Travis Meyer

Travis Meyer was born in Jacksonville, Arkansas. Travis has a very loving family that supports him through his career.

Travis works for NCF or Naval Construction Force. He is commonly referred to as a SeaBee that originates from the letters CB which stands for Construction Battalion. The unit he is currently attached to is Naval Mobile Construction Battalion Forty (or NMCB 40). This is one of 9 battalions’ stations between Port Hueneme, California and Gulfport, Mississippi. NMCB 40 is located in California. As a SeaBee he is trained in 7 "ratings" or job specialties of the Construction Force. His job is a project engineer commonly called an Engineering Aide.

Travis specializes in three main and highly technical fields. The first is Architectural Drafting. This field can be anything from hand sketches to detailed computer drawings using special computer programs called CAD or computer aided drafting. These drawings are what they use to depict on paper the construction activity that is or will be taking place so that all can understand and include what the surrounding area looks like, ground work, wood framing, electrical and plumbing plans and what the end product should look like.

The second part of Travis’s rating is surveying. This is basically the process of determining the layout of the land around where a construction project will go and the layout of the project itself. He and many other people will from time to time build roads and mostly, some kind of building. Roads require a survey of what the land is doing naturally, and then decide what needs to be done for the road to go into place. All the angles will be computed for up and down slopes or hills and left or right curves to either best fit the land for the least amount of work and more efficiency or to their "customer" or organization that has contracted their work, to meet their standards or requirements.

As we all know, most buildings are square. When laying out a building, his job is to make sure that it turns out that way. Over tens or hundreds of feet, it can be more difficult than one may think! With that, Travis has to make sure that everything is straight and in the right place distance wise from one point to another. Such as concrete columns or footing or footer placements, doorways, windows, etc. The last, last area that Travis must expertise is soils testing and analysis. Basically this consists of playing with dirt, which Travis thinks is fun! But in all actuality it involves dirt, concrete, and asphalt or pavement that is used on all major roadways. The dirt or soils that Travis and his buddies build their projects on have to meet a certain compaction percentage. All that means is that they have to pack it down to hard enough to support the project that they will place on top of it. Most of their projects have concrete in somewhere to give it a solid foundation or base or vertical columns to support something up above. The concrete has to meet a certain pressure rating in PSI (or pounds per square inch). They have to take samples of the concrete while they put it in place to determine if it meets that pressure rating. To do this Travis does compression tests on them to see how much pressure it takes at 7, 14, and 28-day intervals until it passes. If it doesn’t then the concrete has to be jack hammered out and removed to do it again! “Now that is fun, ha ha!” Travis says.

Now, the SeaBees were created during World War II. So with that being said, they are also trained to fight and defend themselves. There is a motto that all SeaBees live by, "We Build, We Fight". There are times where they might be sent to a location where there are hostile forces, like overseas with the war, and they might be attacked during construction. They have to defend themselves in these instances. They do work side by side with the Marine Corps for this reason, but that is a whole different story. Most of that stuff is left up to them. However, during times of National or World crisis they have been known to do Force Protection. Basically military security guards and riot control in times of natural disasters.

But on the other hand, they also partake in humanitarian efforts as well. Basically, they do work for others that are in need of help or are less fortunate. In Hurricane Katrina, Seabees were there as Force Protection and for Humanitarian efforts. They stopped riots and looting after the damage as well as helped clean up debris left behind and repair schools, hospitals, and houses that were damaged.

Travis says, “I thoroughly enjoy everything I do. I get the chance to learn lots of good traits and skills that I can become proficient at during my time in and can use on the outside of the military. I get to use these skills in all different kinds of places traveling around the world for deployments and projects. Right now there is nothing more fun and exciting than what I am doing. I am always being challenged with my work on a daily basis. It's not your daily normal desk job, that’s for sure.”

Travis is my hero because he has worked hard at what he has been doing for many years and I think that is what mostly counts in this situation. He helps out so many people, and risks his own life with loving friends and family in it to save our lives. I think we should really thank Travis for all his help in the real world for so many years. I think Travis is a wonderful guy and I hope you think the same too.