Berger Group's Strategy Still Relies on Going Far From Home
Berger Group, the big design and development consultant known for working in poor nations, found itself in unusual company this spring when the Bush administration was picking reconstruction contractors to work in Iraq. In news stories identifying contenders for the contract, which Berger did not win, the company was referred to as one of the U.S.'s "Big Five." The other companies were Bechtel, Fluor, Halliburton and Washington Group.
That tickled Derish M. Wolff, the 68-year-old chairman of Berger Group, partly because he knew that with total revenue of $443 million a year, his company is much smaller than Bechtel or Fluor, and that its place on the list was owed to deep international experience, not size. During a news conference, the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, Andrew S. Natsios, pointed to Berger's use of local contractors while rebuilding a key highway in war-ravaged Afghanistan as an example of how the Iraqi jobs should be done.