Rock Solid Warrior: Staff Sgt. Paul Northrup Published July 6, 2012 386th Air Expeditionary Wing SOUTHWEST ASIA -- Rank/First & Last Name: SSgt Paul Northrup Deployed Unit: 387th Expeditionary Support Squadron Duty Title: Structural Craftsman Home unit/station: 97th Civil Engineer Squadron, Altus AFB, Okla. How do you support the mission here? I ensure $615K of maintenance and custodial contracts are managed while also performing service calls. In addition to helping each other maintain a work load of more than 150 job orders a month, we maintain a 24/7 stand-by presence at our location, always ready to troubleshoot light carts, replace struck barriers, switch to generator power in the middle of the night. How many times have you deployed and what makes this deployment unique? This is my fourth deployment. It is different because the entire shop is single man shops of each craft so we end up helping each other on work orders and learning each other's job. Normally I am JET (joint expeditionary tasked) Airman or deployed into a large shop to travel to forward operating locations to build living quarters and work areas. How does your job differ in a deployed environment vs. home base? At home station the task of base operating support infrastructure is conducted by an operations flight of nearly 200 personnel. Deployed I work in a shop of 8, where each specialty in the flight is only one person deep which means that everyone relies on their fellow Airmen to perform daily maintenance, close out work orders, complete projects, run exercises or inspect first response equipment.