U.S. Army Corps of Engineers: Building Strong, Serving the Nation and the Armed Forces 2012

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

Building Strong SERVING THE NATION AND THE ARMED FORCES

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Mission-critical power generation: Aggreko keeps you up and running Aggreko in Iraq and Afghanistan Celebrating 50 years in business, Aggreko is the worldwide leader in temporary power and temperature control solutions.

Aggreko people and equipment have supported U.S. military efforts in the Middle East for more than 10 years.

In fact, the company recently announced it will provide power to three more U.S. bases in Afghanistan, adding to the 10 locations Aggreko already serves in that country, and raising the amount of electricity provided by the company in hostile areas of Afghanistan by nearly 30 percent.

The three camps being fitted with temporary power are: Dwyer, Sharana and Shank, with a total capacity of 60 MW. These

bases are operating at mixed voltages and frequencies—both 50 Hz at 11 kV and 60 Hz at 13.8 kV—to support both the U.S. military and International Security Assistance Force. The plants will consolidate existing spot generation systems, enabling the military to save on fuel consumption. They also create a centralized source of power, which can achieve a more efficient and effective method of powering the base. Aggreko installs modular power plants on-site to connect all parts of the camp through distribution cables that link to one central unit. In addition to fuel-cost savings, centralized power can limit the amount of time spent on maintenance and upkeep, as well as giving our customers

a significant reduction in power cuts and an increase in safety.

In March 2009, Aggreko installed a 5 MW plant at Camp Sather in Iraq (now the Baghdad Diplomatic Support Center), located on the west side of Baghdad Airport, and operated it under a U.S. Department of Defense contract.

The U.S. State Department purchased the plant in March 2012, and the company turned over the fully operational and stocked plant to State Department personnel within just a few days of the sale, after providing an operational review for the new on-site technicians.

Orange Excellence Powers Improvement Orange Excellence is Aggreko’s own program for assessing and improving safety, security and operations. Through its success, the company has been able to strengthen working relationships with military personnel who depend on Aggreko for power. In fact, building on the U.S. military’s Lean Six Sigma program, improvements through Orange Excellence often are adopted and promoted at the military facilities themselves.

One Orange Excellence project at Camp Dwyer, Afghanistan, brought significant improvements in manpower management and operations control. Aggreko managers standardized daily inspection and maintenance tasks, improved preventive

maintenance methods, and increased efficiency by optimizing their parts inventory.

Camp Arifjan, Kuwait, is another Orange Excellence success story. Through a combination of personnel training and new procedures, along with new methods for storing and accounting for high-value tools and equipment, Aggreko is providing power there at a high level of efficiency.

Feedback from military liaisons has been very positive, so Aggreko continues to use Orange Excellence as a useful tool to prepare for the next 50 years of keeping the electricity on with the U.S. military— wherever we may serve together.

Rupert Soames, CEO The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is among the very best engineering and construction organizations in the world—military or civilian. There’s nothing the professionals of USACE have set out to do that they haven’t accomplished, oftentimes under extreme climate conditions and in hostile locations.

Those are the reasons why the men and women of Aggreko are proud to serve alongside our colleagues of USACE. Throughout these past years in Iraq, Afghanistan, Haiti and other locations, our work together has powered the efforts of the courageous service members and civilians who carry out and support vital missions, from national defense to humanitarian relief.

Winston Churchill once said, “Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality that guarantees all the others.” It takes an undeniable brand of courage to perform mission-critical functions correctly and effectively, and to hold others to that standard as well.

We at Aggreko recognize those qualities in our work with USACE colleagues each and every day, and we strive to perform our own work accordingly.

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As Aggreko prepares to celebrate 50 years in business, we look back with pride at what we have accomplished around the world and alongside USACE, while we look forward to the challenges that we will solve as we work together in the future.

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The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers did not select or approve this advertiser and does not endorse and is not responsible for the views or statements contained in this advertisement.

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Contents

35 years of experience as a geotechnical contractor

Interview with Lt. Gen. Thomas P. Bostick.................................................... 10 U.S. Army Chief of Engineers and Commanding General of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

By Nancy Allen, HQ USACE Public Affairs Office

Services include installation of slurry walls, from 6 feet to 150 feet and more, collection drains, permeable reactive barriers and soil mixing. We service projects coast-to-coast and abroad.

PREVENT AGC: Home of the Army’s Geospatial Expertise ............................................ 18

By Craig Collins

Advanced R&D Technologies Serve the Nation and Armed Forces ................ 22 In an era of unprecedented technical transformation, ERDC leads the way for USACE, the Army, and DoD.

By Craig Collins

Culture Changes Propel Dam Safety Program to New Heights ..................... 28

By Charles Dervarics

USACE Levee Safety Program ........................................................................ 32 Putting levees in a risk framework

By Charles Dervarics

Flood Risk Management ................................................................................ 36 Coordinating within the federal family

By Craig Collins

Implementing Quality Business Deals ........................................................... 40 Contracting and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

By Jan Tegler

More Competition, Better Value .................................................................... 44 The Corps’ Small Business Program

By Eric Tegler

Setting the Theater ........................................................................................ 48 USACE and the Army’s Engineer Regiment

By Eric Tegler

SHAPE The Civil Works Challenge ............................................................................ 52 USACE undertakes transformation to meet 21st century water-resource demands.

By Jan Tegler

The Nation’s Environmental Engineers .......................................................... 58

By Craig Collins

Interagency and International Services: Carrying out the Nation’s Work Abroad ......................................................... 64

By J.R. Wilson

USACE Focuses on Recovery from 2011 Midwest Flooding .......................... 68

By Charles Dervarics

SERVING THE NATION AND THE ARMED FORCES

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Gulf Intracoastal Waterway - West Closure Complex

Photo courtesy of the Army Corps of Engineers

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The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ sustainability program takes aim at ambitious federal requirements.

By Craig Collins

Focusing on Today’s STEM Opportunities to Develop Solutions for Tomorrow ................................................................................. 80

By J.R. Wilson

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ENGINEERS ARCHITECTS PLANNERS

A Sustainable Corps ....................................................................................... 74

Engineering the Future: USACE Designs, Builds DoDEA 21st Century Schools ............................................................ 84

By Raini W. Brunson

USACE Support to Combatant Commands ................................................... 88 Providing military-to-military assistance and humanitarian response for partner nations

By J.R. Wilson

Global Climate Change: Adapting the Corps’ Mission................................... 92 ARMY TRAINING SUPPORT CENTER, JBLE, VA

By Craig Collins

WIN Military Missions Transformation.................................................................. 96 USACE is set to shape future force structure requirements.

By J.R. Wilson

USACE Is on the Frontline of Domestic Contingency Operations .............. 100

By J.R. Wilson

OCONUS Contingency Ops: USACE Helps to Build Host-Nation Capacity .................................................................................. 104

By J.R. Wilson

The 249th Engineer Battalion (Prime Power)............................................... 108 Generating power in peace, war, and moments of humanitarian need

By J.R. Wilson

Built to Order............................................................................................... 112 Answering the nation’s historical challenges

By Eric Tegler

The Great Outdoors .................................................................................... 124 DORMITORIES, JBLE, VA

In partnership with public and private collaborators at all levels, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is reconnecting Americans with their public lands.

By Craig Collins

Building a Culture of Safety for Employees and Contractors ...................... 128

By Charles Dervarics

The Corps’ Park Rangers ............................................................................. 132 Protecting natural resources and the public

By Craig Collins

A Day in the Life: USACE Divisions, Centers, and Commands................... 139

SERVING THE NATION AND THE ARMED FORCES

7

SINCE 1978

Implementing an efficient and effective process

MILITARY

The USACE Regulatory Program ................................................................ 136

SERVING THE

By Craig Collins

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U.S. ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS Published by Faircount Media Group 701 N. West Shore Blvd.

