THE BEST IS YET TO COME

The sands of time ran out of my work clock. This story describes my final years of corporate employment.03/10/2016.

THE BEST IS YET TO COME

Within a week of being removed from my position, a long-time company friend arranged to transfer me to the Project Management Department in the capacity of Procurement Consultant. Eating crow is not a tasty dish, but my alternatives were nil. It behooved me to stay on with SRP because my retirement benefits would diminish significantly if I resigned.

A need for my services in this capacity actually did exist. The company had hired Black & Veatch, a Kansas City engineering/construction firm, to design and build an addition to the company’s power station at St. Johns, Arizona, Coronado Generating Station Unit 3. I would help oversee purchasing activities associated with this major project.

In 1988, financial conditions caused SRP to cancel construction of CGS Unit 3. By then, it had awarded over $100 million in contracts for equipment and services, the bulk of it to General Electric for its turbine generator set and to Combustion Engineering for its steam generator.

Our contract boilerplate contained very specific cancellation language but few suppliers or contractors anticipated this clause would come into play. Many firms found it extremely difficult to document their costs associated with our order.

I spent the last year of my employment helping settle about one hundred vendor claims for relatively small amounts of money compared to those submitted by GE and Combustion Engineering, each about 30 million dollars. Their equipment remained in storage for years. Efforts to sell these items to other utilities failed.

As the settlement process for this major project came to an end, I wondered what would happen to me next. Would I be laid off, forced to retire early, or manage to hang on a few years longer, hopefully to age 65 in order to maximize my retirement benefits?

The answer came quickly. SRP began reducing its workforce in 1989. In April, they severed a group of employees considered most expendable.  My boss chose not to include me in that initial layoff group. That decision helped boost my ego.

Later, SRP offered me a generous severance package. In Mafia terms, they made me an offer I could not refuse. I retired at age 62 on July 23, 1989 after 22 years and 5 months of employment.  

I ran out the door with glee and unlike Job's wife, did not look back.

▀