Posted by Robert Archer in A question about ship/Fleet auditing
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I want to avoid this question sounding mean, so please don’t take it as an attack… However, in my mind the entire point of FCOMM and the cabinet positions therein are meant to serve the same purpose as your audit idea (unless I’ve read it wrongly). By that, I just mean that each Fcomm/Afcomm team should be tracking these things in their respective fleets already.

Hi Dave, thanks for your post! So yes you are right the entire point of FCOMM and the cabinet positions should serve as an audit as we describe. However, given what one person terms as ‘healthy’ or ‘acceptable’ is often stretched beyond what is reasonable for the base guidelines of FCOMM and such. Or that how one person is trained to the next is inconsistent and often the smaller deviations of this training over time are not corrected it becomes ‘acceptable’ to do one thing over another. So not only is this audits focus relating to ships in the fleets, but at a higher level also the FComm duties and how they are done if that wasn’t clear. Essentially we (The Exec) set the guidelines using FCOMM and then Matt and I would first check on the fcomms to see how its working, in turn then fcomms would do the same with communicating to the CO/XOs on a ship. Matt and I would do our best to do the same at the ship level, and then we compare notes. That is in a very condensed planned way what I feel I said in our HQ post regarding this in more detail.

Would you consider stricter enforcement of the bylaws already in place as an alternative to creating more bylaws, or altering them? Or would you consider your audit plan to be more in the vein of training people to perform Fcomm duties?

I look at it more in the vein of consistency of training. STF has existed well on 31 years, and mostly our current standards have been around at least since I joined in 2006 on, so having some kind of check up audit like this couldnt hurt. At best we find that more or less everything is running as it should and no improvements could be needed (I very much doubt this will happen but hey positive thoughts!), at worse we find several key areas that are inconsistent or ways we can improve that will help not only ships and fleets, but also STF’s community as a whole.

Again, not trying to be sassy here… I’m trying to get a better mental picture of how this should work. Also, I’m very glad someone is taking a serious look at this.

Thanks,
-Dave Eads

No offense was taken Dave, I was/am more then happy to clarify this point. Its how we learn and grow as a community from each other.

Robert Archer

I appreciate the answer!
Thanks
- Dave Eads