Congratulations to Melissa Rinehart, US Corps of Engineers 2014 Recreation Employee of the Year! She leads and mentors 44 project personnel at 20 operating projects with 93 Corps-operated recreation sites, and these sites are safer, more enjoyable and better managed thanks to her leadership and professionalism.

Melissa manages a number of technical programs including OMBIL (where she co-chairs the Users Group,), RecBEST, Rec Self-Assessment, VERS, Recreation and Environmental Stewardship OMBIL and the Portland District’'s Wounded Warrior program. Ms. Rinehart also serves on numerous national programs including the Operation and Maintenance Information Users Steering Committee. Several of her innovative ideas on water safety and fire management are documented on the Gateway’'s "Good Enough to Share" pages.

She recently conducted a peer review of the Bonneville Lock and Dam, in which a group she formed reviewed each display and feature of the facility'’s visitors center against the Corps’ requirements and regulations, and made recommendations for changes and improvements.

Melissa created a "sustainable recreation strategy" that tracks expenditures to ensure that they remain within budgets. Each project uses the too'l’s timeline feature to plan their multiyear strategy and manage their annual budgets and work plan.

Recognizing that young people aged 18-35 were disproportionately more at risk in the water, Melissa created an outreach program with representatives of University of Oregon and Oregon State University to deliver water safety messages to this hard-to-reach demographic.

Perhaps Melissa’'s most vital contribution to the Corps is her seven years supporting OMBIL on the district and national levels. She helps rangers and managers in the field simplify their operation with numerous webcasts, database and user manual updates and lots of one-on-one training sessions. By improving the OMBIL functions Corps managers are better able to plan for and manage their recreation and environmental stewardship programs.

Said Melissa about the award, "It was such an immense honor and wonderful surprise to be nominated and selected at the national level for this award. I know the competition is stiff and there are many amazing Corps of Engineers employees across the country who make a huge difference every day in the recreation program and for our visitors. We are all driven to provide the best recreation experience, keep our visitors informed and safe and have fun doing it."