Martin Pyle

Serviceman with 24 Commando Engineer Regiment in Afghanistan

Course: AutoCAD

Martin is currently serving in Afghanistan with 24 Commando Engineer Regiment, Royal Engineers, on Operation Herrick 14. It is his second tour and on this tour he has been working in the Construction Supervision Cell (CSC) as a Surveyor Engineer.

Also in the CSC are a Draughtsmen (Construction), an Electrical and Mechanical Draughtsmen, a Clerk of works (Construction), Clerk of works (Mechanical), Clerk of works (Electrical), and a Military Plant Foreman (MPF).

He has completed a number of jobs including Site Plans, As Build Surveys, Levelling of sites, Highway Design and Drainage Design. To complete this he has been using Leica 1200+ GPS kit as well as Liscad SEE, which is a program for downloading data and presenting it.

The drawings produced are required in a PDF format as this is the only way that they can be seen by people on the front line.

In order to get the information into the required PDF format, Martin had to sit down with a draughtsmen (who was busy with other work), to sort out the drawings. This became very time consuming and also very annoying as it was often hard for the draughtsman to create exactly what was needed. Therefore Martin took it upon himself to complete the CAD qualification.

Martin said: “I found this course to be very beneficial and also very good in teaching how to use AutoCAD. I completed it while out on Operation Herrick 14, and I can now produce drawings to a very good standard. The draughtsmen still need to go round and tidy up a few little bits, but in the main the drawing is of a very high and professional standard.”