Everyone knows home is where the heart is. The Whiteman Air Force Base Resident Office with the Kansas City District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers understands this. That’s why they put their heart into making sure the Airmen at Whiteman Air Force Base have the best home possible.
Recently, the team finished work on Discovery Hall, now the most updated dorm on base. This dorm was a team effort between USACE and the 509th Civil Engineer Squadron at Whiteman Air Force Base.
Eric Dannenberg, a Whiteman Air Force Base Resident Office employee who provided quality assurance for the Discovery Hall project, praised the partnership between the base and USACE on Discovery Hall.
“Our local team works well with the 509th CES project management and housing management teams due to years of continuity, leading to a team that cares about and delivers the tangibles,” he said.
For the project, USACE provided construction management services, coordination, quality assurance and contractor selection.
“It’s been great,” said Stephanie Terry, a civil engineering tech at the resident office. “Our resident office is fairly small, we’re at seven or eight people in our office and most of us have worked together for a lot of years at this point, so we’ve kind of become a little family. We’re pretty easy going and we’ve got a good relationship with the base.”
For a small office that’s very involved in the base and the community, this project was fulfilling to work on.
“It’s good to know that we can provide a good product for the Airmen coming into the base. [For] a lot of them, it’s their first time being away from their families, and we want them to have a good experience here, so they start off their career on a good foot,” Terry said.
According to TSgt Travis Makara with the 509th Civil Engineer Squadron, there currently are 34 residents already living in the newly renovated Discovery Hall. Most of the Airmen moving into the dorm now are fresh out of their career field training pipelines and brand new to the base, but another group of more experienced Airmen was brought into the building to help the newer Airmen as they settle into life on base.
“Those people who lived in other facilities prior to coming here, they know what they’ve got,” said Makara. “They’re very appreciative of [this dorm]. They’re very excited to be here. It’s a complete change of life to go from an older building and to come over here. It’s wonderful.”
Airman 1st Class Jason Reid, an avionics apprentice with the 509th Maintenance Squadron, is one of the Airmen that moved in from another building.
"I moved here from the Challenger dorm, and it has been a great experience,” he said. “I like telling all our new Airmen about our new facilities and the experience has been pretty good so far."
Walking into the building, some of the changes are immediately apparent. The team selected lighter floor and wall coloring to make the building feel roomier. They also included door sweeps on the doors to seal against drafts and to help reduce additional noise.
“Every little thing in here, you can thank Stephanie [and her team] for putting all this together,” said Makara.
The work on the building included environmental measures such as installation of energy efficient windows, replacing lighting with LED light fixtures, using recycled content, low flow plumbing and more. The largest modifications of the project included replacing the plumbing branch lines, mold remediation and exterior masonry repair. Some of this work wound up being more challenging than the team had originally thought.
“There were [some modifications] to the project,” said Terry. “The largest one was the brick … it was discovered during construction.”
When the windows were being replaced, the brick started letting go of the facility and turning outwards. There was also an issue with mold in the beginning. The mortar was eroding, allowing water to infiltrate the facility. The project team had to renegotiate in order to get these issues fixed. According to Terry, the collaboration between the Air Force and USACE in getting these issues addressed was great. The team worked together quickly and efficiently to keep the project on track and ensure delivery of a quality project.
“Now they’ve got it all tied back in and looking great and everything is secure now,” said Makara.
Now that the project is completed, Terry and the team at Whiteman have a lot to be proud of in their work to ensure quality of life at the installations USACE supports.
“[The thing I’m most proud of] is that the base, USACE and the contractor were able to work together so well,” said Terry. “We really have a good relationship with the base, and [we found] a contractor that was able to handle a lot of unknowns on this project and we worked together really well on that.”