Tampa, FL 33609 Tel: 813.639.1900 www.defensemedianetwork.com www.faircount.com EDITORIAL Editor in Chief: Chuck Oldham Consulting Editor: Karen Buehler Managing Editor: Ana E. Lopez Project Editor: Rhonda Carpenter Editor: Iwalani Kahikina Editor/Photo Editor: Steven Hoarn Contributing Writers: Nancy Allen, Raini W. Brunson Craig Collins, Charles Dervarics Eric Tegler, Jan Tegler J.R. Wilson DESIGN AND PRODUCTION Art Director: Robin K. McDowall Project Designer: Lorena Noya Designer: Daniel Mrgan Designer: Kenia Perez-Ayala Ad Traffic Manager: Rebecca Laborde DEFENSE MEDIA NETWORK ONLINE Managing Editor: Chuck Oldham Product Manager (Internet Strategy): Damion Harte Lead Developer: Clyde Sanchez Internet Marketing/SEO: Brian Melanson ADVERTISING Ad Sales Manager: Ken Meyer Account Executives: Steve Chidel, Art Dubuc, Paul Martin Charlie Poe, Jay Powers, Chuck Smith Geoffrey Weiss OPERATIONS AND ADMINISTRATION Chief Operating Officer: Lawrence Roberts VP, Business Development: Robin Jobson Financial Controller: Robert John Thorne Chief Information Officer: John Madden Circulation: Alexis Vars Database Administrator: Joshua Roberts Events Manager: Jim Huston Executive Assistant: Lindsey Brooks FAIRCOUNT MEDIA GROUP Publisher, North America: Ross Jobson Publisher, Europe: Peter Antell

Cover: The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) works rapidly to repair a levee breach caused by Hurricane Sandy in Mantoloking, N.J. USACE has more than 3,000 employees within the North Atlantic Division engaged to support the response mission. At the peak of response activities, an additional 990 team members deployed from other USACE divisions to assist. U.S. Army photo by Mary Markos ŠCopyright Faircount LLC. All rights reserved. Reproduction of editorial content in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. Faircount LLC and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers do not assume responsibility for the advertisements, nor any representation made therein, nor the quality or deliverability of the products themselves. Reproduction of articles and photographs, in whole or in part, contained herein is prohibited without expressed written consent of the publisher, with the exception of reprinting for news media use. Printed in the United States of America. Permission to use various images and text in this publication was obtained from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers or U.S. Department of Defense and its agencies, and in no way is used to imply an endorsement by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers nor any U.S. Department of Defense entity for any claims or representations therein. None of the advertising contained herein implies U.S. Army Corps of Engineers or U.S. Department of Defense endorsement of any private entity or enterprise. This is not a publication of the U.S. Department of Defense or U.S. government.

Interview with Lt. Gen. Thomas P. Bostick U.S. Army Chief of Engineers and Commanding General of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

By Nancy Allen, HQ USACE Public Affairs Office

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Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) after a disaster, whether natural or man-made. As the chief of engineers, Army staff principal, Bostick advises the Army on engineering matters and serves as the Army’s topographer and the proponent for real estate and other related engineering programs.

Lt. Gen. Bostick, you assumed command of USACE in May 2012. What are your initial impressions, and what are your top priorities for the organization?

It is an honor and a privilege to lead this great engineering organization. I’ve spent a lot of time on the road since I took

Official U.S. Army photo

t. Gen. Thomas P. Bostick became the 53rd Army Chief of Engineers and commanding general of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) on May 22, 2012. The son of an Army master sergeant, he graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point with a Bachelor of Science degree and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Army Corps of Engineers in 1978. He holds masters degrees in both civil engineering and mechanical engineering from Stanford University, and is a graduate of the U.S. Army War College.

Before USACE, Bostick served as deputy chief of staff of G-1, Personnel, U.S. Army, responsible for developing, managing, and executing manpower and personnel plans, programs, and policies for the Army.

Previous assignments include commanding general of U.S. Army Recruiting Command; director of the Directorate of Military Programs in USACE with duty as commander, Gulf Region Division during Operation Iraqi Freedom; and assistant division commander (maneuver), later assistant division commander (support), for the 1st Cavalry Division deploying during Operation Iraqi Freedom. He served as executive officer to the chief of engineers, executive officer to the Army chief of staff, and deputy director of operations for the National Military Command Center, J-3, the Joint Staff in the Pentagon from May 2001 to August 2002, including the terrorist attack on Sept. 11, 2001.

Bostick was also an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at West Point and was a White House fellow serving as a special assistant to the secretary of Veterans Affairs.

As the USACE commanding general, he is responsible for more than 37,000 civilian employees and 600 military personnel. These men and women provide project management and construction support to 250 Army and Air Force installations in more than 130 countries around the world, and construction, operation and maintenance of much of the nation’s water resources infrastructure. USACE has a key role in support to overseas contingency operations (OCO), with thousands of civilians and Soldiers having deployed to support reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Bostick is also responsible for the diverse USACE missions such as hundreds of environmental projects; the regulatory permit program to protect, restore, and enhance thousands of acres of wetlands; and the emergency response mission to support the

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers photo by Mary Markos

Lt. Gen. Thomas P. Bostick (right), U.S. Army chief of engineers and commanding general of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), speaks with USACE engineers and contractors Nov. 6, 2012, at the Redfern Housing Complex in Far Rockaway, N.Y., where they had worked to restore power after a week of darkness.

command, visiting USACE divisions and districts, interacting with our employees and leaders, and meeting with our partners and stakeholders, including elected officials, non-government organizations, and military customers. I’ve traveled to Africa, Afghanistan, Kuwait, Japan, and Korea, and extensively within the continental U.S., looking at a number of significant military and civil works projects, and I’ve observed our Soldiers and civilians in action during floods, storms, and hurricanes. As our vision statement says, we are truly “Engineering solutions for our nation’s toughest challenges.”

My intent is that USACE continues to increase its public value: ... as a national asset that provides leadership and technical expertise in formulating and implementing environmental stewardship, water resources and broader sustainable infrastructure policies. ... as a Department of Defense asset that is the principal adviser and execution agent for Army and Air Force infrastructure development and maintenance; and ... as a professional asset that maintains strong in-house engineering, project management, and other technical capabilities required to execute federal responsibilities and satisfy stakeholder

requirements, while providing national technical leadership in our mission areas.

I’m focusing on priorities that fall into four main categories: support the warfighter; transform civil works; reduce disaster risks; and prepare for tomorrow. We are aligning our refreshed campaign plan to national, Department of Defense, and Army strategic directions.

We must still support the current fight in Afghanistan and in the U.S. Central Command area of operations. That remains the top priority for the Army and USACE. USACE is also supporting national and combatant command [COCOM] priorities in more than 130 countries outside Afghanistan. We see this level of engagement and commitment continuing, and maybe even increasing in certain areas, as the national security strategy shifts in response to this changing, dynamic and uncertain world.

For the next several years, our major military construction efforts will be in the Pacific as we prepare for the multibillion dollar re-stationing efforts of joint forces, primarily in Korea and Japan.

We will focus increased attention on supporting the Army and the nation in achieving energy security and sustainability goals.

SERVING THE NATION AND THE ARMED FORCES

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Last year, President Barack Obama and the secretary of defense released a new National Security Policy and strategic direction to the armed forces. How do the Engineer Regiment and USACE support the priorities outlined in those documents?

