Page 254 - Peterson 85 Years and Going Strong
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  CORE VALUE: INTEGRITY
 I found out later that we were just one part of the project,
but without the Cat power, the
whole thing couldn’t work.
– Jeff Goggin, chief operating officer, Peterson-Cat
   DOING WHAT WE SAY, EVEN WHEN IT HURTS
It was a crisp spring morning in 1994 and Peterson Power Systems (PPSI) had a problem. President Jeff Goggin had just gotten off the phone with a customer who was clearly unhappy. Several months earlier, Physics International (PI) had purchased two Caterpillar engines—a 3406 and a 3412. It was just anoth-
er half-million-dollar generator sale for Peterson. But as Goggin would soon discover, the job was anything but ordinary. “The customer said that our engines were not performing up to standard, which made us liable for millions of dollars in damages if they missed their deadline,” explains Goggin. “Going in, we knew this was a one-shot deal. We knew that once the engines left here, we would never see them again since they were going overseas. We knew they had to meet very stringent tests.” What Goggin didn’t know was that those Cat engines were part of a high-power microwave test facility—basically a high-tech weapons program. And without the power those generators provided, nothing would work.
 Jeff Goggin
That omission by the customer was based on a need-to-know consideration since it was state-of-the-art technology and not publically known at the time. Not sur- prising since Physics International was a commercial defense contractor. However, it did create an undercurrent of wariness between the two companies. “About seven months in, we discovered they were build- ing a pulse-power military test system—a James Bond-style ray gun of sorts,” ex-
plains Goggin. “It was designed to knock out electronics in remote, targeted areas with an intense, high-power microwave pulse. But we didn’t know that initially.”
In the end, it took an entire year to iron out the problem. After several months of troubleshooting and meet- ings, they finally isolated the culprit. And it wasn’t the Cat engines. It was, however, Peterson’s mess to clean up since Peterson had signed on as the systems integrator, or general contractor, in the initial negotiations, at PI’s insistence. And since Caterpillar didn’t make the capacitor load system required to convert electricity into pinpoint-pulse, high-power microwaves, Peterson had gone with PI’s vendor recommendation. Big mistake.
From the onset, the vendor was remote and non-responsive. It was months before Peterson even saw the capacitor. And when it did arrive, it didn’t work properly. More valuable time was lost trying to track down
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