manrymission.com

I had my first meeting as the MAO OIC this morning. For 3 hours, 0900-1200, I had the pleasure of participating in the GRN weekly Provincial Reconstruction Brief Project Review Board (PRB). During this briefing, we discuss in detail the status of ongoing construction projects throughout northern Iraq. Today’s PRB was an off week. Most of the talking during an off week is done by my higher headquarters - GRN. Next week will be an on week where the talking is done by the area offices, such as MAO. So I’ll get to talk more next week.

As of 6 July 2007, USACE has completed 3463 construction projects throughout Iraq with a construction cost of $4.87 Billion, yes Billion! At that time there were another $2.4 Billion worth of projects ongoing. USACE is very active throughout the entire country. Take a look at the USACE GRD website to get more information on some of these projects. One of the focus areas for construction is schools. Right now, I have 12 different school construction projects being managed by engineers in my different offices.

Back to the real topic of discussion - meetings. I have another weekly conference call on Sunday mornings. This one focuses on all construction projects involving provincial primary health clinics (PHCs). COL Pfenning, Commander of GRN (my boss), is keenly interested in anything to do with the construction of PHCs. So we update him each week on Sundays. On Mondays, I attend the Civil-Military Operations (CMO) crosswalk. This meeting brings together the different US agencies in the Mosul area of operations (AO) that are involved in reconstruction. On Wednesdays, I have a tele-conference with the Dahuk Resident Office (DRO) and Erbil Resident Office (ERO). Those are two USACE offices that work for me but are located in their respective provinces. During that tele-conference, they provide me the project status that I need for my Saturday meeting. On Thursday, I do a project review with the project engineers located here at MAO. Then on Friday evenings, I meet with my senior Area Engineer to go over the final slides for Saturday’s tele-conference. You may have noticed that on Tuesdays, I don’t have a meeting!