The Corps’ military missions support the Army as a central component

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Commanding general of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Lt. Gen. Thomas P. Bostick (center) speaks about post-Hurricane Sandy coastal storm damage in New Jersey with U.S. Assistant Secretary of the Army (Civil Works) Jo-Ellen Darcy (second from right); Maj. Gen. Michael J. Walsh (right), deputy commanding general for Civil and Emergency Operations; and Lt. Col. Chris Becking, commander of the USACE Philadelphia District, at U.S. Coast Guard Station Atlantic City.

to our nation’s defense – prevent, shape, and win. We prevent by delivering facilities and infrastructure worldwide to help Soldiers maintain readiness, and the Army to achieve modernization goals. We shape through our support to combatant commanders, which include military-tomilitary assistance and humanitarian response for partner nations and global interagency development assistance. Finally, we win through research, development, and engineering to equip and protect our Soldiers. Additionally, USACE does not work alone; we are part of a larger organization, the Engineer Regiment. The Regiment is 110,000 strong who win on the battlefield. Of those, 75,000 are combat engineers who provide four lines of support: mobility, protection, expeditionary logistics and force protection, and infrastructure and partner capacity.

Our engineers in uniform assure joint force mobility on the battlefield – finding improvised explosive devices [IEDs]; clearing minefields; building roads, bridges, airfields, and base camps;

SERVING THE NATION AND THE ARMED FORCES

and visualizing the battlefield through geospatial engineering.

The Engineer Regiment and USACE offer incredible capabilities to the armed forces and the nation including: • s trong partnerships with engineers in our brother services and allied forces; •w ell-established relationships with international governments, federal, state and local agencies, non-government organizations, tribal nations, academia and industry; • fi rst-rate research and development capabilities and advanced geospatial technologies; •m odernized mobility, counter-IED and counter-mine capabilities; and • e xtensive knowledge in sustainability and energy security.

COCOM support. USACE is a global organization. At any time, USACE is engaged in more than 130 countries around the world, supporting the Department of State, allied armed forces, NATO, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the ambassadors and

USACE photo

Reducing energy dependence, increasing energy efficiency and adopting renewable and alternative energy sources are increasingly important for both the nation and our Army.

It is imperative that we increase the value that USACE provides to the nation by delivering timely water resource solutions.

Our civil works program faces a myriad of challenges that are prompting swift transformation in our current business model to make it more relevant in the 21st century.

The end result will be improved performance and responsiveness; increased customer satisfaction, public trust, and confidence; and improved readiness.

We must continue to enhance our interagency disaster response and recovery capability to support the needs of our nation.

More and more, other nations are requesting USACE expertise to prepare for largescale natural disasters, and to assist them during those catastrophes. As our nation requires, we will continue to support these international efforts.

In this current environment of declining Army resources, we must find additional methods to strengthen the teaming and partnering between USACE and the U.S. Army’s installation management command to achieve the efficiencies required.

After more than a decade of war, we will all spend a significant amount of effort ensuring that the Army captures the lessons learned, and ensuring we properly design, shape, prepare and organize the Engineer Regiment to meet future requirements.

The strength of our Army and the Corps is our people. Talent management and leader development are essential to our future success – how we recruit, retain, and develop our talent will help produce a team that can address future challenges that we will face.

embassies and many others, especially the combatant commanders.

For example, I spent some time earlier this year in the Pacific Command area of responsibility where we are delivering high impact, low-cost projects that provide technical assistance for contingency response, international capacity development, and project execution in Indonesia, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Palau, Thailand, Mongolia, and Bangladesh. We’re similarly engaged with other COCOMs around the globe.

Overseas Contingency Operations. Our overseas contingency operations constantly evolve as the U.S. mission changes in Afghanistan and Iraq. Transatlantic Division provides program oversight, allowing Middle East District (MED) and two Afghanistan districts to focus on project execution.

Iraq. The MED Iraq Area Office in Baghdad continues the work of the past eight years. Most of today’s construction missions are foreign military sales projects funded by the government of Iraq. MED’s Iraq Area Office has about 60 projects, either in progress or planned, valued at $700 million.

Afghanistan. USACE has two districts in Afghanistan [Afghanistan Engineer District-North in Kabul and Afghanistan Engineer District-South in Kandahar] with about 900 deployed

civilians. We have completed more than $5 billion of construction in Afghanistan and about $10 billion remains to complete. Our 2012 construction mission of more than $3.7 billion is focused on four areas – Afghan National Security Forces, U.S./coalition forces power projection, counternarcotics/border management, and strategic reconstruction.

Energy security and sustainability are hot topics these days.

What role does USACE play in helping the Army and the nation meet their goals?

Sustainability is an umbrella concept that incorporates multiple strategies related to energy, climate change, and the environment.

We are adapting to changing needs, practices, and priorities to achieve sustainability in all we do. Sustainability has been an increasingly important part of the USACE culture since March 2002 when we adopted our Environmental Operating Principles. We are using these principles, reinvigorated in August, to bring together a wide range of independent sustainability-related actions in a focused, comprehensive way.

USACE is a steward for some of the nation’s most valuable natural resources. We must ensure our customers receive products and

USACE photo

Dan Kimball (left), superintendant of Everglades National Park, provides Lt. Gen. Thomas P. Bostick, commanding general of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, with an overview of the benefits of the Tamiami Trail Bridge Modifications Project on Oct. 10, 2012.

SERVING THE NATION AND THE ARMED FORCES

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services that provide sustainable solutions that address short- and long-term environmental, social and economic considerations.

The Corps’ sustainability program focuses on two lines of operation – meeting our enterprise energy, water and waste reduction targets on USACE owned and operated facilities; and assisting our customers, including the Army, in meeting their targets and advancing the Army’s net-zero policy. USACE provides assistance in areas such as advanced metering, innovative financing methods, identifying methods to reduce potable water consumption, recycling grey water and retrofitting sites for lowimpact development, which when all put together leads to being more sustainable.

While energy security and sustainability have long been considerations in the projects we build for our customers, they are now key drivers. Since 2008, USACE has built 31 Army facilities meeting the LEED® [Leadership in Energy and Environment Design] gold standard, and 22 that met the silver standard. Our Engineering Support Center in Huntsville, Ala., leads the USACE effort to design “green” buildings for the armed forces.

We are also reducing the Army’s energy requirements on contingency bases overseas, reducing the need for vulnerable fuel convoys and thus, lowering risks to the warfighter. The 249th Engineer Battalion (Prime Power) has installed initial power plant and electrical distribution at sites across Afghanistan resulting in an estimated savings of more than $195 million in fuel annually and the removal of more than 12,000 fuel trucks from the road each year.

In the last few years, USACE has had a significant civil works workload, including construction of the $14.6 billion Hurricane and Storm Damage Risk Reduction System in New Orleans. Where do you see the future of the civil works program heading?

We recognize that the nation is currently in an era of constrained fiscal resources and that we are one of many federal agencies supported by those limited resources. My job as the commander is to make sure that USACE is doing everything it can to present a business case that fully informs the administration, Congress, and Army of our value to the nation when funding decisions are made.

With respect to our civil works program, budget transformation is a key piece of what we are trying to accomplish as part of an overall transformation of the program. This effort will help ensure the nation’s most critical current and future needs are met and it gets the maximum return on investment in the program.

We will do this by focusing on national goals and objectives, and developing a comprehensive infrastructure strategy that prioritizes investments based on an evaluation of project value and level of service provided.

