Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog

All clear. We stocked up on everything the man on the telly recommended and while other areas of Maryland were without power for days and others got 3 feet of snow – it seemed to just forget about us. My weekend plans to go to New York are utterly cancelled though – seeing as most of it is without power and the subway systems are completely flooded. They closed down the subways days before the storm hit and essentially crippled the city – I later found out this was due to the thousands of homeless people living down there that needed to be evacuated……they could have used one disaster to solve another….but perhaps that’s the squaddie humor kicking in.

USACE deployed the mobile command and control unit – headed up by our own Mr Brian Walton. He’s still deployed and assisting with the coordination efforts. I applied to do the Emergency Response course a while back but the boss reckoned it wasn’t in line with my DOs (she’s right – I just wanted the jolly) but with hindsight as I was tucked up safe and warm with the Mrs, I decided it was for the best.

I have been doing some coordination work with the Hancock to facilitate the jobs for Nick’s arrival – I’m sure he’ll have a much smoother integration than I did. The HQ project is starting to gear up so there’s some good scope for PE work. The Roofing project should be in full swing ot get some technical aspects under his belt and then there’s a bunch of levee projects that will also make benefit of his skills. I also think they’ve let out all their jokes about englishisms out on me so he’s less likely to be bullied.

The C4ISR is ongoing and tediously complicated. The Office Engineer has embraced the tools that I have updated recently and is making full use of them. We need more staff to get through this!

The Solarwall project was on hold throughout the storm which gave me a chance to catch up on submittals. The biggest problem is actually still with our sister office in Alabama. The biggest cause of wasted time appears to be from the person that wrote the contract (which has been found to hold many holes and mistakes by the Harrisburg Office). It’s as if they are defending poor decisions out of pride or spite and have generated needless work for our office. I have formally requested that the issues currently under dispute (see previous blog) are now to be raised at Contracting Officer level. My boss is supporting all of my observations and conclusions to the point that they are prepared to sever ties with the Huntsville Office if they continue like this….it’s like a soap opera.

My final gripe of late was that having agreed that a temporary solution is required for the Albright flood gate (which managed to not float away in the storm) it appears that nobody is willing to be held accountable. Apparently if nobody is responsible, nobody can be sued if it goes wrong. I find this utterly irresponsible  As things stand it’s easy enough to blame the previous contractors that built the gate. I have since been assured by my boss that the correct channels have been made aware and that the relevant plans are in place….even if they don’t know who’s meant to be executing the fixes or where the materials will come from. It’s just wonderful that nobody died.

I have volunteered to go and do another schools presentation. This time it is for Highschool students who have done introductory calculus and are making decision on which avenue to take in their prospective engineering careers. As long as they don’t ask me any calculus questions we’ll all get along just fine. This is another STEM project and I will be able to re-use a lot of the previous stuff I’ve done.

Other News: Right – enough of this – I’m on leave until the end of the week when it’s back to reality. In the meantime I am happy to report that Ulli has now been offered a full time job with the networking agency. We look forward to thanksgiving where we are required to eat lots and watch football….some biblical thing I think.

Also – it appears that Obama remains as Commander in Chief – hopefully the locals will calm down a bit now it’s all over. But if anything goes wrong – at least we know who to blame.