An Investigation of the Air Force Civil Engineering Foreman as a Resource Manager.

The United States Air Force has installations worldwide. The Base Civil Engineer BCE organization operates, maintains, and provides for construction, repair, and maintenance of facilities at these installation. The foreman is the link between the BCE work force and management. He directly effects accomplishment of the BCE mission. The foreman, as a resource manager, may not be utilizing his own man-hour allocation in the most effective manner. Previous research indicated that he may be devoting more time to functions which are the primary responsibility of others than to his key management functions of directing and controlling. Research data on actual man-hour allocation were gathered from surveys sent to fifteen bases. This data was compared with previous research data on foreman man-hour allocation. The comparison indicated 1 directing and controlling are perceived as the BCE foremans key management duties 2 BCE management personnel perceptions of foreman man-hour allocation is not equivalent to the actual allocation 3 the BCE foreman man-hour allocation is not equivalent to that of the civilian industry foreman and 4 the BCE foreman allocates excessive man-hours to duties that are the primary responsibility of others at the expense of man-hours available to his key management functions. Author