The transformation of civil works is among the most important endeavors in USACE history. It will set a clear direction for the USACE civil works program to meet the nation’s current and emerging water resources needs. The objective of civil works

transformation is to shape a sustainable portfolio of water resources infrastructure for the nation’s future.

Civil works transformation includes enhancing the budget process, modernizing the planning process, improving methods of delivery, and smart infrastructure asset management.

Through this process, we will enhance our capabilities and promote greater involvement, ownership, concurrence and commitment among the USACE team, water resources stakeholders and the American public.

What was USACE’s role during the response and recovery efforts after Hurricane Sandy?

We are always prepared to respond to natural and manmade disasters. When disasters occur, our teams and other resources are mobilized from across the country to assist our local districts and offices to deliver our response missions. In any disaster, the Corps’ top priorities are life and safety.

From the beginning, the Hurricane Sandy response was a team effort. Through the FEMA National Response Framework, we were part of a larger team that extends through all levels of government – local, state, and federal, as well as non-governmental partners and volunteers.

Our primary missions during the Hurricane Sandy response were unwatering flooded sites, generating emergency power and debris removal. USACE has more than 3,000 employees in North Atlantic Division [NAD] and at the peak of the response, about 990 additional team members from USACE divisions across the country deployed to support NAD. At the height of the power mission, we had generators capable of providing 55 megawatts of power to critical facilities in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. In addition, we sent power experts and generators to support New York Public Housing, the Hoboken High Rise Complex, the Kinder Morgan Petroleum Terminal, and Hoboken Terminal.

The storm surge flooded five subway tubes in New York City, two Amtrak tunnels and three of the city’s primary roadways. FEMA assigned the unwatering missions to USACE, and we turned to Mississippi Valley Division and Rock Island District because of their recent unwatering expertise in New Orleans. Joint Task Force Unwatering teamed with New York District, other federal agencies, and city, state, and local authorities, with assistance from the U.S. Navy and U.S. Coast Guard. We concentrated our pumping efforts at 14 critical locations determined by local officials, and we unwatered the tunnels in less than two weeks. During the unwatering operations USACE controlled 162 pumps and removed more than 475 million gallons of seawater, equal to 720 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

A total of 35 USACE debris teams helped clear debris in ports, waterways, and coastal areas of New York and New Jersey.

FEMA assigned us a direct federal assistance debris mission in New York. We awarded a contract and helped plan and manage

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What does USACE need to do to position itself for the future, in terms of workforce development and talent management?

Because of what the nation and Army expect from USACE, we must be an organization made up of military professionals, and of engineers, scientists and technicians who are respected leaders in their fields. We will increasingly see a teaming at nearly every echelon on the battlefield between uniformed military engineers and our civilian workforce who are our technical and professional backbone. We will continue to value degreed

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Lt. Gen. Thomas P. Bostick, commanding general of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, meets with Republic of Korea Vice Minister of National Defense Lee Young-geol (far left, with the Korean government translator) during his visit July 16-17, 2012.

engineers, licensed engineers, advanced degrees, and the other credentials that make military engineering a true profession, while also benefiting from the many other educational backgrounds that contribute to USACE. I have often said that the Army trains Soldiers and grows leaders. We grow our leaders through a variety of challenging assignments, demanding experiences and broad educational opportunities.

It takes a significant investment of time and personal commitment of our senior leaders and mentors to properly grow a bench of future leaders. Leadership is often more about how to be, not how to do. We spend our entire lives learning how to do things, but at the end of the day, it is the quality of one’s character that distinguishes the great leaders.

In the military engineering profession, we also have an added responsibility to develop engineering and technical professionals. We not only must build great people, but also strong multidisciplinary teams to be successful in most of our endeavors. We will continue

SERVING THE NATION AND THE ARMED FORCES

“Building Strong” through leader development, mentoring and talent management programs.

I believe that we all have an obligation to mentor the future leaders of our Army, both military and civilian. This takes an investment of time, but it is well worth it. Those who we mentor appreciate it, and will pass it on. I was mentored by some outstanding leaders.

I also feel that I’ve been mentored by those junior to me. I continue to lead and grow from my association with those junior to me.

USACE also recognizes the critical role that science, technology, engineering and mathematics [STEM] education plays in enabling the U.S. to remain the economic and technological leader of the global marketplace. STEM is also vital to the security of our nation. We are committed to teaming with others to strengthen STEM-related programs within our schools across the nation that inspire current and future generations of young people to pursue careers in STEM fields.

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers photo by Jason Chudy

the operation. More than 300 loaders, bobcats, backhoes, short- and long-haul trucks, barges and tugs were assigned to remove debris, and more than 1,300 pieces of USACE-contracted equipment was put to work, in partnership with state and local entities, to support clearing some 3.6 million cubic yards of remaining material.

We had a number of other missions as well. USACE provided 512 truckloads of water to New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia at 18,000 liters per load.

We also had a critical public facilities mission to assess damage at fire, police, and paramedic stations, schools, city halls, hospitals, and public works facilities. Of the 158 facilities that we inspected in New Jersey, 29 needed temporary structures, including eight fire and police stations, three schools, and one city hall.

Our infrastructure assessment teams augment local efforts to inspect buildings that are primarily residential, and to manage inspections of public works facilities as assigned by FEMA. Buildings are assessed for damage and assigned a safety rating under the direction and authority of local code enforcement officials. USACE completed 16 infrastructure assessments requested by Nassau County, including evaluations of medical facilities, fire stations, piers, and water and waste treatment plants.

Those are just a few of the missions that USACE had during the response to Hurricane Sandy, some of which will continue into the new year.

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AGC: HOME OF THE ARMY’S GEOSPATIAL EXPERTISE

By Craig Collins

I

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SERVING THE NATION AND THE ARMED FORCES

The AGE GeoGlobe is a 3-D terrain visualization and analysis tool that operates either online using federated enterprise servers or as a stand-alone system in disconnected environments.

“Our mission,” said Fontanella, “is to provide timely, accurate, and relevant geospatial information capabilities and domain expertise for the AGE implementation and support of unified land operations.”

The Four Imperatives

The AGE is being developed as part of a broader National System for Geospatial Intelligence architecture that will allow data-sharing among all echelons of the Department of Defense, the federal government, and coalition partners. This expanded mission embraces the expertise for which USACE’s AGC’s geospatial data experts have become widely known – work that can be divided into four main categories: • Executing policy and implementing standards. As it works toward developing a common operating picture, the AGC plays a critical role ensuring that everything the Army does – setting priorities, identifying production requirements, purchasing, developing products, and strategizing – is in line with this ultimate goal. For example, AGC is working with the Office of the

Courtesy KGC Terrain Analysis Branch

n 2009, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) reorganized the U.S. Army Geospatial Center (AGC) into a major subordinate command. This marked a significant movement in establishing a “Ground Warfighter geospatial knowledge center” that could provide a range of products, services, training, reachback support, and domain expertise. Over the past two decades, as different parts of the Army had acquired and implemented geospatial data and mapping applications, gaps and incompatibilities had emerged among different systems. A functional solution analysis of the Army’s geospatial portfolio, in fact, revealed about 200 gaps across the “doctrine, organization, training, materiel, leadership and education, personnel, and facilities” spectrum.

“Over the years,” explained the AGC’s director, Dr. Joseph F. Fontanella, “all these different systems have been built for the Army by contractors to proprietary standards of format, so you can’t share geospatial information. If you were to go into a command post, you might see that every computer has a map on the background. But a lot of those maps are at different scales. They don’t line up. If you were to take something off one map and send it to another system, it might not appear in the right place with the right symbology.

So a main part of what we’re trying to do here is create a common operating picture – which will create information superiority and improve the commander’s military decision-making process.”

