RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK - The sharp drop in violence across Iraq recently and a buildup of hybrid civilian-military reconstruction teams have given RTI International's long-running reconstruction project there a big boost.

The RTP-based nonprofit institute has expanded its staff of a federally funded program to strengthen local governments by nearly 50 percent, to about 910, and is hiring more at the rate of 10 a month. Many of the new hires are part of a surge in "Provincial Reconstruction Teams" designed to complement the recent military buildup, which is credited with some of the reduction in violence.

A big benefit is that RTI's staff can do substantially more work because of fewer frustrations such as meetings and convoys canceled because of security problems, officials said.

"We're probably doing about 25 percent more work across the board," said Phil Gary, director of the project for RTI.

RTI is working under contract to the U.S. Agency for International Development. Its job is mainly to train local government workers and officials in such things as developing an annual budget, delivering clean water, collecting garbage and treating sewage.

The project's low point came in spring 2004, when the expatriate staff of about 220 went under lockdown on U.S. military bases as violence flared across Iraq. The total program staff then numbered about 3,200, most of them Iraqis.

Though security improved some, RTI eventually shed more than 80 percent of its staff, down to about 500 with just 50 or 60 non-Iraqis remaining. Instead of visiting local government offices, RTI mainly brought elected officials and government workers to military bases and heavily secured compounds for training.

Lately, though, violence in Iraq has dipped to levels last seen more than four years ago, in part because of the U.S. troop surge that began in early 2007 and because of U.S. successes in winning over Sunni insurgents in the volatile Anbar province beginning in 2006. U.S. military casualties have fallen sharply, and security is so improved that last week Iraqi President Nouri al-Malaki broached the idea of a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops.

For RTI, this has meant that its employees can drive to places where they once would have had to wait for a military helicopter. And now RTI can send trainers to Anbar province to work with local officials there. Two years ago, that would have been suicidal.

In May, company workers were able to return to Diyala, a province just north of Baghdad, where they hadn't been able to work since 2006 because it had become a stronghold for Al-Qaida in Iraq and other extremists. All told, the company now has staff working daily in 16 of the 18 provincial government offices, Gary said.

It may not seem like a major change to be able to train officials in their own offices with their own paperwork and equipment, but Gary says it allows trainers to better bridge the gap between theory and practice.

"It brings the program to life," he said. "It builds a basis where you really start to link Iraqi institutions with each other."

The crucial next step, said Gary and RTI spokesman Patrick Gibbons, is fostering the systems that will keep alive the improvements in government and infrastructure when the Americans are gone.

"Local governance has survived the insurgency," Gibbons said. "Now it's more about can the Iraqis move it forward."

The program is important for RTI. Awarded in 2003, about a month after the fall of Saddam Hussein, it became the largest contract in company history and is a major part of RTI's revenue.

RTI will have received $600 million to run the local governance program when its current contract ends Dec. 31. RTI plans to bid on the next two-year phase of the program, Gary said.