(Editor's Note: Engineers Week is this month and we wanted to take the opportunity to spotlight members of the Air Force Civil Engineer Center and Air Force Installation and Mission Support Center team doing great things for the Air Force and civil engineering community.)
JOINT BASE SAN ANTONIO-LACKLAND, Texas -- Meet Laurel Papadopoulos, command engineer, AFIMSC Detachment 6, Air Force Materiel Command, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio.
What are your main responsibilities?
I am the Installation Energy Plan lead for AFMC, the liaison with the Office of Energy Assurance for implementation, the Air Force Common Output Level Standards representative for AFIMSC, and lead waiver consultant, streamlining complicated National Air and Space Intelligence Center waiver. Additionally, I provide performance measurement for the energy assurance campaign plan/strategic guidance and program; and the charter, schedule, content, slides and minutes for the Energy Assurance Steering Group and the Energy Assurance Working Group. Currently, I am also serving as the sub-chair for AFIMSC’s 2021 Air Force Installation and Mission Support Weapons and Tactics Conference, Mission Area Working Group 1, Future Installation Construct.
What is the best thing about your job?
Enabling installations to achieve their energy goals.
As a child, what job did you want to be when you grew up?
I always wanted to be an engineer.
What made you pursue engineering as a career?
I played with cars and built cities in the dirt for our “families” with my siblings. I completed design plans for schools and mansions with my Grandpa’s engineering drafting paper. Later, I learned how to use the construction software AutoCAD to make them even better.
What is your favorite part about being an Air Force CE?
We build stuff and watch it serve the purpose that it was intended to serve.
Why is your job important to the Air Force mission?
We sustain the mission through facility and infrastructure excellence.
What advice do you have for someone new to the engineering field?
Learn from people who have been doing the work for years. Also, continue what you were taught in school to solve problems innovatively.
What motivates and inspires you the most?
People succeeding and feeling well served.
If there was one engineering marvel or achievement that you could have been a part of, what would that have been and why?
I would have liked to help design a city from the beginning. Detroit, Michigan, for example, looks beautiful from the air.