This common operating picture would be enabled through an initiative called the Army Geospatial Enterprise (AGE), which is not a new program or system, Fontanella explained, but “a combination of technologies, of people, of standards, of formats, of systems that work together to provide a standard and shareable geospatial foundation.”

The AGE is being administered and developed by the Army’s Geospatial-Enterprise Governance Board (GGB), co-chaired by the chief of engineers and the deputy chief of staff for intelligence. The Army Geospatial Center – the seat of the Army’s geospatial expertise – as a major subordinate command center under USACE, supports the GGB by providing domain expertise to ensure that systems can consume and produce standardized geospatial information.

The movement away from multiple data formats is a complex undertaking, but the AGE is on track for implementation in 2018.

In the fall of 2013, it will finalize and publish its Ground-Warfighter Geospatial Data Model (GGDM), so named because it will be adopted jointly with the U.S. Marine Corps. The GGDM will provide a mechanism for storing and sharing ground-warfighter specific feature data across multinational ground forces.

PREVENT

Courtesy AGC BuckEye Program

High-resolution BuckEye unmanned aerial system imagery of a town in Nagal, Afghanistan. BuckEye’s imagery and Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) elevation data, used to conduct intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions in operational environments, exemplifies the quality of data necessary to populate the Army Geospatial Enterprise.

Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics, and Technology (ASA(ALT)) to study and narrow available options for hand-held device platforms. The AGC is also working on developing an open-source alternative to the Army’s Command Post of the Future, a proprietary application that requires constant updating by a service representative.

“It costs the Army every time we have to go out and touch that system,” Fontanella said. “So we’ve created some efficiencies.

We’ve reduced overhead. We’ve increased cost stewardship with these kinds of activities.”

• Conducting research, development, testing, and evaluation (RDT&E). In conjunction with the Engineer Research and Development Center’s Topographic Engineering Center, the AGC

focuses research on increasing the agility of the Army’s Mission Command with new technologies and methods. The Geospatial Research and Engineering Division explores innovations in the collection, processing, exploitation, and dissemination of geospatial data in support of both civilian missions and those of ground warfighters.

• Systems acquisition and program management. With future AGE standards in mind, the AGC is responsible for acquiring, fielding, and managing programs related to geospatial intelligence – including the Instrument Set, Reconnaissance and Surveying (ENFIRE), an engineering tool set designed to modernize the collection and dissemination of information by engineer Soldiers.

ENFIRE enables field personnel to enter bridge, road, minefield,

SERVING THE NATION AND THE ARMED FORCES

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Supporting USACE

The AGC’s own Hydrologic Analysis Team, the Army’s data source for water resources information around the globe, designed the Water Resources Database to be a logistical support tool for commanders and engineers around the world – and especially in Afghanistan. “It’s pretty important, if you’re going to go out and build a structure,” said Fontanella, “that you’ve got access to water, either surface or subsurface, nearby.

And this database, combined with some of the other work we do, really helped Army well drillers increase their success rate from something like 30 percent to around 95 percent. That’s one of the ways we support USACE. We’ve collected petabytes and terabytes of data from Afghanistan and Iraq, super highfidelity data.”

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SERVING THE NATION AND THE ARMED FORCES

The Army Geospatial Enterprise is an integrated system of technologies, standards, data, people, and processes that delivers a standard and sharable geospatial foundation.

AGC’s expertise has also proven useful for USACE’s civil works projects, inland waterways navigation, and civilian disaster relief. The National Inventory of Dams, maintained by USACE, documents information on 84,000 dams around the nation. The National Levee Database, first rolled out for public access in October 2011, displays levee systems on a map with real-time data from other sources, providing important geospatial information to agencies and individuals, including floodplain managers, emergency management agencies, and people who live or work near levees. USACE has also developed the Inland Electronic Navigational Chart Program for much of the 8,200 miles of waterways in the U.S. inland river system. The charts offer a real-time display of vessel positions relative to waterway features as well as a system of overlays making targeted, detailed information for specific customers such as dredgers, hydraulic engineers, environmental planners, and others.

The ability to share such geospatial data, along with the AGC’s mission-critical military applications, over a stable, proven geospatial network promises to transform the way the Army – and the nation as a whole – do business. “The long-term objective is to facilitate this net-enabled Army Geospatial Enterprise, with a database that is distributed both horizontally and vertically,” Fontanella concluded. “The efficiencies we’ll gain will be dramatic.

We’ll reduce duplication. We’ll smooth transfers of authority.

We’ll minimize overhead, because we won’t go out to collect data over and over again. We’ll ensure interoperability and synchronization, not just with the Army, but also within joint interagency, intergovernmental – and in very many cases – within the multinational community.”

AGC graphic

improvised explosive device, and other data on standard Army forms in a digital format.

“We’re trying to get away from re-creating the wheel time and time again,” Fontanella said. “We can build the data once, and make it available to everybody to utilize it over and over again.

We still find, even in the Corps of Engineers, that you’ve got folks going out and collecting the same data over and over again …

With ENFIRE, instead of having to hang on to bridges with rappelling ropes and measuring the width of I-beams, and looking at all the different measurements within that substructure, you can do all this with a series of laser range-finders and a number of other digital tools that allow you to populate these reconnaissance forms from a distance.”

• Providing warfighter geospatial support, and production.

The AGC is perhaps best known for the products and services developed by its own experts, especially in the depiction of terrain data. Since 2004, its BuckEye program has delivered highresolution three-dimensional color imagery, along with Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) data, to commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan, helping them to characterize tight and complex urban environments. In 2012, BuckEye was deployed in support of U.S. Africa Command.

“In Afghanistan, details matter,” said Fontanella. “Wall heights, widths of roads in congested areas, an understanding of how compartmentalized terrain is, slopes and vertical obstructions for helicopters – all those things matter. And they matter so much that you really need to have this kind of capability to collect highfidelity data.”

The AGC makes BuckEye data – and data from a host of other AGC products, including the Border Zone Tactical Planner, the Urban Tactical Planner, and Water Resources Database – available to customers through its public key infrastructure (PKI)-enabled website and the Common Map Background (CMB). CMB is a library of the latest and best available data from both the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and AGC. The CMB provides a Web-based portal to these data holdings, allowing customers to place an order and have it delivered via FTP or shipment on a DVD or hard drive.

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PREVENT

ADVANCED R&D Technologies Serve the Nation and Armed Forces In an era of unprecedented technical transformation, ERDC leads the way for USACE, the Army, and DoD.

“The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers [USACE] provides solutions for our nation’s toughest challenges. To do this, the Corps relies heavily on technologies from its research organization, the Engineer Research and Development Center [ERDC],” Dr. Jeffery Holland, USACE director of R&D and ERDC, said.

“ERDC technologies save Soldiers’ lives, strengthen our nation’s security, energize the economy, reduce risks from disasters, and protect the environment. ERDC technologies touch almost all Americans in some way or fashion, whether it is saving threatened or endangered wildlife, saving shipping costs on improved navigation projects, or protecting our citizens from terrorist attack.”

In 1999, USACE consolidated all its separate R&D laboratories into one mighty research entity, ERDC. It was the beginning of a new research enterprise that would become one of the Army’s most renowned. ERDC provides advanced technologies, materials, and expertise to the nation and armed forces through its seven component laboratories: • Coastal and Hydraulics Laboratory, Vicksburg, Miss.

• Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory, Hanover, N.H. • Construction Engineering Research Laboratory, Champaign, Ill. • Environmental Laboratory, Vicksburg, Miss.

