Institutional and commercial facilities of all kinds face challenges related to deferred maintenance, but for maintenance and engineering managers in facilities that rely on public funding, the issue is especially difficult. Military facilities are no exception to this problem.
Consider the case of Fort Stewart in Georgia, where broken air conditioners at the U.S. Army base, poor ventilation, and little to no barracks maintenance have created a decades-long breeding ground for mold on the base, which soldiers repeatedly try to clean to no avail, according to Military.com. The site spoke with more than 20 soldiers, mostly junior enlisted troops but also commanders and senior noncommissioned officers.
In interviews, troops described disgusting conditions that would get an apartment or restaurant in the civilian world condemned. They painted a picture of senior leaders blasting platoon-level NCOs for not being harder on their soldiers to clean; young soldiers being told to buy their own cleaning and protective supplies to scrub mold, stretching their already thin paychecks; and the service's arm in charge of maintaining facilities on post almost never responding to problematic living conditions.
The issues at the base come after press coverage of mold issues, first detailed by Military.com, at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, where Army press officials struggled to answer basic questions about what the service would do to address the problem.
Dan Hounsell is senior editor of the facilities market. He has more than 25 years of experience writing about facilities maintenance, engineering and management.
