Live Q&As

That's a great question to start with, because althought 13,000 people worked on the project, it's quite likely the Pentagon renovation would not have happened without Doc Cooke. In his decades as the unofficial mayor of the Pentagon, Doc had built up a great deal of authority and credence on Capitol Hill and elsewhere in Washington. Neither the DoD leadership nor Congress really wanted to tackle such an enormous undertaking that was clearly going to cost billions of dollars and be subject to much criticism, but Doc was able to persuade enough people that the safety of the building and the people working in it were at stake.

The blast-resistant windows clearly saved the lives of some of the people who were in E-Ring offices that day, among them Peter Murphy, general counsel for the Marine Corps. The windows did contain some of the blast within the building, which likely caused more destruction elsewhere.

The program had also added structural support behind the limestone facade that was critical in keeping portions of the building intact. The biggest difference, though, was that much of the renovated area was empty - people hadn't moved back in yet, by good fortune.

The renovation work was done by contractors hired by the program. Hensel Phelps, a Colorado-based contractor, oversaw most of the work in wedges 2-5, while General Dynamics did the IT work.

Most of the routine repairs are done by the Pentagon building staff. With a 6.5 million square-foot building holding 22,000 people, they're kept pretty busy answering calls from people who have water dripping on their heads and the like.

Design-build is basically the idea that you want your architect and contractor working as a team, rather than as rivals. Often in a construction project, you hire an architect to design the project and then a contractor to build the plans, and then the two of them end up butting heads and blaming each other for the problems. Lee Evey, who had no construction background, read an article in the home improvement section of the Washington Post, of all places, and learned about the design-build concept. He introduced it to the Pentagon renovation, and the result was truly a team effort that changed the whole tone of the project.

There have been a lot of people over the years. I'll see how many I can remember. Lee was succeeded by Mike Sullivan, who had been his deputy during the Phoenix Project. I believe Ken Catlow was next. Sajeel Ahmed, who started on the IT side, has been in charge for the last several years. Apologies for anyone I've left out - please let me know.

While there are a number of DoD jobs that can be done via teleworking, there are always a lot more that either for security reasons or other factors require fact-to-face contact. Part of the renovation has included an assessment of who really needs to be in the Pentagon and near the leadership. So while the faces may change, I can guarantee you that the numbers won't decline. There are many more always clamoring to get in The Building.

That said, the Pentagon is already a museum in many ways. The renovation has included a reworking of many of the hall exhibits, and you could easily spend days wandering the corridors looking at different displays. I would actually rank it as one of the top military museums in the country already.

Those are all good observations. You're certainly right that the early part of the work was not well-coordinated. You had different parts of the renovation program working in silos, not knowing what the other parts were doing. The early work was disastrous. Secretary Perry shut down the project for a while because he was so upset by the noise. Quality control was almost non-existent. Design-build addressed some of those early problems.

And you're right that 17 years is not excessive for a project that size. Still, we shouldn't forget that the original construction was done in 17 months. And the first employees were moved into the building just seven months after ground-breaking! The plank-walkers, they were called, because they had to walk over planks across mud and dust to get into the building. So for much of the 17 months, the building was occupied while construction continued around the Army workers. I tell that story in "The Pentagon: A History" published by Random House in 2007 for anyone interested.

The War Department had a couple of secret weapons to build the Pentagon in 17 months. One was Gen. Brehon B. Somervell, the chief of Army construction, who dreamed up the project, sold Gen. Marshall and President Franklin Roosevelt on the idea, and then by force of personality made it happen in stunningly short order. Somervell was a force of nature, and the Pentagon would not exist without him.

Somervell's secret weapon was his deputy, Col. Leslie Groves, who would go on to head the Manhattan Project building the atomic bomb.

As for the shape, that's quite an accident of history.  The original site near Arlington Cemetery was five-sided, and after they moved the building downriver there was no time to change it. I tell that story in the Pentagon book and in this excerpt from the Post magazine:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/23/AR2007052301296.html

It's interesting because we often think that the September 11, 2001 attack on the Pentagon was an unprecedented attack on the American government. We often forget that nearly 200 years ago, during the War of 1812, the British captured Washington and burned not only the White House and the Capitol, but also the War Department, Treasury, Navy Yard and every goverment building save the Patent/Post Office.

Dolley Madison did indeed see to it that the portrati by Gilbert Stuart was rescued. A small portrait of Dolley was taken by a British soldier, but his conscience was stricken and he returned it years later.

That's all a subject for another book - and in fact I've written about these events in August-September 1814 in a book to be published next year by Random House.

It's along the east side of Corridor 2. It's really a miracle that it was saved, and it took some fast action at the last minute by people concerned about the Pentagon history. Right now there's not much if anything to see, because they're still working on it. I believe the idea is to show what the Pentagon looked like during several different eras, including World War II. I'm sure we'll be writing about it as it approaches public display.

That's absolutely true. Design-Build allowed a lot of innovative concepts to be introduced to the entire bid process that rewarded good work and included incentives for early delivery.

I don't doubt that the renovation would still be underway without it.

Of course there will always be more renovation. The roof work, which is seperate from the renovation program, is still underway. And has mentioned in the article, some of the first work done in the basement and wedge 1, including fire alarms and some of the mechanical and electrical systems, is nearing the end of its life cycle and is being replaced. So the Pentagon renovation is a sense will never end.