• Geotechnical and Structures Laboratory, Vicksburg, Miss.

• Information Technology Laboratory, Vicksburg, Miss.

• Topographic Engineering Center, Alexandria, Va. Today, ERDC has an annual R&D program exceeding $2 billion. It also has more than $1.2 billion in R&D facilities. Add ERDC’s most important component, its team members and their unmatched wealth of expertise, and you have a national asset. Among its 2,500 employees, more than 1,000 are engineers and scientists (71 percent with doctorate or master’s degrees). It is easy to understand why ERDC is a frequent winner of the Army Research Laboratory of the Year Award. Its work, conducted on all seven continents and in the Arctic, is diverse, investigating not only solutions for American warfighters, but also improvements to the lives and lifestyles of people everywhere in the world and the economic might of the nation.

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SERVING THE NATION AND THE ARMED FORCES

ERDC photos

By Craig Collins

PREVENT

OPPOSITE TOP: An MPS mortar pit in use by Soldiers of the 82nd Airborne Division in eastern Afghanistan. OPPOSITE CENTER: The first Modular Protective System (MPS) overhead cover (OHC) structure was constructed in June 2012 in Afghanistan. OPPOSITE BOTTOM: An MPS OHC configuration is subjected to an explosive test to validate its protective performance. ABOVE: The Mobile Information Collection Application, or MICA, software on 50 Android phones was used to record and file more than 12,000 photos, videos, and notes related to the Mississippi River flood fight of 2011.

USACE photo

Force Protection

Since 2005, ERDC has been developing and refining the Modular Protective System (MPS), a strong, lightweight, and portable system that provides warfighters protection from insurgent weapons and terrorist attacks.

The main distinction between the MPS and other protective systems widely used is portability: While other methods of creating protective walls, such as soil berms, revetments, or Hesco baskets, are effective, they require large logistical support that includes heavy equipment.

The MPS, on the other hand, consists of an expandable inner frame structure and supporting inner and outer walls of lightweight protective panels 10 times stronger than concrete. All MPS components are lightweight and man-portable; MPS kits can be transported by helicopter. Another significant advantage of the system is its modularity; the 10-foot segments, each of which takes about 15 minutes to assemble, can be arranged in countless configurations.

The first MPS protective wall was fielded in Iraq in 2008, and it did not take long for Soldiers and ERDC’s researchers to envision other applications for the system, such as mortar pits, guard towers, and entry control points. ERDC researchers soon began adapting the system’s components to provide overhead cover

(OHC) that would protect command posts and other high-value assets from mortar fire.

As ERDC researchers have developed the MPS, a larger joint program, the Deployable Force Protection (DFP) program, has been conducting research into active force protection technologies such as electronic sensors, facial recognition systems, and gunfire detection systems. During DFP technology demonstrations at the Joint Readiness Training Center in Fort Polk, La., several different applications of the MPS – a perimeter wall with detonation screen, an OHC, a guard tower, and a personal inspection lane – were assailed with a variety of weapons, including mortar rounds, a rocket-propelled grenade, a simulated vehicle bomb, and a simulated suicide vest. All the MPS components provided highly successful protection that would have saved Soldiers’ lives. Soldiers with the 82nd Airborne Division erected four MPS mortar pit kits and one MPS OHC kit in the spring of 2012 in Afghanistan; another MPS OHC kit was constructed by other Soldiers.

Pushing Expertise into the Field – Paperlessly

USACE is one of the nation’s premier disaster relief agencies, and among the first to acknowledge that in emergencies, when

SERVING THE NATION AND THE ARMED FORCES

23

PREVENT every second counts, the traditional method of doing government work isn’t up to the task. In 2008, after Hurricanes Ike and Gustav, USACE fulfilled its Blue Roof mission of providing temporary home roof repairs by sending inspectors into the field to meet with homeowners, assess damage, determine eligibility for assistance, and assign relief work to contractors. In the process, USACE generated 90,000 pieces of paper that required tracking and manual entry into a database.

ERDC’s Reachback Operations Center and Information Technology Laboratory, as part of the Army’s larger strategy for exploring the use of mobile device technology in all its operations, began in 2010 to test mobile operating systems. The resulting pilot field management system, more commonly known as the “Blue Roof App,” was installed on more than 120 iPhone® and iPad® devices. The entire process – from homeowners’ application, inspections, and contractor assignments – was dramatically improved for homeowner relief. What used to take days literally now takes seconds with the help of the mobile network.

During the Mississippi River flood of 2011, as flood response teams in USACE’s Memphis District were receiving their daily briefing on levee and flood problem areas, an ERDC employee, noting that some field images and notes were 24 to 36 hours old, approached ERDC about a better solution. Within 48 hours, the first version of the Mobile Information Collection Application, or MICA, was installed on 50 Android™ mobile phones and deployed to seven flooddamaged cities. Twelve thousand pictures, videos, and notes – each data item specified by its GPS coordinates – were then transmitted from the field directly to command centers, enabling commanders and emergency teams to review new data instantly.

MICA’s immediate success, and the resulting cost savings during the 2011 Mississippi River mission, earned it USACE’s 2012 Innovation of the Year Award, and much attention from other agencies and organizations. The city of Detroit, Mich. – which lost a quarter of its population between 2000 and 2010, leaving it with 40,000 abandoned properties – began using MICA during the summer of 2012, sending out inspectors to catalog candidates for demolition. USACE is considering adapting MICA – an application with literally unlimited potential – for use in a variety of missions, including real estate inspections, debris removal, and post-disaster ice and water distribution; the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), intrigued by MICA’s potential to bridge the data gap between federal, state, and local authorities, has requested multiple MICA demonstrations. Seventy MICAequipped smartphones were deployed to New York, New Jersey, and other locations for Hurricane Sandy response. They provided fantastic support in infrastructure assessment, housing, debris, and other missions as part of the federal response.

Super Materials: from Nanoscale to Macroscale

For several years now, scientists around the world have been experimenting with so-called “super materials” whose physical properties – strength and conductivity, for example – greatly surpass

The Modular Protective System (MPS) Saving Soldiers’ Lives ERDC has been developing and refining the MPS since 2005. It is a durable, lightweight, effective, and mobile system that provides warfighters protection from enemy fire, IEDs, or mortar rounds, to name a few.

While traditional protective systems – soil berms, revetments, or Hesco baskets – call for large logistical support using heavy equipment, the MPS is different. It consists of an expandable inner frame structure and supporting inner and outer walls of lightweight protective panels 10 times stronger than concrete. All MPS components are lightweight and manportable and can be transported via rotary aircraft.

The first MPS protective wall was fielded in Iraq in 2008, and it did not take long for Soldiers and ERDC’s researches to envision other uses for the system, such as mortar pits, guard towers, and entry control points. ERDC researchers soon began adapting the system’s components to provide overhead cover (OHC) for command posts and other highvalue assets from mortar fire.

those currently in widespread use. These super materials have the potential to transform the world’s basic infrastructures. One of these materials is graphene – a two-dimensional sheet of pure carbon atoms, arranged in a honeycomb lattice. A second related material is carbon nanotubes. Carbon nanotubes can be thought of as rolled tubes of graphene. Together, carbon nanotubes and graphene are the strongest material yet discovered. A fiber the diameter of a fine pencil lead (0.5 millimeter), if it had the strength of a perfect carbon nanotube, could support the weight of a large car (4,700 pounds). Graphene and carbon nanotubes also can be extremely conductive, making them ideal candidates for highspeed electronics, photonics, and optics applications.

