Engineer presents professional information designed to keep U.S. military and civilian engineers informed of current and emerging developments within their areas of expertise for the purpose of enhancing their professional development.
Issue link: https://engineer.epubxp.com/i/284727
January–April 2014 Engineer 43 battalion—performing route clearance and providing mili- tary intelligence and signal operations in support of the brigade mission command. Given all of these missions, the battalion commander directed the battalion operations off- cer to oversee the security mission, while I had the task of preparing the FOB for closure. The brigade commander directed that FOB Salerno be closed before winter came to the notorious Khost-Gardez Pass, which would severely restrict ground retrograde. This left approximately 6 months to complete the closure. Fortunately, our predecessors had signifcantly reduced the container count and consolidated personnel on the FOB before our arrival. As a former instructor in the systems department at the U.S. Military Academy, I used a problem-solving method- ology to attack FOB closure, truncating the design process taught at West Point to three distinct phases—problem def- nition, solution design, and execution. O n its surface, FOB closure seems to be a straight- forward proposition: fnd out who lives on the base and help them retrograde personnel and equipment, while simultaneously and systematically off-loading life support systems. Since most life support systems such as feld feeding, power, water production, wastewater removal, and trash collection were provided or managed by a single Logistics Civil Augmentation Program (LOGCAP) contrac- tor, fnding bridging strategies to replace these services was straightforward. The real challenge was identifying the stakeholders and synchronizing them to depart in an organized manner. The months of May and June 2013 were primarily consumed with this stakeholder analysis. Using broad categories, the following stakeholders existed on FOB Salerno: ■ Decisionmakers. The U.S. Army clearly establishes commanders as decisionmakers. Essentially there were two—the battalion commander, who was the FOB com- mander; and the brigade commander, who also resided on the FOB. ■ Owners. The owners were the battalion staff and the brigade Headquarters and Headquarters Company, which fell under our battalion and served as the base operations node on the FOB. The brigade staff and bri- gade support battalion (both on FOB Salerno) fell into this category. The contracted LOGCAP provider was involved in all life support systems on the base and also had an ownership stake in this problem. ■ Clients. All major tenants on FOB Salerno (such as 4th Brigade Combat Team task forces, Special Opera- tions Command elements, other government agency partners, and other military units) comprised this cat- egory. Unlike owners, clients shouldered defned mission sets that were unaligned with FOB closure. Thus, while the closure of FOB Salerno affected their future opera- tions, they were participants rather than driving forces in the process. ■ Users. Composed of more than 50 somewhat detached agencies on FOB Salerno, users included feld service representatives; special contractors unaligned with any FOB military organization; and transients, some of whom could be described as squatters. Starting work at 0500 daily, Soldiers recover a 300-meter section of metal aircraft landing panels in just 2 days. EN Sawser.1.indd 46 3/12/2014 1:33:15 PM