Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center, Twentynine Palms, Calif. -- The Combat Center has recently seen construction throughout the base. Several new bachelor enlisted quarters have been built and these modern barracks are an innovation compared to their predecessors. They offer many amenities to the Marines that live there, but like anything in the Marine Corps, old or new, it’s the responsibility of the Marines to take care of what they have.
Headquarters Marine Corps mandated that managers of these residences take classes on current standards and strategies for barracks management as part of Marine Corps Order 11000.22, a Corps-wide policy on the requirements of maintaining its housing enterprise.
Combat Center BEQ managers finished the course April 30.
“Significant investment in family, bachelor and transient housing infrastructure has resulted in unprecedented improvements in married and single Marines’ quality of life,” said Rick Worrell, deputy director of training, Military Housing and Lodging Institute. “It is critical that this investment in housing assets is managed and maintained in order to sustain the desired quality of life and meet the expectations of Marines and their families.”
The institute was contracted by HQMC to provide the proper training to civilian and Marine BEQ managers on every base across the Corps.
“There’s been a lot of training at the installation level, but this is a new order,” Worrell said. “There are a lot of rules and regulations you have to understand and be able to articulate well enough. With all these buildings going up, we want to make sure we take care of what we’ve got.”
The two-day basic course provided the BEQ managers with a wide variety of specialized training in all areas of military and privatized housing operations.
“I thought it was a good course,” said Emmett Guiette, barracks coordinator, G-4, who attended the course. “It hit some of the highlights that barracks managers should follow.”
They covered topics from room assignments to inventory control as well as the responsibilities that fall on the shoulders of barracks residents.
“The old (barracks) are harder to take care of than the new ones, but the new (buildings) still need to be taken care of,” Worrell said. “These brand new buildings come to us after two, three years of construction. They’re still new.”
MHLI continue on to Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, Calif., as part of its tour of training at Marine Corps installations. They are scheduled to return to the Combat Center in June to teach a more in-depth intermediate course on barracks management.