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Morrison's one commandment is to get the job done on time, even at the expense of the 10% profit that he tries to make on big jobs. When his estimators make a mistake, Morrison never tries to squirm out from under. When the boss of a job wants help, he does not go to Boise; Morrison or one of his lieutenants hotfoots it out to the job. Otherwise, Morrison gives his project managers all the elbow room they need.
"We've Got a Job." The mammoth Alcan project is a prime example of the Morrison method. When the preliminary survey work was done in February 1951, MK's No. 2 man, Jack Bonny, called a big, hearty Swede named Ole Strandberg who was vacationing in Honolulu. "Come on back," said Bonny. "We have a job for you—some dams and tunnels—the kind of stuff you like." Some "dams and tunnels," recalls Strandberg, turned out to be "a ten-mile tunnel, a 50-mile transmission line, the biggest underground powerhouse ever built."
Project Manager Strandberg was responsible for ordering $25 million worth of heavy equipment on his own say-so. He built a network of 26 radio stations to link 25 work camps with shelters for 6,500 men, set up a mile-long aerial tramway to haul 20-ton loads to inaccessible work sites, established what was then the world's biggest helicopter supply fleet outside the U.S. military. When he had manpower and equipment troubles, a phone call to Boise straightened them out. "My top tunnel man," says Strandberg, "was shifted from a job in Afghanistan to my team. If you can't make it after something like that, it's your own fault."
MK's part of the Alcan project was originally conceived as a $100 million job, with MK's fee pegged at $2,200,000—subject to a 50% cut if costs went beyond a certain limit. Costs have soared, and M-K may make less than $1,000,000 for its more than three, years' work in subzero temperatures and blinding blizzards that often buried camps under many feet of snow. The men are well aware that heavy construction is one of the most dangerous of all industries. To date, 48 men have been killed on the Alcan project, 33 in tunnel and mountain accidents, 15 in plane crashes. But no time has been lost. Three of the eight big generators are now being set in place. By July, the first power will surge over transmission cables. Wrote Morrison to Strandberg: "The gang is indeed to be congratulated."
Water Boy. Harry Morrison was born in central Illinois near Kenney (pop. 409). When he was four, and still wearing dresses, his mother died. After that, Morrison remembers his early life "as one of those things where the children get passed around among the various relatives."
Harry Morrison's father worked in a gristmill in Kenney. Harry was shy, thrifty, and determined to make good. When he was 14, he got a vacation job as water boy for the Chicago construction firm of Bates & Rogers. Five years later, after two years of high school and a business-school course, he went to work full-time for Bates & Rogers in Idaho, building a dam and powerhouse on the Snake River. Iron-grey already streaked his sandy hair, but he hustled so hard that other men called him "that damned kid."