Fort Campbell's FSBI program to improve quality of life

By Spc. Mary L. Gonzalez, 101st Airborne DivisionJuly 10, 2009

If your lightbulb's out or your toilet doesn't flush and you live in the barracks, help is on the way!

The Fort Campbell First Sergeants' Barracks Initiative is a civilian program that will officially take hold July 21 with the purpose of helping improve the quality of life for Soldiers living in the barracks.

"We have a team that's dedicated to the barracks," said Michelle Garnder, FSBI area manager. "We have inspectors that will inspect the barracks in some form on a daily basis. So if someone finds something wrong, it's going to be corrected right away. And because we will have inspection teams there, we will see any minor things early so they don't lead to any big things."

Before FSBI, the upkeep of barracks was usually the responsibility of a facility maintenance technician, Gardner said. The FMTs were Soldiers who had this additional duty along with his or her primary job.

"So, not only did he work in the motor pool, he had to get off work and come to the barracks to do the FMT stuff. They were school-trained to do this. I mean, if you just got off work out of the motor pool why would you want to go [to the barracks to fix things]'"

Gardner explained that this is a reason that barracks' work orders would take so long. Generally, there was only one FMT per building for all three floors. Add that to the fact the FMT Soldiers did not have an incentive to get motivated, she said.

Specialist Troy Armstrong is a Fire Support Specialist with 1st Special Troops Battalion, 1st Brigade Combat Team, and barracks-dwelling veteran of two years. From his experience in the barracks, he said he thinks this is a step in the right direction.

Mostly any work order he put in that dealt with furniture or an issue with the bathroom took three to five days, he said. "With military we may be short handed with people, but now that it's civilian work, it should get done a lot quicker. This sounds like it should work out, so hopefully we'll see," he said.

"We have not gone up yet, but we hope to take 1st BCT by the 21st of July," said Gardner. "We will have done everything up to the point of assigning rooms. So when they come back off of block leave at that time, we can start assigning rooms to them."

For Sgt. 1st Class Timothy Easton this is a welcome relief. Easton has been acting as the Key Control and Housing NCO since December, along with about five other jobs he does for 1st STB, 1st BCT.

"It [FSBI] eliminates some of the calling we have to do for work orders. Lots of things go wrong in the barracks all the time and they make it easier because they can do all the work orders and track all that stuff making it less work for us green-suiters to do," Easton said.

Emergency work orders on weekends, giving out his personal cell number so Department of Public Works personnel can get into a room to fix something were fairly common rations on his plate, Easton said, as well as dealing out certificates of non-availability.

Trying to figure out just how much barracks space a unit actually has will prove a vital task for FSBI, said Gardner.

"Looking at it from a logistics point of view, it's going to be a tremendous help to the units for somebody to come in and ... [help get things] working smoothly," she said. "Everything and all the names will be in the computer. All the first sergeants will know what space they have available so when they get new people in they will know, I have five new people and I know whether I can put them off post or on post."

Does this mean that civilians will have complete control of the barracks' Not entirely.

"We all know that the barracks belong to the sergeant major, but down to company level, the first sergeants are really in charge of the barracks for the units," Gardner said. "We didn't want the leadership to think we're taking the control away from them because, for example, if you are a first sergeant and you want Private Smith in a room with Private Brown, that's your call. We will house them where you want them. We don't want to take any control, we are doing this so that the Soldiers that are tasked out to do things like working in the housing office, manage the barracks keys, perform the FMT tasks, they can go back and do what they are really being paid to do."