of Ordnance Department supplies, guns, and shells; also storage facilities, arsenals, and proving grounds.

4. Plants for making nitrates, powder, and other explosives, and for packing these explosives or loading them into shells.

5. Industrial plants and their enlargements, such as factories, mills, power stations, etc.; in which the interest of the Government varied with the degree of its ownership and with other contract provisions.

6. The maintenance and repair of the foregoing structures and of their utility services and the operation of such services.

These projects had many individual characteristics but enough features in common to admit of adopting general standards in design and methods of construction by allowing adaptations in the field to suit local conditions. This was especially true of the cantonments and camps, of which there was no opportunity to make detailed or individual plans in advance.

The declaration of war made it necessary to provide shelter and utility services for housing about 1,000,000 troops and required the construction, during the summer of 1917, of a large number of wooden cantonments and tent camps. The former were cities of about 40,000 population each and aggregated several times the housing capacity of cities such as Buffalo, Cincinnati, Detroit, Milwaukee or San Francisco. While the plans and general building designs had been partially

developed, many special structures, such as hospitals, depots, and remount stations had not then been designed or even determined upon. Nevertheless provision had to be made for them and materials ordered at once for the construction of the temporary and permanent buildings and for the water supply and sewerage.

The immediate need for extensive housing and training facilities was recognized by a number of engineers and builders who volunteered their services to help in these problems of determining the character of the required structures and expediting the preliminary work of investigation and design. This work had to be done quickly, without much knowledge as to the locations and sites of the cantonments and camps, transportation, living and construction conditions; scope of initial or ultimate project; and extent to which plans and specifications would have to be altered almost overnight to comply with the changing needs of the Army, as developed by experience, overseas and at home.

The facts mentioned made it impossible to let fixed price contracts except for material and for minor parts of the work. There was no opportunity to secure lump sum or even unit price bids because the Government was unable to furnish information, plans, or adequate specifications, and information was lacking as to the amount, character, and location of the work and working conditions. It was therefore evident that the services of contractors must be enlisted on some basis which would admit of working out all features and problems without incurring delays, through changes or additions, or creating complications which would be to the disadvantage of the Government. Insistence on doing this construction by prewar Government methods, which required the letting of lump sum or unit price contracts, would have resulted in losing valuable time, many lives, and possibly the War. To expedite this emergency construction work, the Secretary of War declared, on April 12, 1917, that an emergency existed in the meaning of section 3709, Revised Statutes, under which emergency construction could be carried on without advertising and taking competitive bids.

These conditions demanded:

1. That a form of contract as to plans should be developed which would leave the Government unhampered and yet assure the building of the requisite structures at maximum speed.

2. That the services of competent and responsible contractors be secured upon whose zeal, knowledge, and experience the Government could rely.

3. That the administrative organizations of the War Department construction arm be changed and made adequate and flexible in order efficiently to design, direct, and supervise all this work. This

necessitated that many experienced men of proven ability be obtained to fill the important positions in the new organizations.

All these conditions were met and the Cantonment Division created to administer the work, which was immediately started, being based on the three primary features above mentioned, namely:

1. A flexible type of cost-plus contract, carrying low compensation. 2. Mutual confidence and cooperation between the Government officials and the contractors selected.

3. The enlargement and development of the construction bureau of the War Department into the Cantonment Division, to administer and direct the work and supervise its execution.

Under this general plan, changed and enlarged to meet requirements, a total of 596 construction projects, ranging in size up to more than $40,000,000 each, are stated to have been built. Much of this work was carried on simultaneously.

The Committee on Emergency Construction, which was charged with the nomination and selection of contractors, obtained information respecting the qualifications of numerous contractors and thereafter invited many of them to furnish statements respecting their experience, past and current work, and grounds for expecting consideration.

The Government and its representatives received many protests against this plan and pressure was brought upon Members of Congress by those failing to secure work or desiring special consideration. Many argued that competitive bids should be secured. When the requirements of the situation were realized by the largest and most experienced contracting concerns, they showed a general willingness to build the work on this Government plan for the fees fixed and approved by the General Munitions Board.

The indorsement of this plan for performing War Department emergency construction received from the engineers, architects, and builders of the country, their full cooperation therein, and the successful results achieved, indicate its general soundness.

Subsequently, early in 1918, because of questions raised in various quarters as to the wisdom of these methods of construction, and also because of the enlarged program of construction then contemplated, the War Department decided to invite a board of experts to review and report upon these policies and the type and form of the standard contract in use by the then Construction Division on all of its work. This board was composed of the presidents of the principal national engineering societies and of the Chamber of Commerce of the United States, and representatives of labor, contracting concerns, and the public. At its meetings, held in Washington, it considered, among other matters, a summary statement dated March 14, 1918, with which it was supplied, on its request, by the Construction Division.

