The Pentagon Renovation & Construction Program is just what the name implies and much, much, more.  The Pentagon, built in 1941, is over sixty years old. The interior has been modified, walls moved or added, and painted numerous times. Examples include: cables above the ceiling, some dating from the original construction, to fiber being run for new applications.  Our mission is to strip everything out, down to bare concrete, and rebuild it.  Even the concrete pillars are inspected, repaired, or replaced as needed.  We are also asked to accomplish other construction and renovation projects as funds are available or a need arises.  The most recent is the Memorial Project for those who perished on 9/11/01. 

To accomplish this, we ask for bids and award contracts to various companies.  These companies place construction trailers around the building to support their work and work force.  Currently, there are thirteen such trailer complexes (I call them complexes because the largest is twenty trailers wide and the smallest a double-wide).  Each of these complexes is tied back to our server room that is located in a compound at the North end of North Parking, about ½ mile from the building.  This is also the location of our LAN Team and Help Desk.   

Because this is a construction site, there are workers here and on the LAN at all hours of the day, night, and weekend.  Therefore, we maintain a 24/7 operation.  The technicians may be sleeping, but someone is monitoring the phone and can dispatch a tech to a site within a few hours of notification. 

I have worked at Help Desk activities for over fifteen years.  Most of it consisted of just answering the phone and going to the desktop or remotely trying to solve the problem.  On two occasions, with different companies, we tried to somehow automate the trouble ticket process to gain a database of problems, which could be easily referenced for future problems.  Both of these were “home grown”, i.e., developed by local programmers, contained many bugs, and did not accomplish our aims. 

Then three years ago, I moved to my current position with the Pentagon Renovation & Construction Program, and was introduced to HEAT.  At the time we were using version 6.0.  I envisioned using HEAT for many purposes, i.e., keeping track of the numbers of trouble tickets received, resolved, and the timeliness involved.  Later when I took the HEAT Administrators Course, I realized that HEAT could do much more then just keep track of trouble tickets.  After much frustration with the vendor we were using at the time, i.e., being unable to produce the products we required, we heard about CreekPointe.  From the very first, I was impressed with the professionalism of their engineers and their attitude toward getting us the product we needed.   

Over the last year, we have used sixty-five Support Units under their Priority Support Plan and recently signed on for 130 more.  We brought a team from CreekPointe to our location to evaluate our processes and give guidance and direction for attaining our goals.  We also expanded HEAT to cover our Service Support group as well as the LAN group.   

Needless to say, we are elated with the response we receive from CreekPointe and continue to use their expertise to make our jobs of reporting much less demanding.  

Jake Gecowetts
Sytex, Inc.
Pentagon Renovation & Construction Program
Deputy IM IPT
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