18th CEG, 718th CES receive PACAF, AF level awards

  • Published
  • By Airman 1st Class Hailey Staker
  • 18th Wing Public Affairs
KADENA AIR BASE, Japan --  The 18th Civil Engineer Group and 718th Civil Engineer Squadron recently received both Pacific Air Forces and Air Force level awards during the 2013 award period.

The 18th CEG Resources division won the 2013 Air Force Outstanding Civil Engineer Award-Maj. Gen. Robert C. Thompson Award (Resources).

This annual award honors Thompson, who served as the Air Force Director of Engineering and Services, and was instrumental in improving the quality of life for Air Force personnel. It recognizes the Resources Flight that offers the most outstanding products and services to its customers in areas such as Financial Management, Real Estate, Manpower and Personnel, and Information Management.

Not only did the group win at the PACAF level, it also won at the Air Force level for the first time.

"It feels really good to win at the Air Force level," said John Prewitt, 18th CEG Resource Division chief. "It's not anything I've done; it's everything the folks in the office have done."

Most of the personnel in the resource office are Japanese civilians, with only three being U.S. civilians. The office manages finance, tracks $65 million for operations and management, and $45 million for military family housing.

The office also handles personnel actions, managing approximately 970 Japanese civilians and 130 U.S. civilians, as well as covers building maintenance and housing and design construction projects between the two squadrons.

"Winning the award is a combination of successful management of the operations and management side, as well as the execution of having everything prepared to secure $8 million in fallout funding (at the end of the fiscal year)," Prewitt said. "We were already operating at efficiency level, so we stretched the dollars we had as far as we could and were properly prepared to secure more money. It was a team effort."

The resources division also handled 400 personnel actions during 2013 and continues to provide computer support for the entire group with a four-person computer team, working closely with the 18th Communication Squadron. The civil engineers have two systems unique to the career field that require constant maintenance, so their team provides nothing but computer support.

The 718th CES won the 2013 Air Force Outstanding Civil Engineer Award-Gen. Thomas D. White Environmental Quality Award, Team Excellence category, and was the runner up for the Maj. Gen. Del R. Eulberg award.

"The environmental award details all the environmental programs that we had," said Kelly Livingston, 718th Installation Management chief. "We supported Kadena with environmental compliance, according to the Japanese host nation and internal Air Force regulations, as well as pollution prevention, for getting rid of compliance issues and eliminating potential causes for pollution. Also our conservation efforts for preserving habitat for protected species, categorizing archeological sites and protected historical areas contributed to that award."

One of the large contributors to winning the award was the implementation of hazardous material tracking. The 718th CES environmental flight created new procedures to control the shelf life of hazardous materials.

"If you have a bottle of paint, it's only going to be good for so long, it'll expire and you'll have to throw it away," Livingston explained. "When you throw it away, it's still hazardous so we have to dispose of it as hazardous waste and then you have to buy a new bottle, so it's a double cost there. We teamed up with the 18th Logistics Readiness Squadron HAZMART and saved $788,000 in 2013 by avoiding the hazardous waste disposal of those items, and not having to buy replacement items for the things that were about to expire."

718th CES also established a protocol for executing an exercise for a fuel spill off-base twice a year. They teamed up with the Okinawa Prefecture Government and the Okinawa Prefecture Enterprise Bureau, the water supplier off base, and did a spill notification and response exercise for a spill that could go into the Higa River.

"The importance is that they have water intakes on there for the drinking water plant in Kadena-Cho, so that's the off-base water supply," Livingston said. "The spill exercise is (to practice) how quickly we can notify them so they can shut off all the intake pumps, and then we can deploy spill response supplies to keep fuel from getting there to protect off-base water."

Also for the natural resource side, the 718th CES managed to identify 12 endangered species of plants and 300 individual plants within those 12 species that were in that site. These species were found while doing an environmental survey for a new missile storage facility.

Although the facility could not be built elsewhere, the 718th CES were able to relocate the plants by finding an identical habitat in the munitions storage area and hiring specialists to remove and replant them in a place that met their needs so the species can continue to live on.

Congratulations to the 18th CEG and 718th CES for their accomplishments.