Word: m-k
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About 8,000 miles away, in British Columbia, another M-K construction crew was finishing a far bigger job, a $173 million hydroelectric installation. It was MK's share of the $500 million Nechako-Kitimat project of the Aluminum Co. of Canada, probably the biggest construction job ever attempted by private capital. To supply power for a new aluminum smelter, M-K had dammed a river to form a 120-mile-long reservoir, hollowed out a mountain to enclose a huge powerhouse five city blocks long, and drilled a ten-mile tunnel to carry the water to the turbines...
...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...
...Learn, Too." Overseas, Morrison-Knudsen is as much teacher as builder. When M-K first went into Afghanistan seven years ago to erect two dams to control floods and bring water to 400,000 desert acres, it brought in a large crew of Americans. There were even high-school graduates to work on surveying teams. M-K found, as it had in South America, that it could train natives for many of the jobs. Now it generally operates with only one American specialist to scores of natives on each job. M-K sometimes has as many as 400,000 local...
...insists that workers must learn to do everything the American way if they can work out a good method of their own. "The fact is," says one M-K executive, "there's a lot we can learn from them." By patient explanation and endless demonstration, tribesmen are coaxed off camels and onto roaring cats, and ancient peoples are taught a thousand undreamed of modern skills...
...cash, a dozen wheelbarrows, a few horses, some picks and shovels. The company's first job-a $14,000 subcontract to build a pumping station on the Snake River-brought only a tiny profit. The prime contractor and the promoter got into a court fight, and M-K was caught in the middle. Morrison ruefully recalls: "You can't make money out of lawsuits...