The successful contractor will be responsible for all aspects of the supply process, from the establishment of distribution centres to the satellite tracking of goods and online co-ordination of shipments with hauliers, contractors and customs officials.

The contract's scope includes:

Construction of transportation, storage and distribution facilities;

Introduction of IT systems for data sharing and automation;

Co-ordination of civilian and military logistics;

Liaison with reconstruction contractors on 2,300 planned reconstruction projects.

'We will have a contract out in a couple of weeks for a logistics corps package,' PMO logistics director Jack Holly told MEED on 23 March. 'It will cover the full range of logistics requirements and those competing are likely to be consortia of companies with multiple skills.'

Holly said he was not able to put an exact figure on the value of the contract but confirmed that it was likely to be worth 'several hundreds of millions of dollars' and would run for several years. His department has been studying Iraq's existing logistics infrastructure as well as delivery systems used around the world in order to design a system that can serve not only the reconstruction contractors but also wider Iraqi society.

'We have been tasked with designing a logistics infrastructure that is able to handle the surge of activity at the beginning but that can then transfer to Iraqi society,' says Holly. 'It is also designed so that it doesn't require Iraq to leap to the forefront of technology.

'We are talking about the movement of goods virtually from the producer to the end user,' he says. ' The idea is to leverage commercial industry. The end goal is to do this by outsourcing and contracting to put ourselves out of business. We will try to outsource to logistics partnerships all of the work we are talking about.'

One of the priorities is to refurbish the physical infrastructure needed for efficient supplies. 'We have looked at roads, ports, airports and railroads,' he says. 'Each has missing pieces that need to be maximised. When you start peeling back the layers then you see that Iraq's infrastructure is stuck in the mid-1970s.'

www.meed.com/iraqreconstruction