CAMP ARIFJAN, Kuwait - Thousands of service members living in camps throughout Kuwait have their daily life support needs looked after by mayor cells operated by Soldiers within the 115th Fires Brigade.
The mayor cell is a non-standard, non-tactical operation center. Because they are non-standard, some of the positions and job titles don't necessarily conform to a typical military operation.
"Our purpose is to conduct base operations and to provide life support for permanent party and temporary transient coalition forces," said Master Sgt. Charles Olivas Jr., Camp Arifjan mayor cell non-commissioned officer in charge. "We focus on helping units accomplish their assigned missions for the Army Central Command assigned Area of Operation, by securing and providing a safe living area and working environment for everyone's basic life support needs."
Camp Arifjan's mayor cell is staffed by Soldiers of Headquarters, Headquarters Battery, 115th FiB, while Camp Patriot is manned by 1-147th Field Artillery from S.D. Camp Virginia and LSA's mayor cell is run by the 960th Brigade Support Battalion from Wyo. Camp Buehring is operated by the 151 CBRN from Ala.
The Soldiers in HHB 115th FIB on Camp Arifjan work in several different sections within the mayor cell to ensure operations run smoothly in their area of operation.
"We have a grounds crew that conducts camp beautification, as well as heavy lifting and equipment movement in coordination with contractors," said Olivas. "We have a light crew whose sole responsibility is turning on and off the light sets which we have more than 160 in Zone 6. There is a contracting position and an assistant contracting position which basically manages and monitors the contracts that are assigned to them or contracts they initiate. We also have an inspection crew that goes around and inspects all the work the contractors are supposed to be doing," he added.
There are two main sections that have the biggest roles within the mayor cell.
"We have billeting, which is one of two main sections in the mayor cell. They assign billeting to personnel based on classified information they receive on troop movements and troop strength coming in and out of theater, as well as service members who visit our camp and need a place to stay," stated Olivas.
The billeting office is responsible for organizing the housing for transient service members who stay 90 days or less, as well as permanent party service members who stay over 90 days in Zone 6.
"We have the capacity to house 10,000 service members at any given time," said Sgt. First Class Robert Iokepa, Camp Arifjan's billeting NCOIC. Currently in Zone 6, there are around 7,000 service members being housed, he added.
Sometimes service members forget the environment they are in. Kuwait doesn't have eminent danger like Iraq, but it's still considered a combat zone.
"The largest problem we encounter in billeting is service members forgetting that they are in the military and deployed to a war environment," said Iokepa. "In our office, some think they're coming to their local Motel 6 and looking for room service and any other service you might find at a hotel."
Creating a more efficient process to provide living quarters for service members on a daily basis is the goal.
"The biggest goal is to streamline the billeting process. Get all the people involved with a unit's deployment on the same sheet of music so when the unit comes to Zone 6 or leave Zone 6, the confusion caused by any operation of that size is brought down to a minimum," said Iokepa. "Another goal is to leave billeting better so when the next unit comes in, it's not chaos."
The other main section within the mayor cell is the Emergency Operations Center.
"The EOC is the heart of all operations. Since it's a 24-hour operation, they have contact with all the contractors and subcontractors, core personnel, venders, and overall everyone centralized in Zone 6," said Olivas.
"We are in charge of safety, repair and Soldiers' quality of life within Zone 6," said Staff Sgt. Melvin Fairbanks, the NCOIC for the EOC at Camp Arifjan. "We put in work orders and make sure the work gets done. The EOC has a crew of nine people that work one of three different shifts. At any given time, one of us will be putting in work orders submitted by service members, contractors or anyone within Zone 6 who finds something broken or for small projects they want done," added Fairbanks.
The daily use of the facilities and equipment on camp creates wear and tear, increasing the need for maintenance.
"Typically when something is broken, someone will call it in to tell us where it's at and what's broken. Whether it's an emergency, urgent or routine request, we assign an urgency to it to determine how fast it needs to get done," said Fairbanks. "Then we decide what contractor to send it to depending on what area, tent or Prefabricated Concrete Building it's located in.
When the work is finished, the contractor will submit a check-off sheet indicating they've done the work. Our Core department inspects the work done by the contractors when the job is complete to ensure the problem is taken care of," added Fairbanks. "Depending on what the work order is, the contractors respond to the requests anywhere from one hour to one day, and depending if they need parts, they take around a day or two to complete the work."
Running the operation with a quarter of the staff the previous unit had was one of their biggest obstacles.
"The first three months were the hardest. We had to redesign the process to submit all the work orders, which was a real challenge at first," said Fairbanks. "We also had to figure out how to cover all the shifts. We created a new, paperless submittal process that cut down the time and the amount of people it took to do a request. After the third month, more people were assigned to us which really helped cover shifts," he finished.
The camps in Kuwait managed by the 115th FiB have had over 50,000 work orders submitted and have billeted over 200,000 service members since they took over the mission in July, 2009.
Date Taken: | 01.26.2010 |
Date Posted: | 02.07.2010 11:07 |
Story ID: | 45050 |
Location: | CAMP ARIFJAN, KW |
Web Views: | 1,009 |
Downloads: | 428 |
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