vol. 2, no. 23  Serving Southern Nevada’s military community, including Nellis, Creech and NTTR                                           nov. 16, 2018

                        An Aerotech news And review publicAtion • www.Aerotechnews.com

Nellis Airman named

DOD Senior Fire Officer of the Year
   Master Sgt. Andrew Kehl, 99th Civil
Engineer Squadron deputy fire chief, was                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           Courtesy photograph
recently named the winner of the 2017
Department of Defense Senior Fire Officer        Air Force Fire Chief Jeff Wagner (left) presents Master Sgt. Andrew Kehl, 99th Civil Engineer Squadron deputy fire chief, with a coin at
Award.                                           Nellis Air Force Base, Nev. Kehl was named the Department of Defense Senior Fire Officer of the year for 2017.

   Kehl’s accomplishments set him apart              As the Nellis and Creech deputy fire     vehicle accidents because we run a large    was won in Spangdahlem, and that team
from hundreds of other fire officers             chief, Kehl ensures that the more than       section of US-95 there.”                    there just really built me up.”
throughout the military.                         100 members assigned here are capable
                                                 of responding to whatever call they might       To Kehl, the award not only recognizes      “We had more than 200 people alone
   “Each wing will have a representative,        receive.                                     him for the hard work he’s done, but also   involved in the process improvement as-
then it goes to the major command (MA-                                                        highlights what the teams he has worked     pect, which was a big chunk of this award,”
JCOM) and then the Air Force level,” said           “The majority of calls we get here are    with on his many projects have done.        he said. “It was also firefighters taking
Kehl. “Once it goes to the Air Force level       for medical and inflight emergencies,” said                                              the initiative to get rid of things that are
then you compete against the Marines,            Kehl. “Up at Creech we get a lot of motor       “For me, it validates all the hard work  considered waste and be more efficient.”
Navy and Army.”                                                                               my teams put in,” said Kehl. “The award

   Although Kehl did quite a bit during the
year that contributed to his to being named
senior fire officer of the year, the project he
is most proud of is a platform he built, with
the help of a team, used by firefighters Air
Force-wide.

   “I had a vision that we create a web-cen-
tric platform to conduct all flight business
for fire departments,” said Kehl.

   With his team, Kehl was able to use
readily available SharePoint software to
make his vision a reality.

   “I don’t think a lot of people were fully
aware of its actual capabilities,” said Kehl.
“We coded a custom fire department
dropdown web part and coded a custom
slider and a bunch of the guts. We’ve been
delivering it to one or two bases a week
across the entire enterprise.”

   A limited file size for email along with
cloud computing technology lead him to
come up with this new way of sharing
information while standardizing fire de-
partments around the Air Force.

   “It started because our mailboxes had a
60 Mb max and every time someone sent
me something with an attachment I would
get annoyed by it,” said Kehl. “That led
me to SharePoint, but, the overall vision
was ‘how can we make it so that we are
sharing information throughout the entire
enterprise.’”

   “The idea was that because it’s cloud
based, we could have a platform that we
could share information and it would be
the same no matter where we go.”

INSIDE: Commentary — 2; News — 3-10; Veterans’ News — 12; Nellis Living — 16