For the time being, however, graphene and other super materials are prohibitively expensive. As part of the nationwide Materials Genome Initiative, ERDC researchers, along with colleagues at NASA, the Department of Defense, and several university laboratories, are nibbling away at this expense and improving the performance of super materials by leading a paradigm shift away from the traditional trial-and-error method of developing materials. These traditional methods consist of building a material, testing its properties, and then building it again. The new method championed by ERDC and others is a more proactive approach that is enabled by three recent technological breakthroughs: CONTINUED ON PAGE 27

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ERDC molecular dynamics simulation of an interlinked fiber of carbon nanotubes.

Image courtesy of ERDC

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 24

• The ability to predict material properties before the material is built by modeling the forces between its atoms and molecules.

Using supercomputers and molecular dynamic simulations, ERDC researchers are able to model the performance of polycrystalline silicon carbide – a lightweight ceramic with great structural promise – by using sophisticated multimillion-atom simulations requiring up to 200,000 computer processor hours.

• The ability to measure material response and discern the structures of materials at the molecular level, or nanoscale – a capability enabled by the development of instruments such as atomic force microscopes and scanning electron microscopes.

This capability provides confirmation of the molecular dynamic simulations.

• The increasing ability to engineer the material synthesis process and to synthesize materials with prescribed molecular structures. ERDC researchers can now routinely grow carbon nanotube “forests” in their laboratories that are millimeters long, and, with their academic colleagues, have learned how to infiltrate carbon nanotubes into layered ceramic structures.

They are also able to predict how the very strong crystalline structures of silicon carbide grow together during synthesis, and are looking into producing other nanotube-based structures with potential applications in energy technology, microelectronics, pharmacology, and structural engineering.

ERDC researchers’ pursuit of very-high-strength carbon nanotube fibers is long term and connects to the real world because fibers are critical elements inside very strong lightweight composites. Unlike the near-term life-saving MPS and the efficient disaster relief offered by mobile device software, ERDC’s super materials research is aimed at the second generation of super construction materials.

ERDC’s engineers and scientists are laying the groundwork for rapid development of super materials that could transform the way our material world looks and functions. These super materials will have strengths greater than 10 times that of high-strength steel and could replace structural steel and aluminum with over twothirds weight reduction, making possible lighter, stronger military aircraft and vehicles; more fuel-efficient engines; and building and bridge components that are not only fantastically stronger, but also corrosion resistant. Like many ERDC innovations, these materials will contribute to a safer, more resource-efficient future.

One Stop R&D

It is our nation’s toughest, most complex engineering and scientific challenges that need ERDC’s attention and resources the most. System-wide water resource problems, advanced modeling of hurricane and storm impacts on coastal areas, building military airfields in a matter of hours, providing alternative energy to remote combat outposts, dealing with invasive fish that threaten the Great Lakes, construction in polar regions, and thousands of other projects show the wide range of ERDC R&D capabilities.

“There probably aren’t any other R&D organizations in the world that have the diverse mission, the diverse capabilities, or the research expertise that ERDC brings to the table to solve the toughest problems of our nation and our armed forces,” Holland said.

“As budgets get tighter, R&D solutions will be even more valuable. There will be increased pressure to do things smarter, more cost effectively, and better in the future. I am sure ERDC will answer the call; we will provide innovative solutions for a safer, better world.”

SERVING THE NATION AND THE ARMED FORCES

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Culture Changes Propel Dam Safety Program to New Heights

By Charles Dervarics

W

hen it comes to changing organizational culture, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) Dam Safety Community of Practice (CoP) takes its job seriously. Until recently, 41 different USACE district offices had responsibility for dam safety and construction. But thanks to recent transformation efforts, the CoP consolidated these operations into seven robust centers that provide expert guidance on a regional level.

“We have fully embraced the concept to make dam safety modifications better,” said Eric Halpin, special assistant for dam and levee safety. “It took significant cultural change to do that,” he noted, “but it’s positioning us well for the future.”

Halpin said the new changes reflect a commitment to organizational strengthening that can serve as a model agencywide.

Given the age of many dams and the need for modernization, he believes the new structure is essential for a risk assessment process to identify the most pressing needs in a systematic way. And along the way, he added, “We’re getting our mystique back!”

Risk Assessment and Response

In fiscal year 2005, USACE began its transition to risk-informed decision-making when it launched the Screening for Portfolio Risk Analysis (SPRA), an initial screening level risk assessment of the entire USACE portfolio of dams. In its simplest terms, SPRA considers current dam behavior, how well it meets current design criteria, and potential consequences of dam failure. Today, USACE uses the results from this risk-informed approach to ensure that limited funding reaches top-priority sites. More than 90 percent of USACE dams are at least 30 years old, and the typical dam is 55 years old. Perhaps not surprisingly given their advanced age, the dynamic nature of risk, and changes to the state of the practice, almost half require improvements.

Overall, Halpin said these dams require $26 billion in repairs. Yet USACE only receives about $500 million per year to make dam repairs and improvements. That mismatch between need and available funding has led to the need to manage risk and prioritize needs.

As a result, USACE is strategic with its limited resources and, in some cases, takes short-term and interim measures to buy down risk.

For example, USACE may lower the reservoir level at some dams to

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SERVING THE NATION AND THE ARMED FORCES

reduce risk in the interim, he said. “Later, we can make a more permanent and measured investment over time,” Halpin noted.

These shorter-term measures are essential to reduce risk to individuals and communities, he said. In 2011, for example, flooding caused $9 billion in damage, including $2 billion in damage to USACE’s flood damage reduction infrastructure. Yet analysis also showed that the USACE dam and levee systems prevented another $141 billion of additional damage.

“Many of our dams in 2011 made record releases and avoided significant flood damage,” he said.

Halpin credits this success to a modernized planning process that leads to streamlined decision-making. “We have fully embraced the concept that decisions need to be scaled to the level of the task. It has to be done smarter and faster.”

One prime example of USACE’s new approach is at Pine Creek Lake in Oklahoma. Inspectors found a major crack that posed significant risk for those living nearby. By embracing the concepts of Planning Modernization, the study and decision document that previously would have taken four to five years will be completed in about 24 months. “We want to collect the best information and leverage our expertise,” he said.

Concentrating Its Expertise

USACE’s decision to concentrate its dam safety expertise also contributes to this success. Instead of working at 41 different district locations, dam safety experts are now concentrated at one of seven dam safety production centers. “This allows us to sharpen our expertise, build the bench of engineering and construction competencies, and more efficiently deliver our services,” Halpin said.

Located strategically nationwide, the centers focus on regional needs. Districts within USACE competed for the designation, with the best-qualified sites winning it, according to Halpin.

There also is a mandatory center of expertise, or MCX, based in the Huntington District, in West Virginia, which provides technical oversight and overall management of this new framework. In addition to housing the MCX, the Huntington District also is home to the dam safety production center serving the Great Lakes and Ohio River Division.

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U.S. Army Corps of Engineers photo

Aerial view of Dworshak Dam on the North Fork of the Clearwater River in northern Idaho as seen in December 2007. In May 2012, USACE reclassified Dworshak Dam and Reservoir, near Orofino, Idaho, as a Dam Safety Action Classification III (DSAC III) after a rigorous study and review by USACE dam safety experts. Dworshak Dam was initially classified in October 2007 as DSAC II “Urgent” because of engineering unknowns related to structural stability and foundation seepage of concrete gravity sections.

“These are robust centers that can efficiently deliver services,” Halpin said, and several are already fully staffed. “The Dam Safety Community of Practice is among the USACE leaders in modernizing its workforce for the next 20 years,” he added. Other locations for dam safety production centers, listed by USACE division, are: • Southwestern Division, based at the Tulsa (Okla.) and Little Rock (Ark.) districts offices; • North Atlantic Division, based at the New England District (Mass.) and Baltimore (Md.) District offices; • South Atlantic Division, based primarily at the Mobile (Ala.) District office; • Mississippi Valley Division, based at the Vicksburg (Miss.)

