Hard-wired

  • Published
  • By Senior Airman Chad Warren
  • 2nd Bomb Wing Public Affairs
Dust covered everything in the small, dimly lit closet. The stale smell permeated the room as if it had not been accessed in decades. The only evidence of human activity here, aside from the layers of black marker graffiti on the cracked paint, was the massive tower of plastic and wires dividing the already cramped workspace in half. This little known closet in the middle of a busy office is the nerve center for all of the telephones in the building.

Cramped in this tiny cave is Airman 1st Class Stephen Sovine, plugging away at terminals on the huge telephone switch. Testing telephone ports on the other side of the building, he walks back and forth every few minutes to switch out equipment and try again. He has 40 pages of work orders in one hand; this is one.

"This was supposed to be a simple job," said Sovine, unable to locate an active telephone port. "They are never simple."

Sovine is a client systems technician with the 2nd Communications Squadron and one of only a handful of Airmen entrusted with the monumental task of handling on location jobs that cannot be resolved remotely. With hundreds of jobs to be completed and more coming in constantly, it is up to Airmen like Sovine to fight and win the uphill battle of supply versus demand.

"Some simple installs can be really quick, but some jobs can take one or two days," said the Austin, Texas native. "On a really good day, I can get through 10 or 11 tickets if everything goes smoothly."

Jobs are broken down into low, medium and high priority based on the urgency and mission impact. Higher priority, mission critical communications systems are given immediate attention. The majority of tickets are low priority jobs, which are tracked and completed in the order they were received.

Telephone installation, line activations, software installation and any issue that requires a technician to physically be present is handled by his office. The sheer volume of work associated with the upkeep of Barksdale's communications infrastructure is daunting.

"We have about 300 active jobs right now and 13 client system technicians here on Barksdale," said Sovine. "We are always making headway, but the job is never done."

Keeping up with the demand of customers is a never ending task, constantly chipping away at the pile of work orders while more are piled on top. Sovine is constantly on the move, constantly working; that is the way he likes it.

"I don't see a lot of desk time, which works for me," he said. "I love getting out and working with customers, and I get to meet new people every day."

Whether it is sweating in a tiny, cramped room connecting telephones or installing software for an office full of people, Sovine keeps Barksdale connected, one job at a time.