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New Marching Orders
Military contractors face a host
of procurement and delivery changes as bases prepare for worldwide
troop redeployment
By E. Michael Powers
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The spires of the new Air Force Memorial
in Washington, D.C., were designed to evoke the image
of the precision "bomb burst" maneuver performed
by the Air Force Thunderbirds Demonstration Team.
photo courtesy of centex construction, by michael carpenter
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The military construction market in the
United States has undergone a rash of changes over the past
several years that have impacted every facet of the process,
from procurement and finance to design and building methods.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is leading
the way with the most drastic of those changes.
"Traditionally, military construction
work on individual bases has been designed and built according
to the needs of the site," says Marco Giamberardino,
director of AGC's Federal & Heavy Construction Division.
"No two projects were ever alike."
From now on, military buildings are going
to look increasingly familiar, he says. The Army is currently
working to adopt standard designs for building types that
can be adapted to the needs of each base. The Army Corps of
Engineers is also considering a switch to modular construction
elements, says Giamberardino.
Not everyone is enthused about the new
approach. "One of the problems with the standardization
concept is that the commander on each installation has a lot
of say and may not want buildings that do not match the architectural
styles of existing structures," says Eddie Stewart, president
and COO of Caddell Construction, Montgomery, Ala.
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The $13.5-million bachelors' enlisted
quarters was built by Jacksonville's L.C. Gaskins at Mayport
Naval Station, Fla., with a variety of anti terrorism
and other force protections.
rendering courtesy of L.C. gaskins |
More Housing Needed
Some of the most drastic changes have come on the procurement
side of the business. The Corps is focusing its procurement
efforts on multiple-award construction contracts and indefinite-duration/indefinite-quantity
contracts with task orders.
These jobs tend to be for greater volumes of work, resulting
in contracts that exceed the bonding capacity of many small
to mid-sized firms. The restructuring is to help expedite
projects at a time when the military's needs are changing
rapidly.
"The Army is planning on bringing a lot of troops back
from overseas, and assuming that does not change and they
bring back units from Korea and Germany, it has created a
need for expedited housing units," says Doug Barnhart,
president of San Diego's Barnhart Inc.
The basis for project awards has changed as well. Contracts
are no longer won solely with a low bid. A combination of
scheduling, cost and past performance is also part of the
decision, says Barnhart.
The Naval Facilities Engineering Command recently has even
enlisted private financing to build projects such as the proposed
$300-million high-rise barracks at the San Diego naval station.
The barracks will be owned and operated by private development
firms. Two similar facilities are being considered in Norfolk,
Va., and Camp Pendleton, 38 miles north of San Diego.
"NAVFAC is now letting 80 to 85% of its projects as
design-build," Barnhart says. "There were some design-build
jobs in the past, but it has changed rapidly over the past
five or six years."
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| San Diego's Douglas E. Barnhart Inc.
built upgraded amenities into this bachelors' enlisted
quarters at the Marine Corps Air-Ground Combat Center
in Twentynine Palms, Calif. |
New Standards
While some elements of the reorganization, such as modular
construction and the use of cheaper materials, have been well
received by contractors, others are wary of the new procurement
and design methods.
"The government will take a program to build barracks
throughout a region and lump it all into one large contract,"
says Stewart. "The size of the contract can be prohibitive
for many firms." A lump-sum contract to build 50 buildings
for $10 million each, spread across a large geographic area
may not appeal to firms with the bonding to bid on such a
large contract.
"Once the actual contracts hit the street, it's often
many smaller jobs that contractors with $500 million in bonding
capacity are not interested in, which could result in higher
prices," says Stewart.
Despite his concerns over the new methods, Stewart's firm
is taking advantage of the new market. Caddell recently broke
ground at El Paso's Fort Bliss on the First Brigade headquarters
of an indefinite-duration, indefinite-quantity contract that
will require it to build the same facility five more times
throughout the Southwest. The project is actually the first-ever
application of the new standard design for a brigade headquarters,
Stewart says.
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Caddell Construction Co., Montgomery,
Ala., has built several barracks at Ft. Bragg, N.C., where
the Army Corps of Engineers has launched a $1-billion
capital improvement program.
Photo by Ronald Moore & Associates |
Regional Differences
While many contractors have experienced similar situations
with government agencies, the winds of change in the military
construction market have not blown the same way across the
country. In some areas, the volume of work is overwhelming
while in others, it's relatively stable.
"The effect of base realignments and closures has not
been felt as strongly in Florida, says Larry Gaskins, president,
L.C. Gaskins, a general contractor in Jacksonville, Fla. Gaskins
says he has seen his market change dramatically over the past
five years. "Security has become a bigger issue in the
past year," he adds. "On most of the projects we
have going right now, we have to do background checks. Generally,
I need three weeks to a month to get people onto a base."
"There is a lot of DOD [Dept. of Defense] work targeted
for the mid-Atlantic region," says John Barotti, senior
vice president of Clark Construction Group, Bethesda, Md.
The Corps of Engineers has so much work lined up for the region
that Barotti's firm and others have been urging the Corps
to get the projects into the construction marketplace while
there's still enough capacity to get them done.
"There are many large, private-sector projects in the
planning stages," Barotti says. "If all of the general
contractors aren't getting bids from subcontractors, prices
could go crazy. We are already seeing bids where there are
only two subs bidding on a project because they are overwhelmed."
Ken Gray, the Corps' Fort Bragg, N.C., area engineer, says
next year is going to be a problem because of the volume of
work planned. "The problem is that labor is already stretched
thin in the region and adding more work simply is not going
to help the situation," he says.
