James Janicek is commended for serving as QA Team Leader Supervisor for the Louisiana Recovery Field Office in support and recovery effort for Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. In this position, he supervised four separate QA team leaders responsible for 60 government QA roofing team members and over 60 Contracted civilian employees During the Period from 01 September through 30 November 2005, he provided invaluable experience and leadership to establish “Blue Roof” operations in St. Tammany Parrish and Calcasieu Parrish. Jim trained and supervised over 60 personnel as “Blue Roof” estimators and quality assurance inspectors. His positive “Can Do” attitude was adopted by both his team members and the civilian contract work force. Under his direct leadership over 35,000 temporary roofs were installed by contractors hired by the Corps of Engineers providing direct hurricane relief for many distressed homeowners. Jim has had a direct major impact on the hurricane recovery efforts in Southern Louisiana. His contribution and teamwork reflect selfless devotion to duty and bring great credit upon him, the LA-RFO and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Mr. Smutny,
I would like to take this opportunity to commend one of your employees whom was instrumental in the overwhelming success of the Blue Roof Program for the recovery efforts from Hurricane Rita at the Emergency Field Office – West in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Mr. James “JJ” Janicek proved to be an extremely valuable asset to the project, the team of over 150 employees and to the Corps of Engineers. JJ served as a Quality Assurance Supervisor while I was one of the Resident Engineers at the EFO-West.
However, JJ was much more than that. When I arrived in mid-October, the RE that I was replacing told me that the QA Supervisors had everything running smooth and the best thing I could do was to not get in the way and mess things up. I soon learned after taking over that he was correct. JJ and Michael Welch (NWO) had a good handle on the entire Blue Roof Program and were able to distribute the workload on a daily basis to over 150 QA personnel and also keep our customers satisfied.
JJ was instrumental in assigning the daily work for over 150 QA personnel and keeping up with the progress of the work that they were doing. JJ handled numerous customer complaints in a very professional manner and he even learned to do it in love (ask JJ about this). On several occasions JJ went above and beyond the scope of our mission to help people that fell through the cracks of the government bureaucracy. These are the characteristics of JJ that stand out to me more than anything. His desire to help the less fortunate in our society and his ability to get things done that were not necessarily in our mission but needed to be done anyway. Although he appears to be a little rough around the edges, I learned over the course of six weeks that he has a soft spot for folks that need help the most and does whatever necessary to help them.
I am sure that you are aware of JJ’s talents and skills but I just wanted to emphasize to you the importance of his performance in helping us to accomplish the Blue Roof Program in a very successful and timely manner.
Mark Harris, P.G.
Resident Engineer – EFO-West