Senior Airman Cody Nations, 332nd Expeditionary Civil Engineer Squadron engineering technician, cross-references Joint Base Balad units with their status within the scheduled drawdown. Nations is responsible for tracking and organizing the consolidation of units and infrastructure as the installation continues to drawdown. Photo by Jeffrey Schultze.
SALAH AD DIN, Iraq — Joint Base Balad is in full-swing mode preparing for a responsible drawdown and leading the way for other bases who are also preparing for a drawdown.
Tracking everything involved with the drawdown is a 332nd Expeditionary Civil Engineer Squadron airman.
“I maintain a database for more than 7,000 facilities on base which also includes infrastructure such as water and electricity lines,” said Senior Airman Cody Nations, 332nd ECES engineering technician. “My database also includes the staff who works in each facility.”
“My main project right now is to coordinate with all units to assist with getting personnel out of trailers and into as few facilities as possible,” continued the airman deployed from Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska. “It’s a lot of responsibility on my shoulders, but I like it.
Nations has a giant map of JBB that shows where all facilities are located, what jobs are performed in them and who is in them. He also maintains a spreadsheet with similar information. The information gained from these documents helps show where personnel can be moved to reduce the U.S.’s footprint in Iraq.
The information that Nations organizes allows base leadership to understand the capabilities each organization processes to carry out the mission and how units can be consolidated while still continuing the mission.
Nations is an indispensable member of the squadron who is a pillar to our success,” said Staff Sgt. Terence Parton, 332nd ECES GeoBase noncommissioned officer-in-charge, who is also deployed from JBER. “He continuously volunteers to work well past ‘business hours’ to make sure the job gets done.”
Parton is a native of Oregon, Ohio.
Other responsibilities of the Marion, N.C., native, include flight safety representative, alternate squadron information assurance officer, providing GeoBase support the environmental flight and providing map support to the terrain management office.
In addition to his job, Nations is currently working on attaining a degree in Archeology from the University of North Carolina.