Senior Leader Offsite at McCrady Training Center. The strategic planning session was designed to promote dialogu... VIEW ORIGINAL
Fort Jackson's senior leaders met for a strategic planning session April 13-14 at McCrady Training Center to ensure leadership could continue the post's ongoing measures in the future.
The senior leader off-site meeting was "our opportunity as the leadership of Fort Jackson to segregate ourselves from our daily lives and think about what we do at Fort Jackson," said Lt. Col. James Allen, Fort Jackson's deputy chief of staff for operations.
Another reason for the off-site was to capitalize on the leadership in the room to improve Basic Combat Training on Fort Jackson which may lead to potential policy changes.
We don't want leadership changes over time to "result in radical changes to the azimuth" that we are following, Allen said during the event.
Maj. Gen. Roger Cloutier, Fort Jackson's commander, spoke about the need for Fort Jackson to change for the better and not let inertia affect what the post is doing.
"If you do nothing over the long term, that is where we will be," he said referring to being in the same place as the present. "We would be just going along this flat line and nothing will be changed."
He advised the post's senior leadership to continue to use an opportunity to change to better Fort Jackson. All battalion-level and higher commanders and sergeants major attended both days of the off-site, while senior civilian leadership only attended the second.
On the first day of the strategic planning session, Cloutier and military leadership discussed the similarities and differences between Fort Jackson and other basic training posts.
Traveling teams brought back reports from forts Benning, Leonard Wood and Sill about how basic training is set up and run.
The teams found basic training is similar from post to post with some minor differences. For instance, reception operations at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, mirror Fort Jackson but is more
efficient, while at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, Soldiers in Training go to the rappel tower at the end of week two instead of day one. The travel team from the 165th Infantry Brigade found that during BCT at Fort Benning, Georgia, trainees are given supplemental nutrition as a fourth meal to
help soft tissue and bone density recovery.
When discussing differences between training posts on the second day, Cloutier said basic training should "be the same" everywhere but it's not.
On the second day of the event discussion centered around the personnel make-up of basic training battalions and how Fort Jackson's infrastructure helps.
Some of the changes Fort Jackson has made were summed up by Ann Garner, director of the Directorate of Public Works during her briefing the second day.
She shared how her directorate was undermanned, but was still able to accomplish amazing feats.
While the directorate was dealing with 1 million square feet of buildings built before 1970, they were still able to install thousands of new street lights that save nearly $218,000 per year. DPW has also saved 48 million gallons of water a year by installing low-flow faucets and shower heads around post.
One issue spoken about briefly during Garner's presentation was privatizing the electrical and gas infrastructure.
Cloutier lauded DPW's efforts to rebuild the post's infrastructure noting "a lot of these places you go the only thing holding the pipes together is the ground," yet the directorate has built redundant structures to keep the gas flowing and the electricity running.
The impetus to privatize the infrastructure is for Fort Jackson to "get out" of the electrical and gas business.
The senior leader off-site ended with leaders meeting their spouses for team building exercises.
SIDEBAR:
DPW UPGRADES
The Directorate of Public Works has led the way in upgrading the post infrastructure. Over the last 12 months DPW has:
Installed 3,200 LED street lights and parking lots saving roughly $218,000 per year
Control burned around 9,000 acres
Collected 8,300 tons of recyclable materials
Demolished 10 relocatable buildings
Installed low-flow fixtures to save 48 million gallons of water a year
Repaired 80 miles of flood damaged roads and firebreaks
Completed 32 projects totaling roughly $1 million in flood damage repairs
Managed more than a dozen service contracts costing nearly $8 million a year
Processed roughly 15,000 service hours
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