The South and Southeast are also seeing booming military
markets. Fort Bragg and Fort Benning, Ga., both expect to
see massive amounts of Base Realignment and Closure-related
work soon, Gray says.
Caddell Construction has been a part of the team of contractors
getting Fort Bragg ready for the massive influx of troops
from BRAC and redeployment from international bases. "I
think the big influence is going to be bringing those units
that are based overseas back to the United States," says
Barnhart. "We've kept units overseas since World War
II."
"All of our work reflects the changing market,"
Stewart says. "Much of the work is related to the redeployment
of our forces out of Europe and Asia."
The work at Fort Bragg further reflects the Corps' new focus.
Much of it is design-build work, and the contractors have
been given more flexibility in construction techniques and
materials.
"Five years ago almost all of the projects were designed
by the Corps, then bid and built," Gray says. "The
old cycle was that we would start design two years before
funding. Now we do it all at one time, cutting the cycle in
half."
One drawback to the new construction specs is a possible
loss of longevity in the structures being built. "With
the cheaper materials, we can expect a 20- to 25-year life
expectancy, versus the 50-year life expectancy of the old-method
buildings," says Stewart.
The work is not limited to constructing barracks for troop
redeployment. In 2009 the U.S. Forces Command will be moved
from Fort McPherson, Ga., to Fort Bragg at a cost of roughly
$300 million, says Gray. "The project will be funded
in 2009 and [the Army] wants to have it completed by 2011,"
he says.
Fort Benning is looking to complete more than $1 billion
of work over the next five years, Gray says. A big chunk of
that work will be the relocation of the Army's armor-training
school from Fort Knox, Tenn., to Fort Benning.
That move, like many others under way throughout the armed
forces, is part of the massive BRAC program that is fueling
so much of the military construction across the country.
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AIR FORCE MEMORIAL SWEEPS
INTO WASHINGTON, D.C. SKYLINE
The skyline of Washington, D.C., has a new addition:
three steel spires that sweep into the sky like the
Air Force fighter jets they were built to honor.
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| photo by Jennifer Finch for
centex contruction |
President Bush dedicated the city's new Air Force Memorial
on Oct. 14. Located just off Columbia Pike, in Virginia,
on a promontory overlooking the Pentagon and adjacent
to Arlington Cemetery, the memorial is made up of three
stainless-steel spires that curve as high as 270 ft
into the sky. The memorial, which cost more than $30
million to build, commemorates the one U.S. military
service branch that, until now, did not have a monument
in its honor.
"The reality has lived up to the dream that we've
had for almost 15 years since we embarked on this project
to develop the memorial," says Maj. Gen. (Ret.)
Edward Grillo, president of the Air Force Memorial Foundation.
It was incorporated in January 1992 to pursue the development
of a national Air Force memorial.
The memorial adds a distinctive new element to the
Washington, D.C., skyline. John Tarpey, division president
and CEO of the Washington, D.C., metro office of Centex
Construction, Fairfax, Va., calls the project unique.
His firm served as the prime contractor for the spires.
Creating the Spires
The spires were designed to evoke the image of the
precision "bomb burst" maneuver performed
by the Air Force Thunderbirds Demonstration Team. James
Ingo Freed, who also designed the holocaust museum in
Washington, designed the spires.
The three spires are 13 ft wide at their base and taper
to two ft wide at their tips, which rise to 270 ft,
231 ft, and 201 ft. They are anchored by 20-ft-deep,
3-ft-wide drilled, belled concrete piles that are tied
into three separate 8-ft thick caps. A continuous 16-ft
x 8-ft x 300-ft perimeter grade beam connects the three
caps. The spires are tied to the foundation with DYWIDAG
anchor bars and steel stiffeners welded to the interior
of the first 40 ft of each spire to keep them erect.
Architects, engineers and contractors worked together
to come up with a system to construct the memorial.
The fabrication of the spires was a long process that
started in winter 2004, says Bevon Mace, project manager
for Centex Construction LLC, Dallas.
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| photo courtesy of centex construction |
The low-sulfur, stainless-steel sheets were milled
in Indiana, polished in Philadelphia and finally rolled
in Toronto. Three sheets were welded together to form
one of the 15 segments that comprise each spire. After
the welds were carefully evaluated and smoothed, the
completed segment was aligned on its side using a jig
with the segment that would precede it in the structure,
ensuring that they would line up perfectly onsite. The
completed segments were then shipped to Arlington for
erection.
The segments were stacked atop one another and welded
together both internally and externally. Rebar was added
inside the segment, and it was filled with 12,000-psi
concrete up to the first two-thirds of its height. The
segments were left hollow above that. Aerodynamic tests,
however, showed that the hollow portion of the spires
would be too susceptible to high winds. That required
the placement of dampener boxes on top of the concrete
inside the spire.
The dampening box is essentially a large metal box
with its inside walls lined with rubber. The box also
contains a 2,000-lb rubber ball. The energy transfer
produced by the collision of the ball with the box serves
to dissipate the swaying created by the wind.
The contractor says there was no margin for error allowed
in the onsite reassembly. "We had to do a lot of
experimentation with welding techniques and how to prefabricate
components," Tarpey says. "They were just
like sails-the wind would catch it, spin it out of position,
and we couldn't line it up with the piece below. It
was unsafe for the workers to line up the pieces in
those conditions."
"The rest of the park is granite hardscaping,"
Mace says. The memorial grounds are heavily landscaped,
with much covered in 4-in. granite pavers, also used
to make the memorial's parade ground. The grounds are
flanked on either side by inscription walls and contain
a bronze honor-guard statue and a glass contemplation
wall set together with a rendition of the Air Force's
missing-man formation.
The memorial was built to honor the more than 54,000
men and women who have died serving in the U.S. Air
Force.
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