LANGLEY AIR FORCE BASE, Va. –
In an Air Force culture centered on innovation, many units have become more innovative with their decision-making.
The 633rd Civil Engineer Squadron at Langley Air Force Base is no exception.
With a mission tied to infrastructure, the Air Force CE community was tasked with updating its systems, without compromising Langley's buildings, roads, pipes and more.
At Langley, Maj. Jimmy Jeoun, 633rd CES operations flight commander, and his team have stepped up to this challenge.
"Leadership has set out initiatives collectively known as 'CE Transformation'," said Jeoun. "For Langley, two major initiatives, asset management and next-generation information technology, are paramount to our success in this Air Force."
Asset management is all about changing the way the 633rd CES manages and maintains Langley's facilities and infrastructure. Instead of the "first-come, first-serve" model used previously, Jeoun and his contemporaries are targeting their greatest needs first to ensure their limited resources are used wisely.
In order to appropriately manage resources, Jeoun needed to make more informed decisions, weighing mission needs, risks, benefits and life-cycle analyses against cost. He needed to know "where we spend the next dollar".
Until recently, Jeoun's analyses have been suboptimal and time consuming.
The 633rd CES uses a number of "legacy" systems to help manage and maintain infrastructure. These systems track costs, man-hours, materials and supplies, customer requests and more. Civil engineers require this information to do everything from planning road work to repairing a hanger.
Though the legacy systems can track this data, they lack the capability to analyze data.
Jeoun and his team needed a real-time data analysis to help prioritize projects and make sound business-case analyses for funding requests. Leadership looked at the latest commercial information technology systems available, and found commercial systems offer considerable improvements and capabilities to the Air Force's mission. Once fully implemented, next-generation information technology systems will modernize the 633rd CES systems and allow personnel to manage infrastructure better.
"With all this new information, the question arose on who would manage it," said Jeoun. "Leadership decided the operations flight will stand-up an operations engineering element to handle the management."
The new element will include "degreed engineers, CE controllers and CE planners from various crafts", such as electrical and structural planners. These individuals know where the most important and the most troublesome infrastructure systems are located.
In conjunction with the new IT, this unit will be able to prioritize maintenance actions and construction projects to ensure proper project execution. Also, the engineers can better conduct "repair versus replace" analyses so the 633rd CES personnel can utilize their limited resources for maximum effect.
Jeoun, his leadership and his work mates consider mission assurance and support as top priorities.
"The new 'ops flight of the future' will ensure that we are devoting our resources on the most important assets first, protecting our critical missions," Jeoun said.