Because of its full exposition of the general situation and the problems involved a portion of such statement is here quoted:

It was at first decided to build 32 cantonments. This number was later changed to 16. The estimated cost of first original 16 cantonments was approximately $5,000,000 each. It was thought that additional construction would be added, and this thought proved correct. By successive steps from the time of the commencement of the job until completion work was added in the form of additional hospital accommodations, the addition of divisional depots, divisional remount stations, complete changes in the military organizations to raise the companies from 200 men to 250 to suit the Pershing Division and to radically modify the general scheme of military organizations and other like changes so that the final cost of the cantonments was in the neighborhood of $9,000,000 each, nearly all of which increase was due to the additional work rather than to poor estimating in the first place, although the original estimates were somewhat low. It must be borne in mind also that many of these changes, particularly those caused by the changes in the military organizations, were not decided upon until after the 1st of September, when the contractors were in some cases practically finished with their original jobs and had in several cases materially decreased the organizations.

In the case of the two largest port terminal developments now under construction the plans were fairly well decided upon and construction started on the basis of the plans fixed. In both cases, after the jobs had gotten some weeks along and the organizations were commencing to show material results, in some cases having several thousand men on the job, construction had to be absolutely stopped, due to the direction of higher authority, and these holdups continued until the matter could be again adjusted. In both cases the work is being carried forward under generally the same plans as were originally contemplated but with enough modifications to seriously affect any lump-sum contract. It also developed at one of these terminals that instead of being able to build one-story buildings on the ground, as was originally thought possible, it was necessary to pile for the entire area, including the support of the floors. In another case, the location of the buildings which had been started was changed and construction delayed while additional filling could be done at the new site. An additional pier was added to the project.

Taking one of the Ordnance depots as a sample, the plans for the general development were fairly well settled and construction work was laid out and started on the basis of building about eight magazines to start with, with plans for increasing this number as necessity demanded. After the construction work was started it was decided by the Ordnance Department to add several hundred thousand square feet of building space for use in connection with the carriage department, which had formerly had no connection with the job at all. This necessitated considerable changes in the railroad arrangements. After the work had gotten well under way again it was suddenly found necessary to add a cantonment to house 5,000 troops, which had not previously been considered as even a remote possibility in this connection. It was also necessary to get the housing for these troops in the shortest possible time, which necessitated radical changes in the construction organization, sacrificing the organization on the original contract to make possible the necessary speed under the new conditions.

In the case of a shell-filling plant for the Ordnance Department, that department had started out on a small construction project for a plant for filling shells with poisonous gas. It was apparently not originally contemplated that this would be a plant for any other process than filling the shells themselves with this gas. The Ordnance Department had started the construction of this plant previous to the time when the Cantonment Division was directed to undertake all construction work. The contracts used by the Ordnance Department were something special and are now the subject

of considerable negotiations as to their actual meaning. In the meantime it has been decided to add to this plant, which was originally thought to involve an expenditure of a few thousand dollars, a chlorine plant, a large power plant, and other parts necessary for the complete manufacture of poisonous gases as well as loading them into shells, so that the total expenditure as now contemplated is stated to be over $30,000,000.

The above samples may be taken as representing the condition on most of the work which the Cantonment Division is doing. There have not been many jobs where the changes or difficulties as affecting contractural relations have been materially less than those above enumerated.

Following its review, the board of experts presented, on March 15, 1918, a comprehensive report, of which a copy is annexed as Exhibit 3, expressing its approval, for war emergency work, of the construction methods adopted and of standard cost plus a sliding scale with fixed maximum fee contract, and gave at length the reasons for such conclusions.

The work and plant facilities which were built under this standard contract by the Cantonment Division and by the Construction Division appear to have been supplied on time. Speed was made the controlling consideration, as it was essential that the approved construction program should not lag or fail regardless of the radical and sweeping changes in plans which frequently had to be made to suit revised Army requirements or to utilize the only suitable materials that were available.

Bureaus dealing with new problems could not always at once define their needs with such accuracy that their projects could be pushed to completion on fully predetermined lines. It often was necessary for the Construction Division to start work as soon as the expenditure was authorized and to develop plans and meet difficulties as it best could, as the work progressed, in cooperation with the requisitioning bureau. Liaison officers were furnished by the requisitioning bureaus and attached to the Construction Division to secure proper coordination. The officials of most of these bureaus have stated their approval of the work of the Cantonment and Construction Divisions. Some expressed the opinion that their own bureau organization could have done its building work as well as or better.

Expenditures on War Department emergency construction done by or under the Construction Division aggregated about $1,000,000,000 at the time of the armistice, all of which was executed under the standard contract. This contained a clause fixing a definite maximum limit for the contractor's fee, anything in the contract to the contrary notwithstanding. The saving to the Government, due to fixing a maximum limiting fee, proved very valuable and, on the 16 National Army cantonments alone its insertion is estimated to have saved about $5,000,000 in fees otherwise payable.