Project Manager for the rollout of the JLTV and set up of the national training center

In 2020 I was assigned to 2 years of orders to be the Project Manager for the rollout of the JLTV which is the replacement of the Humvee and to set up the national training center for the JLTV.

Orders came down from the office of the Chief of the Army Reserve in Washington DC. Myself the Project Manager and 7 other Soldiers including a Colonel whose task was risk management, reviewer, and signature authority were assigned to this project. We had 9-months and a budget of $25,000,000 to complete the project.

The project order was to receive 60 JLTV’s from the Oshkosh Manufacture in Oshkosh Wisconsin to be staged for further transport at Fort McCoy Wisconsin. From Fort McCoy, the 60 JLTV’s would be transported to the new JLTV national training center at Fort Hunter-Liggett California. Once all 60 had made it to California my next task was to create and build the national training center course and training facility. Once the course and facility were complete, I would handoff to the new training manager and my orders would be complete.

When I first received my orders as the Project Manager, I had a large initial meeting virtually with all the parties involved to make sure we were all on the same page. The list of everyone involved is as follows.

-???????The Chief of the Army Reserve. His role was to ensure overall project success.

-???????The transport team, training team, and a number of executives from Oshkosh.

-???????All Team members assigned to me.

-???????The logistics and transport team at Fort McCoy

-???????The logistics and maintenance team at Fort Hunter-Liggett

-???????The base Commander at Fort Hunter-Liggett

-???????The Army engineers Commander who will be building the off-road course

Overall, there were 50 people involved in the meeting who would be involved in this project in one form or another and at various stages and phases of the project. During this meeting, the budget was worked out and a timeline for each stage of the project was created.

Once the meeting was complete, I met with my own team and we laid out the entire plan from start to finish. We listed out every task that needed to be completed as well as parallel tasks that could be done at the same time. Since we knew we only had 9 months to complete everything we were able to backward plan the entire project and come up with a timeline of when everything needed to be accomplished.

My second set of meetings was to create the timelines of when things could be accomplished. I first met with the Oshkosh team and the Fort McCoy logistics and transport team to get the timeline on when Fort McCoy could receive the 60 JLTV’s. Based on their estimates I had the Fort McCoy transport team schedule civilian flat bead transport trucks to transport all 60 to Fort Hunter-Liggett California. This first stage of the operation was the largest muscle movement of the entire project and by far the most dangerous. Dangerous because we were transporting these vehicles on public roads in January and February.

Once the Oshkosh team had transported all 60 JLTV’s to Fort McCoy the Army officially took possession of all 60. At that point, all paperwork was signed and documented. The next task was to have the logistics and transport team schedule 30 transport flatbed trucks to take the JLTV’s to California. The largest hurdle we ran into with that was it proved difficult to schedule 30 flatbed trucks at the same time in January in Wisconsin. What was originally supposed to take two weeks to complete ended up taking over a month and a half. By the first of March, Fort Hunter-Liggett had received all 60 JLTV’s.

While the transport phase was happening, I was also having separate meetings with the Fort Hunter-Liggett base commander, The Army engineer commander, The Oshkosh training team, and the Fort Hunter-Liggett maintenance and logistics team. The purpose of these meetings was to create the plan and execution of how the new national JLTV training center would be set up. The Oshkosh team already came with a plan of what the off-road course would look like as well as a dedicated team for the classroom training and maintenance training. My job was to make sure all the pieces of the puzzle lined up and were accomplished in the time frame given.

Once all the vehicles were in California, I coordinated the training of the maintenance staff with the Oshkosh staff so the Fort Hunter-Liggett maintenance team could operate autonomously in the future. While that was going on I was working with the base commander, his team, The Army engineer commander, and the Oshkosh team to get construction started on the off-road course. The base commander’s team had already procured the necessary permits from the state of California to dig and begin construction. My job for this phase of the project was to make sure the high level of coordination happened and that the timeline was being stuck to. Oshkosh had their own project managers, as well as the Army engineers, had their own project managers. The base commander’s team was the approving authority for all activities that occurred. I made sure all the cross-functional teams talked to each other and that any roadblocks to success were identified and removed. The construction of the off-road course took around 6 months to complete. Construction was completed in mid-July right before the fire season really kicked off.

While construction was wrapping up, I was working with the Oshkosh training and maintenance team to make sure the Fort Hunter-Liggett maintenance team was ready to make the hand-off and operate on their own. Beginning in late June I began the final stage of the project which was to set up the training facility. In order to accomplish this, I had to work with the center of Army training at Fort Knox to create the official training program. I took all the course material and course descriptions to give to the center of Army training so they could process, approve, and officially create the JLTV in-person course. Once final approval was given in August and an official course title and course number were given, I began the official hand-off of the JLTV program to the Oshkosh training team and the Fort Hunter-Liggett maintenance team. The JLTV project stayed in the $25,000,000 budget allowed even with minor hiccups that occurred along the way.

The JLTV project was by far the most complicated and most fun project I have ever worked on. There were thousands of moving pieces that had the ability to derail the project at any time. Thanks to my amazing team the project was accomplished with few issues. I was only able to give a brief description of the players and the project in general due to the sensitive nature of the project as a whole. Working with many different cross-functional teams spread across the country I learned more about project management in 9 months than most project managers will learn in their entire careers. ?

So, what did my day-to-day look like with this project? My first task of the day was to review the timeline and do-outs for the day and week. My first meeting of the day was a short meeting with my team who had their hands in every cookie jar of the project. We reviewed what happened the day prior, what needed to get accomplished today, and what issues needed to get resolved, and what potential issues were coming down the road that could be identified and worked on now. I would take the next part of my day to help resolve any issues I could. The last part of my day was planning, coordinating, and refining the next muscle movement we had to work on in the project according to the timeline.

Every day I would have 1-2 meetings with my immediate team. Every week I would have a meeting with the Fort Hunter-Liggett base commander and the Oshkosh team. Once a month I would have a meeting with the chief of the Army Reserve. Once a month I would fly to either Oshkosh headquarters, Fort Knox or Washington DC to meet various people involved in the project in person. These in-person meetings were a great way to build relationships, learn more about the future of the project after my time is done, and also help to further remove any obstacles to success out of the way.?