Army Engineer ENFORCE Conference underway, seeking lessons for future

Pulaski County Daily News ^ | 4/7/2011 | Darrell Todd Maurina

[darrellmaurina]

FORT LEONARD WOOD, Mo. (April 7, 2011) — Top Army engineers are gathering this week for the annual ENFORCE conference at Fort Leonard Wood, but people wearing stars and birds won’t be the only ones speaking. Lt. Col. Timothy O’Brien, who serves as the conference coordinator, emphasized that the senior leaders’ conference is an opportunity for those in key decision-making positions to hear from lower-level engineers who have recently returned from combat in Afghanistan or Iraq. Much of the focus of the conference will be on lessons learned, and that requires up-to-date information. “We will have (a) panel which is all about Afghanistan; the company-level leaders will tell the senior leaders what they’ve seen,” O’Brien said. “It is the senior leaders listening to what the junior guys have to say … There’s not tons of junior leaders at ENFORCE, but there are enough select ones they have a voice. They have been chosen because they have seen things and they are respected.”