Airmen's List available to assist moving units

by Tech. Sgt. James M. Hodgman
U.S. Air Forces in Europe-Air Forces Africa

2/26/2014 - RAMSTEIN AIR BASE, Germany -- With renovations to the U.S. Air Forces in Europe-Air Forces Africa Headquarters building complete, nearly 800 Airmen are making final preparations to relocate in March.

The Airmen will move into new offices with new furniture, and they may not need items they used during the building's four-year renovation. Like other units across the command with older, but serviceable equipment, they may wonder what to do with that equipment.

Airmen's List, a website designed by the command's Business Transformation Office to help units repurpose supplies and save money, can help, said Lt. Col. Brian Lewis, USAFE-AFAFRICA deputy chief of staff.

"In any move, we find things that have outlived their usefulness to us, but still have serviceable life," he said.

"Airmen's List is a great way to offer items to others so they can be reutilized. It's also a handy place to start looking for the item you didn't realize you needed, but now that you've moved, find that your mission would be better accomplished with it," Lewis said.

Maj. Rene Alvidrez, USAFE-AFAFRICA BTO Information Management and Technology Branch chief and the developer of Airmen's List, said the site has helped several units.
Since June 2013, five USAFE-AFAFRICA bases have used Airmen's List to repurpose supplies saving the command $150,000, Alvidrez said.

Airmen from Ramstein Air Base have used the site to repurpose $11,000 in equipment and supplies. Another $9,000 in items from across the command are listed on the site.

Alvidrez encourages units to consider using Airmen's List to find items the unit needs before buying them.

With the upcoming move to the USAFE-AFAFRICA HQ building, units may have a surplus supply items or furniture such as refrigerators or other items the unit may no longer need, Alvidrez said. "If they have furniture and they don't know what to do with it, they can post those items on Airmen's List."

"In the financially constrained Air Force we live in now, every dollar counts," Alvidrez added. "Money is not easy to find, so if you can find supplies, monitors, office equipment --things you would normally use your government purchase card to buy for free -- why not do that."

Charles Hollis, a unit-level command and control trainer with the 48th Fighter Wing Plans, Programs and Inspections Office at Royal Air Force, Lakenheath, England, recently used Airmen's List to repurpose 15 furniture items from a storage room in one of his unit's buildings.

Hollis said that two weeks after posting the items, two units from RAF Mildenhall picked them up.

Now, the approximately 400 square foot room is used as a classroom. "We can now use the room to teach up to 10 students at one time," Hollis said. Airmen's List has had a direct impact on enhancing his unit's mission, he added.

Airmen's List is available to anyone with a common access card.

The site can be accessed by logging on to the USAFE-AFAFRICA Portal. Once there, perform a general search for "Shared AirmensList." Then, click the top link and the front page of the site should pop up. Airmen can then post equipment and supply needs directly to any base within USAFE-AFAFRICA.