Engineers build hangar for aviators

Sgt. Christopher M. Gaylord/ 5th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment

Sergeant Kristen Collison knows that in the Army being a Soldier comes first.

But in a forgotten parking lot off a side avenue on JBLM Lewis Main, where few drivers notice her, she’s harnessing the engineer in herself.

“Nobody has a job like ours,” said the 585th Engineer Company electrician, halfway into a nearly two-month project to assemble a massive shelter alongside Stryker Avenue for Soldiers of JBLM’s newest unit, the 16th Combat Aviation Brigade.

A handful of Soldiers with the company, which specializes in vertical construction, has been working since early December near Gray Army Airfield to build an Expeditionary Forces Aircraft Shelter System, a 115-foot-long, 49-foot-high tent structure the brigade will use as a supply depot for helicopter parts.

The project will finish sometime toward the end of January.

For Collison, the NCOIC at the job site, this kind of work is an opportunity seldom afforded in a stateside environment to knock the rust off her engineering skills.

“It’s pretty great to actually use our skills, because everybody comes back (from deployment), they’re in garrison, and they get in that mode where they get bored and don’t like their job because they’re not doing their job,” Collison said. “Then, we get opportunities like this, where we can build a really great building for somebody else who’s going to need it — who’s going to use it — and it’s really important to them. So it’s an outstanding opportunity.”

Civilian contractors and the Directorate of Public Works carry out most construction on JBLM, leaving only small jobs to units like the 585th Eng. Co. With few chances to refresh their skills, Collison and her fellow engineers are left to their common Soldier tasks, cleaning weapons and maintaining equipment.

“Being home and not doing our job, we get really rusty, so being downrange we’re kind of like, ‘I’m an electrician and I don’t remember how to do switches,’” she said.

For engineers who deploy to Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s a different story, said 1st Lt. Thomas Kutnink, a platoon leader with the company who has overseen the project from its start. They build infantry checkpoints and forward operating bases, run electrical and set up plumbing. And they build shelters similar to the one the company stood up last week. The job helped prepare his Soldiers, Kutnik said, most importantly the new ones, to be successful downrange.

“It gives us this great opportunity to do stuff that we don’t normally do unless we’re downrange,” Kutnink said.

“We see shelters like this all the time in Afghanistan and Iraq,” said Capt. Rex Broderick, the company commander. By building the shelter for the 16th CAB, Broderick said his unit is saving the installation more than $1 million in time and civilian contractors’ fees.

This is the first time Broderick’s company has ever put together an EFASS — a new experience for most of the 10 Soldiers hammering, drilling and wrenching in the parking lot.

“It’s a fantastic morale builder,” he said.

Specialist Abraham Lamug Jr., a carpentry specialist, and fellow Soldiers set the steel framing into place and fit together arches that will support the shelter.

“I love working with my hands,” Lamug said. “I can’t see myself working in an office, so I think I chose the right job doing what I’m doing now.”

Broderick called the project a win-win, resulting in a timely, useful shelter for the aviation brigade, savings to taxpayers and the chance for engineers to get in touch with their special skills.

“We like building things, and we like being able to say, ‘hey, I just built that, and it looks great,’” Collison said. “We want to put our hard work to the test.”