CAMP RED CLOUD, REPUBLIC OF KOREA -- Working together, 30 Soldiers from 362nd and 552nd Signal Companies, 41st Signal Battalion, 1st Signal Brigade, conducted tech facility inspection training as part of the Battalion's week-long, post-Key Resolve White Week Training program on Mar. 13, in Uijeongbu, South Korea.
During the tech facility inspection training, Soldiers learned to prepare for formal inspections they would receive during a Staff Assistance Visit; teaching and training personnel on goals and standards of the Army inspection policy for tech control units.
Spc. Justin Cyr, Tech Control Team Chief, 362nd Signal Company explained that their leaders want to ensure that personnel from both companies can properly operate and maintain the tech facilities.
"Tech control in the Army is very much like the Federal Communications Commission that regulates interstate and international communications through radio, television and satellite," said Cyr. "As such, it is an important function and Soldiers working with it must really know their job, make sure that the facilities are working at certain standards and that operating procedures adhere to Defense Information Systems Agency Circular 310-70-1."
Soldiers were divided into two groups. The first group performed inspection on the 552nd Signal Company's tech facility located in a bunker at Camp Red Cloud, while the second group went over power point instructions on power outages.
Staff Sgt. James Walker, Camp Tango NCOIC led the first group and ran through various standard procedures to check whether 552nd Signal Company Soldiers working with tech controls on a daily basis are familiar with managing the facility.
"We are conducting an equipment to equipment check and evaluating how proficient Soldiers are with their job," said Walker. "This is a good opportunity to perform knowledge sharing with young Soldiers as well as to reassess how we are doing as a team across signal companies, and hopefully make training program better in the future."
Staff Sgt. Philip Durham, 2nd Platoon Sergeant, and Sgt. Louis Schwab, Network Operation Center NCOIC, at 552nd Sig Co. led the second group through an interactive session designed to help Soldiers better understand about the procedures of DISA reporting and build consensus through case studies on what actions should be taken when complicated circumstances arose from outages.
During the presentation Schwab shared his past experience of an outage event when he was working in Washington DC, giving an indication of how important the job is.
"During an outage personnel from the White House called and accused me of being the one responsible for mismanaging the incident," recalled Schwab. "However, because I followed all standard procedures, I did what I was supposed to do and reported to DISA (Defense Information Systems Agency), Regional Network Operations and Security Center and my first line supervisor. By knowing and doing the right thing, they later found out that I had no accountability."
Spc. Matthew Moore, Tech Control Specialist, 552nd Sig. Co, who participated in the training expressed on behalf of all the participants how they benefitted from the training.
"Although we work with this on a daily basis, there could possibly be some inconsistencies dealing with a variety of problems as they arise," said Moore. "This training helped us to conduct the inspection and identify whether problems exist, whether everything is running correctly and makes us better able to self-check prior to DISA inspector evaluation."
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