BAGRAM AIRFIELD, Afghanistan -- Using 10 computers each armed with a sophisticated property management application, Army property book officers assigned to units in Afghanistan met Feb. 20 and 21 to count all non-mission essential equipment still in country and to reduce excess equipment quantities.
The 1st Theater Sustainment Command coordinated the property book officers' conference which included subject matter experts from the Pentagon and other major sustainment commands headquartered in the U.S.
Property books are valued in the Army almost as highly as checkbooks. Like debits and credits in accounting, resolving differences in property books relies on balancing "authorized / required" equipment quantities with "on hand" quantities. Finding agreement in balancing these books was critical to mission success and sparked some animated discussion and comments among the PBO community in Afghanistan.
CW4 Angelo Melton, chief theater PBO, 401st Army Field Support Brigade, led the two-day conference and kept property book officers glued to their computers, using the PBUSE application (Property Book Supply User Enhanced).
"This help set the conditions on accountability in theater for the next 22 months as we reset the Army," said Lt. Col. Jeff O'Sadnick, one of the conference planners.
At the end of the two days, the conference produced multiple results critical to the completion of retrograde by the end of 2014. Some of the significant benchmarks achieved were: increased visibility of excess equipment; updating and validating unit address codes; adjusting business rules for property management and retrograde; and ratifying agreement on the right paperwork for turn-in of equipment at sort yards.
Social Sharing