Decision Analysis with Value-Focused Thinking as a Methodology in Structuring the Civil Engineer Operations Flight

The organizational structure of the civil engineer operations flight has been in a constant state of change since the flight's inception and is currently prescribed only to the element level. This requires an operations flight commander to decide on the organizational structure best suited for their unique situation without any guidance or support. This difficult decision is compounded by the numerous organizational structures currently in use and the myriad of installation-unique factors that impact the decision.To provide insight and defensible support for an operations flight commander faced with this decision, a value- focused thinking process was used to create a value model that aids in evaluating possible organizational structures. To ensure that the results of this research are applicable across the Air Force, the value model was created in a way that identifies the basic values of any operations flight commander. The resulting value model was then used to evaluate how well different organizational structures performed with respect to these generic values. To further strengthen the results and ensure their wide-ranging relevance, the model was used to evaluate a representative sample of organizational structures from the perspective of multiple scenarios.The results of this research provide an operations flight commander a concise, straightforward, and defensible means of selecting an organizational structure.