Why does Engineer CCC seem so out of touch?

2015-05-25T19:07:55-04:00

This is going to be partially biased as I am a Reservist but the structure of ECCC seems unusual and irritates me to no end, here is my thought.

The Army Engineer capabilities are now something like 80% USAR and ARNG.

The Reserve Component ECCC is split into four phases, Phase one and three are distance learning, two and four are resident (2 weeks each) there are four classes per year (50 students ea.) USAR gets 33% of the seats and ARNG gets 67% so that means every year the USAR can educationally qualify 66 CPT's and the ARNG can qualify 133 - these classes are notoriously overbooked and cost the Army say $5000 per student after flights, training and incidentals.

Active Duty ECCC is a nearly 6 month course (with a PCS move) (and a masters degree) there are 8 courses per year, now I'm not sure on class size but let's assume there are 25 in each class, that means Active component can educationally qualify 200 CPT's at maybe $75,000 each (salary +resources + PCS move), possibly more once you add MS&T education to the mix

So for a select group that represents only 20% of the engineer capability are all the concessions made? and why do they need 6 months to complete the course? The reserve and guard deploy and are successful at our missions as well if not greater than A/C yet we are not afforded the same opportunities? Not to mention the outdated POI from 1995 that does effectively nothing to teach TPU engineer officers.

I work as a professional engineer on the civilian side and I will take the skillset of a reserve component officer with an engineering degree 9 times out of 10 then I would an overpaid A/C counterpart.

with the greater Army downsizing this is going to have to be reconsidered sooner than later or the RC's are going to run out of Majors which will hurt the regiment as a whole.

and as a caveat to this discussion.. why did the Engineer Regiment come out with ASI's if we aren't going to use them? I haven't seen any coded positions.

Response by CPT Private RallyPoint Member made May 25 at 2015 7:17 PM

2015-05-25T19:17:28-04:00

I can only answer to the last part. All the companies in my battalion have ASIs, either W4 and W6 or just W6. Pretty sure we aren't worried about trying to fill with ASI qualified individuals (severely short on officers) but they are coded.

Response by CPT Private RallyPoint Member made May 25 at 2015 8:04 PM

2015-05-25T20:04:38-04:00

As a side note, I heard that PLs and XOs are supposed to have W4s but it is not necessary for Commanders. (Correct me if I'm wrong LTC Private RallyPoint Member ) I'm a non-degree engineer and would love to pursue an engineering degree, but the Army definitely isn't going to pay me to go to school.

So out of curiosity sir, how long did you have to wait to attend Phases 2 and 4?

Response by CPT Private RallyPoint Member made May 25 at 2015 8:05 PM

2015-05-25T20:05:47-04:00

I know the Engineer Regiment has been trying for some time to get STEM/Degreed Engineers in the ranks, but have failed miserably. My opinion is that they continue to misplace talent (I'm also a degreed civil engineer and worked in the civilian sector as a Geotech, while i was TPU in a FEST team before joining the AGR program), and treat Engineer officers as generic middle management.

Many fields (Medical, Social Work, Law, Chaplain, etc) commission into higher starting pay grades and fast-track promotions, while degreed engineers, who go through extremely rigorous schooling, can be thrown in a MAC unit as fast as they can be put into a technical position. The aforementioned officers, on the other hand, will always practice their profession, and would never be made to work in a field completely unrelated to their degree. We, as professional engineers, don't get to do our job even if put into a position such as battalion engineer or company construction officer.

So, long story short, they can make up as many ASI's as they want and fill them with officers who have no clue what they're doing, but until they start using talent correctly and treat degreed Engineers as just that, the few who join are going to get tired of being marginalized and leave the force.

Response by LTC Private RallyPoint Member made May 25 at 2015 11:44 PM

2015-05-25T23:44:47-04:00

I went to the resident ECCC as an AGR. Due to the backlog we had 128 in our class. The usual size is 64. Of that AGR might get 1-3 per class with average of 8 slots a year. AGR means in this case Reserves, but in my class we had one NG AGR. I did not get the Masters as it was an option to do night school and then stay to graduate, if your follow-on command allowed, and you paid the costs for school. I already have a Master's and was not eligible for TA. I was using my Post 9-11 GI Bill for my PhD at the time and figured that was smarter than another Master's as I was already a year into this degree and well it is more money and you only have so much GI Bill. It was interesting how much we focused on AC and NG structure as we did not hit on any Reserve structure (as many know the NG is structured like the AC), but it may be because during war we fall into the AC structure when deployed. Four weeks of construction in both OBC and CCC does not cover much and it is mostly OJT for officers to learn how to do construction. However it makes some sense as most of those going will never see construction. Bridging is almost not touched in CCC and yet very valuable asset when deployed. Just a few observations I noticed.

