COLUMBUS AIR FORCE BASE, Miss. -- The 14th Civil Engineer Squadron is tasked with planning, constructing and maintaining infrastructure here.
Their mission is to provide sustainable infrastructure, environment, readiness and emergency response keeps Columbus able to Produce Pilots, Advance Airmen and Feed the Fight.
“We are in charge of maintaining the Air Force property on this base as well as adapting what we have available to the future mission, build new to those missions and demolish what is old,” said 1st Lt. Scott Guerin, chief of project execution.
Guerin also said the squadron is in charge of taking care of 171 base facilities as wells as countless linear feet of roads and runways.
The 14th CES is a diverse squadron. There are several different organizations that make up the squadron such as fire protection, emergency management, an engineering flight, installation management and operations.
With new requirements from higher Air Force, the Emergency Management Flight has been busy training Airmen for deployments. The flight went from training about six Airmen a week to 50.
“Our day to day operations have changed from doing second-hand tasks to focusing on getting people prepared to deploy,” said Airman 1st Class Nicholas Walkup, 14th CES emergency management technician.
Guerin feels that it is a rewarding job because you learn so much. He is by trade a structural engineer, however has assisted on architectural, electrical and mechanical products.
“Pilots are masters of their aircraft,” Guerin said. “As an engineer, you have to solve a multitude of problems regardless if it’s in your skill set or not.”
The squadron has also been recently award several times, to include the 2017 Air Force Small Civil Engineer Squadron and several awards from the fire department.