Engineer Memoirs _____________________________________________________________________
That'll be this summer. We've got detailed planning on how to phase our course so that we'll
have some overlap in the advanced course. That is, we'll be finishing up a couple of
advanced courses here at Belvoir while starting the successor ones out at Fort Leonard
Wood. At the same time, we won't have to do that for the basic course. We'll be able to
finish one and start one out there. We've taken the staff and faculty planning for each of
those down to the eaches--all of that based on an assumption of when we'll be able to get in
at Fort Leonard Wood. That assumption, of course, still floats as long as we haven't started
and got a fix on a beneficial occupancy date from the Kansas City District.
So, we've got our planning down to the details and we're comfortable with it. It's just that
we'd like to have that assumption turn into a more fixed date. We know it's slipping as of
this moment from 1 March 1989 to what we're told is in the order of October, but we'll
know that better when we finally have a date. In the meantime, many of our civilians are
already leaving the work force here. That's causing us some difficulty because, very
naturally, they want to find security and a secure position if they have already made the
determination they're not going to move. In our crucial combat developments arena, people
are in an area where their type of jobs are plentiful, the Washington area, and they are
moving when they get the opportunity. We're already losing some expertise. We had detailed
planning to try to start building up our expertise and capability out there and we moved
positions to Fort Leonard Wood. We've hired interns there to start building up. Hopefully we
didn't want to take too great a dip in institutional knowledge and continuity during the time
we're making the move.
Q:
That's risky business, though, isn't it, all the uncertainty of when you're going to go because
you can't move that fast, can you?
A:
Well, we were very comfortable up until the first time the bids came in "over" because we
felt everybody was plowing on and we were being assured that things looked pretty good and
not to worry. So, we did our planning and felt a little under the gun to make sure we tied up
all the loose ends. Having tied them up, it's been a little frustrating now to see them
unraveling and the execution time extending. We had programmed a shift of the
commanding general, that is my successor, General Reno, out about 1 October 1988, the idea
being that he would be here for a year to understand how the school worked and know all of
the environments and the functional arenas that I described. Then he would be able to move
early and pull it to him, putting all that information to work as he made it happen at Fort
Leonard Wood.
We had planned, as part of our transition, to move those things that are associated with
engineer proponency with him--that is, part of the Combat Developments, part of Training
and Doctrine, the Engineer Proponency Office, the TRADOC system manager, the Engineer
Force Modernization Office, those things that are involved in the day-by-day proponency
arena as opposed to teaching the advanced course and teaching the basic course.
Thus, we would have split Combat Developments. The computer would still be here because
the building's not ready there to put the computer in, so people associated with the computer
in Combat Developments--that is, the force designers, the TO&E designers--would stay
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