Response by COL Jason Smallfield, PMP, CFM, CM made May 26 at 2015 9:16 AM

2015-05-26T09:16:37-04:00

CPT Johansson,
- You are mostly correct in the information you post above in terms of Engineer Regiment component mix (19% AC, 31% Reserve, 50% NG) and ECCC-AC and ECCC-RC differences (6 months vs 8 weeks).
- Some points where you are not correct:
1. Officer Additional Skill Identifiers. Includes S4 (Sapper), W1 (Facilities Planner), W2 (Geospatial Engineer), W3 Professional Engineer), W4 (Degreed Engineer), W5 (PMP), W6 (Project Engineer) and W7 (Environmental Engineer). These ASIs are coded into MTOE positions but there are problems reporting and tracking who has what ASI that the Regiment is working through.
2. The numbers of attendees for each course is worked through a process called SMDR (Structure Management Decision Review). Simply stated, FORSCOM, USARC and NGB report the numbers of students that they expect they will need. TRADOC takes this data and figures out the instructors, facilities, and resources they will need to train these numbers. This is done 3 years out. The Engineer issue here is that there is a logic disconnect in the numbers being reported. By this I mean if 400 EN LTs are trained in FY15 then we should expect 400 - attrition CPTs (360 or so) to be trained in FY19. Right now these numbers are about 50% of each other (400/200).
3. I would need to look up the SMDR data to get exact numbers by course and by FY to compare with your numbers below. Also, I would need to look up individuals costs. You may be right in above or not. Don't know.
- Some comments:
- There is a qualitative and quantitative difference between ECCC-RC and ECCC-AC. USAES is working to close the quality gap by having all ECCC under the control of one person (MAJ Scott Jamieson). Closing the quantity gap is more than an Engineer issue (applies to all branches) and requires TRADOC to change.
- The quantitive differences are not the result of "concessions" to the AC. They are the result of Title 10 vs Title 32 authorities and funding differences. Your primary employer (your civilian employer) signed up for one weekend a month and two weeks a year. Changes to this base agreement takes more than just one branch.
- USAES is working masters degree options to provide like opportunity to the RC as is provided to the AC. One way is a distance learning option with University of Louisville for an Engineering Management Master's. Takes two years or so. U of L will provide credit consideration for ECCC like MU S&T provides (6 credits for ECCC attendance).
- Hope this helps to answer, clarify, and/or confirm the information in your original post.

Response by MAJ Private RallyPoint Member made May 26 at 2015 11:34 AM

2015-05-26T11:34:01-04:00

As a whole the Engineer branch has done a miserable job identifying our tasks to the main Army. Even when deployed the vast majority of real engineering is done via USACE or civilian contractors. I remember when I first chose engineering and heard all this talk about how the branch was going away as Armor and Infantry were going to have the mobility countermobility mission. Then the War started and for some reason Enemy Obstacle became a Unexploded Ordinance or Booby Traps (Vietnam) became IED and the mission was given to EOD, few years later and the Army realized how stupid that decision was and EOCA was born. Thankfully they added a Engineer Battalion to the BCT but Combat Arms still has no idea how to use us.

The root of the problem is the garrison mindset, I worked at DPW for a time trying to set up troop projects and the Army has a long policy/regulation mix that basically shows how to appear like you are not taking projects away from the civilian economy. Compare that to WWII or before where the Army actually did infrastructure missions, or look at Brazil who's Army Engineers continues to do massive projects. Simply put without any ability for the Army to task typical engineer units there isn't a need to train degreed engineered officers. the only exception is USACE where you still won't do much work you'll just monitor contractor performance.

My simple solution bring back troop projects, there are plenty of M&O funded projects across the active solution, there are plenty of state projects that could be handed down to the NG, which pretty much leaves the reserves stuck holding the pickle. (could be used for close federal projects or legislation could be approved to use TPU reservists for State funded projects not to exceed 2 weeks duration. (BLM land road repair seems to be a very easy and beneficial project for horizontal units)

And we wouldn't need to pay incredulous amounts of cash to build roads in theater. (oh wait that would stop the donations to election campaigns maybe that is the real problem...)

Response by CPT Private RallyPoint Member made May 28 at 2015 4:09 PM

2015-05-28T16:09:03-04:00

So now I am perplexed, a lot of great information exchange on here and I really appreciate that, I just don't understand why ANY of this ever reaches the rank and file of the RC? I know we have some bulletins etc. but those are usually filled with irrelevant information. I mean Honest to goodness "hey this will help your career" guidance because after hitting 2LT I was on my own trying to figure it out.. I know there's are new ARCD out there but I am sort of confused about what they are really capable of.

Now that I've got up on the soap box I've got to think about some of these things, I'll probably have to redact a few points that I made of poorly formed opinions and assumptions.

Appreciate everyone's thought's

And just so your all aware.. I am an Engineering Manager on the civilian side designing the new AMPV under BAE systems.. and yes there is a BIG difference between bona-fide engineering and Army Engineering.

Response by LTC Andrew Addison made Apr 28 at 2016 12:32 PM

2016-04-28T12:32:41-04:00

This problems affects such a small number of Reservists so perhaps it is not something that the people at the Engineer School would be willing to focus on? I know that this was an issue back in the 90's and will likely never be fixed. I totally agree with you on this. Perhaps there is someone you can send this suggestion to at the Engineer School?

Response by CPT Private RallyPoint Member made Dec 13 at 2018 2:10 PM

2018-12-13T14:10:26-05:00

I just want all to know who continue to read this. The initial post has made its way into the curriculum of ECCC. I’m fact we referenced it for project management. It was nice to see within the course. Unfortunately no one took it seriously and no one like my comment of a branch split for officers either combat or general engineer (degree and Army background dependent).