The Military Building of the Future: Designed for Change

The Military Building of the Future: Designed for Change (DRAFT) 22 July 2018

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The Military Building of the Future: Designed for Change “We cannot expect success fighting tomorrow’s conflicts with yesterday’s weapons or equipment.”

– Summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy of the United States of America

Concerns with the state of the installations and facilities that support the military are widespread and well known. The scope of deferred maintenance and the mismatch between the requirements of a modern, agile joint force with the often decades-old facilities that house them is well known. But as Secretary Mattis states in the National Defense Strategy, “The Department’s management structure and processes are not written in stone, they are a means to an end– empowering the warfighter with the knowledge, equipment and support systems to fight and win.”

We believe that in an increasingly complex security environment defined by rapid technological change and the increased operational tempo, new planning and design approaches are required to enable the military’s physical infrastructure to keep up with the joint force’s mission.

the post industrial-age approach The current system of guidance and regulations that govern military construction was developed during the industrial age when military missions were understood to remain relatively consistent over long periods of time. Thus, installations and facilities were designed and built for a long, invariable life cycle while meeting a fixed set of requirements.

This system has resulted in a vast portfolio of single-use buildings with high fixed costs, low utilization, and limited flexibility to serve evolving and joint missions. Due to the very particular requirements

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they were built for, these buildings have resulted in a building stock that is expensive to maintain and very difficult to modify in a cost-effective fashion as mission requirements change. In recent decades, military construction has become even more specific and regimented as a result of the persistence of this outdated approach. This is in stark contrast with newer approaches to weapon systems and force structure development to be based on mission goals and capability-based requirements.

a new flexible platform We believe a new approach to planning and facilities design is required in today’s shifting security environment to effectively support the military’s mission as defined in the National Defense Strategy.

Just as the joint force must be agile and resilient, the installations and buildings they occupy must be able to evolve quickly and cost-effectively to integrate new capabilities and adapt to new warfighting approaches.

Rather than continuing the current bureaucratic approach centered on exacting thoroughness and minimizing risk, these easily reconfigurable buildings should intentionally be designed without considering possible future requirements, but rather designed to adapt to unknown future missions while flexible enough to meet requirements that may not be known for years. This capabilities-based approach will require a significant evolution in the way military planners and designers approach the built environment across the DoD.

supporting the warfighter We believe the future of military planning and design must also be based on a holistic understanding of how to support the warfighter’s achievement of 2

mission success. It is critical to acknowledge that every installation is different in its mission, capabilities, location, and demographic profile in a post-industrial age.

An all-volunteer force is made up of not only service members but their families, civilians, and the residents of installation host communities. To enable warfighters to focus on their missions, they must believe all aspects of their lives are being supported.

What today’s soldiers want and need for themselves and their families is vastly different from the support facilities we have available, many of which were built 40 or 50 years ago. The move of military families into the host communities combined with increasing operational tempos and the time it takes for the warfighter to take advantage of the support system put in place to enable them to do their jobs has become ever more stressed.

There is every reason to believe that warfighters’ needs and interests will continue to change as rapidly as they have since the advent of the digital age. Defining support as a capability to be provided rather than a facility to be built will change the location for certain types of activities and determine if they even need a building at all. By constructing programs rather than facilities, warfighters can be supported where it is most comfortable and most efficient for them to utilize the services they need. The activity may be housed in a building, but it also may be located in the greater community or on the internet. Effective joint planning and design with a host community should allow for more efficient use of both military and local funds.

practices had to be based on experience and anecdotes as the technology did not exist to sense, test, and model how people actually used buildings.

Today, the technology exists to continuously measure the many attributes of a building and its installation.

That data can be used to determine more efficient approaches to actual requirements, space utilization, and share of infrastructure across missions and units.

The number of empty conference rooms on any installation is an obvious example of this, but the list of other underutilized, unit-dedicated spaces across the DoD would be long.

Much of the data that could support better informed, real-time decision-making by leadership already exists, but it is often located either in forms that cannot be easily accessed or is owned by entities that, because of stovepipes, do not understand the value of data to assist in areas that fall outside of their expertise. While many data collecting and optimization technologies exist that could easily be deployed across the portfolio, before deploying new technologies it is critical to determine the types of new data that will be useful to leadership before expenditures are made.

optimization

We believe that data and real-time data collection should be integrated into the design of military facilities and installations to enable military leaders to make better, faster, and more informed decisions.

We believe that a capability and data-driven approach to design will inevitably lead to a highly optimized and improved physical environment for warfighters and their missions. By understanding how facilities are used and the capabilities needed, optimization will make it possible to share infrastructure rather than duplicating it. By considering requirements as programs rather than facilities, it is much easier to share and more efficiently use limited resources. While optimization will inevitably drive reductions in sustainment and capital expenditures, other mission improvements should also be achievable.

Today’s model codes and guidelines are built upon a continuous process of updating older codes and guidelines. The evidence behind those earlier

One of the key issues we have found in service member familiarization is that time is a universal concern, affecting both their duty days as well as their personal

data driven approach

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lives. By taking into account the warfighter’s day-to-day activities in fulfilling the mission, military planning and design should make their days more efficient.

• U se an understanding of demographics and the day-to-day activities required to meet the mission of each specific installation to deliver a warfighter-centric planning and design model for the warfighter.

Understanding the mission and applying the right data analytics, dynamic modeling tools can be developed that iteratively test different configurations of programs, units, missions, and bed downs to create the most effective installations designed around warfighters’ daily lives. Reducing the amount of time it takes for warfighters to move between diverse tasks they perform every day, we can free up much-needed time. This type of modeling can optimize not only individual buildings but entire campuses and installations.

• D iscourage single-use building types and instead recognizes that facilities must be designed to fulfill capabilities.

• E ncourage facility designs that can be easily and cost-effectively modified to meet rapidly changing requirements.

• U se data and dynamic modeling to reduce the size and duplication within the overall portfolio footprint by increasing optionality and utilization.

the future of ufc The Tri-Services effort to bring uniformity to military design and construction was an appropriate and necessary feature of the 20th-century military construction environment. The UFC model made sense for meeting requirements expected to remain constant for decades and still remains appropriate for many types of infrastructure. However, the UFC process no longer meets the need for buildings that are responsive to the fast-paced changes, capabilities, systems, and missions required in today’s security environment.

While there must be a consistent set of requirements to determine if scarce funds are being efficiently deployed, the UFC’s should be evolved into a datadriven, interactive system that can cover wide variations of warfighting requirements specific to installations and missions.

We believe future UFC planning and design models should: • R ecognize that all bases and missions are unique and require unique solutions.

• S upport the entire warfighting community, including not only warfighters but their families, civilian personnel, and host communities.

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