A major staffing change did end up happening just over a week ago: another of my original group of seven new construction engineers ended up leaving after much deliberation. His primary reasons were his relationship with his girlfriend and frustration with the construction engineer assignment process. The CE assignment process is significantly different from the vast majority of other Foreign Service Specialists (and Officers for that matter) because each assignment depends on an enormous number of variables: timing of projects starting and ending, family-specific issues, personnel changes, and more. This is useful to know for new hires' expectation management: the current program is for new staff to be in DC for 1 to 2 years and the actual departure date is very hard to predict. In any case, I'll keep in touch with him on his new adventures and wish him the best of luck!
Coincidentally, a new FSCE just joined us the next business day after the aforementioned left. This is very good, we need the help, but the loss of 17 months of institutional knowledge is significant. With the new hire comes helping with training to get up to speed. It sheds a lot of light on how much we learn in just a year, it's a steep learning curve, and I don't think it'll flatten out anytime soon.
Speaking of assignments, this year's Construction Management bid list should come out any day now - in fact, it's about a month behind when last year's was issued. Looking forward to seeing what's coming up! Until then, there's plenty of work supporting the ongoing projects.
As an aside, here's a recent confirmation of my long-held belief: always get the bigger pizza.
(This post written while listening to Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers Runnin' Down A Dream)
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