District office; • South Pacific Division, based at the Sacramento (Calif.) District office; and • Northwestern Division, Pacific Ocean Division, and Transatlantic Division, based at the Omaha (Neb.) District office.

Since USACE-operated and -maintained dams provide significant benefits through flood management, navigation, hydropower, water supplies, recreation, and fish and wildlife conservation, maintaining their viability is essential for USACE staff. “We really have a dedicated group of people who are very committed to dam safety,” said Barb Schuelke, who recently joined USACE as dam safety program manager. “Everyone’s committed to this program.”

Multilayer Inspection System

As a monitoring tool, USACE conducts regular inspections of the dams within its portfolio. Main objectives of the inspection system are to ensure the dam will perform as expected, identify any deficiencies for monitoring or repair, collect information to make informed decisions, determine if the dam has received proper maintenance, and assess the dam’s integrity to identify changes over time. USACE’s approach includes annual inspections as well

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, , •

• ••

•

USACE photo by Chris Hesse

USACE photo

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as periodic in-depth inspections once every five years. These indepth reviews follow an evaluation checklist, a comprehensive review of the safety and structural stability of the dam, and a comparison of the dam’s current status to original criteria when built.

The SPRA, begun in 2005 and finished in 2009, resulted in a Dam Safety Action Classification (DSAC) in one of five action classes, from dams that meet tolerable risks and all essential engineering criteria to those that require urgent action. DSCA characteristics include: • DSAC I, Urgent and Compelling, critically near failure, or extremely high incremental risk.

• DSAC II, High Urgency, failure initiation foreseen or very high incremental risk.

• DSAC III, Moderate Urgency, moderate to high incremental risk.

• DSAC IV, Low Urgency, low incremental risk.

• DSAC V, Normal, very low incremental risk.

(Note: Incremental risk is the risk that exists because of the dam’s presence and is used to inform the DSAC assignment decision.)

Halpin also noted that USACE has identified a common vision for dam and levee safety together. There is a “common vision to approach infrastructure from the perspective of people living and working behind it,” he said. This common vision recognizes that life safety is paramount, which signals a need to manage risk comprehensively in a way that also involves state and local agencies and the general public. “We are reinvigorating our strategy,” Halpin said, including “how we manage risk and tell the story of our infrastructure.”

TOP: Clint Dougherty inspects one of the eight tainter gates, a type of radial arm floodgate to control water flow, at Big Bend Dam on the Missouri River. Formed behind the dam at Fort Thompson is Lake Sharpe, in central South Dakota. Above: Tommy Haskins, USACE Nashville District technical manager for the Wolf Creek Dam Foundation Remediation Project in Jamestown, Ky., briefs the 2011 post-flood Performance Assessment Team from Headquarters during a tour of the project July 25, 2012. The team visited the dam as it seeks to identify potential revisions to water-control manuals and recommend operational changes, both within and outside of existing authorities and policies.

Through this effort, USACE is not only concentrating its expertise but also its best practices capable of replication on a large scale. “It’s the right thing to do. It’s what good government does,” he added.

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USACE Levee Safety Program Putting levees in a risk framework

By Charles Dervarics

L

evees, man-made embankments or concrete floodwalls designed to divert temporary floodwaters, are integral to many communities across the United States. “People may think we manage all levees, but that’s not the case,” said Tammy Conforti, Levee Safety Program manager with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE). Even though 14,500 miles of levees (or just 10 percent of the nation’s levees as estimated by the National Committee on Levee Safety) are in its Levee Safety Program, USACE continues to aggressively advance new methodologies for assessing, communicating, and managing inundation risks associated with levees.

With more than 10 million people living or working behind levees within its authority, USACE considers the role it has in assessing and communicating risks a top priority. “We have a common vision for dam and levee safety. That vision is to approach infrastructure from the perspective of people living and working behind it,” said Eric Halpin, USACE special assistant for dam and levee safety. The goal is to better manage risk, which he described as a “shared responsibility” involving not only USACE but also other federal, state, and local agencies, plus the general public.

“We deliver flood risk benefits commensurate with risk that exists, but with the principle that life safety is paramount.”

Levee inventory information serves as the foundational element of the USACE Levee Safety Program, because the information collected allows for implementation of other activities, including screening levees to characterize the benefits and risk they pose; conducting initial risk assessments to answer key questions regarding priorities, urgency of action, and type of action; and coordinating and communicating Levee Safety Program efforts with U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) St. Paul (Minn.) District employees Jake Fall, left, civil engineer, and Grant Riddick, geotechnical engineer, monitor a temporary emergency levee in Minot, N.D., June 3, 2011. USACE continued assisting local officials with the help of the North Dakota National Guard and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

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U.S. Army Corps of Engineers by Patrick N. Moes

It Starts with Information

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U.S. Army Corps of Engineers photo by Romanda Walker

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) St. Louis (Mo.) District replaces two closure structures on the west flank of the Wood River Creek in Illinois, April 24, 2012. Replacing the structures, and the adjacent floodwall, is one feature of USACE’s Wood River Levee reconstruction project to correct design deficiencies and maintain the levee system’s authorized design level (approximately 54 feet on the St. Louis gage).

stakeholders and other agencies to build the foundation for shared responsibility to develop risk reduction measures.

In the past five years, USACE has spent a significant amount of effort inventorying levees within its authorities and now has moved on to collect available information from other levees outside of its authorities for inclusion into the National Levee Database (NLD).

The NLD includes a geo-reference database system that allows users to visualize the levee’s location and graphically overlay current weather information. Other screens can overlay flooding risks based on past storm history. During torrential rains in 2011, for example, this function allowed USACE as well as state and local agencies to identify locations where levees on the Lower Mississippi River were most vulnerable to overtopping. Such information was important in guiding emergency preparedness and promoting situational awareness for federal, state, and local officials and the general public.

NLD’s interoperability also was a major plus in identifying potential hazards from Hurricane Isaac in 2012. The system was able to show Isaac’s projected storm track over the NLD’s maps to identify levees, population centers, and other critical infrastructure that were at risk from the storm.

Documenting all the levees nationwide is its own Herculean task. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) alone has identified more than 29,000 miles of levees nationwide

as part of the National Flood Insurance Program. Approximately 8,000 miles of those levees are also USACE program levees. One of USACE’s current priorities is to work with other organizations such as FEMA to incorporate their levee information into the NLD. The NLD site has been open to the public since October 2011 and can be viewed at nld.usace.army.mil. So far, the site has registered millions of hits, while agencies such as FEMA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration directly connect to the database as part of their essential missions. “Other agencies use this data in preparing for natural disasters,” Conforti said.

The Risk Context

USACE is on the road to a cultural shift in how it assesses and talks about levees. In conjunction with collecting data about the physical features of levees, it is also important to know how they are expected to perform and what the potential consequences are in cases of poor performance. The essential questions are: What is the range of possible loading events (flood, storm, or earthquake, etc.)? How will the levee perform when subjected to these events?

What are the consequences if the levee doesn’t perform well – losing lives is of paramount concern. More simply: What is the likelihood and severity of undesirable or adverse consequences? In this environment, “one of our major priorities is risk communication,” Conforti said.

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USACE Omaha District photo by Eileen Williamson

Missouri River levee L550 breached on June 23, 2011, near Watson, Mo. Over the following months, USACE focused its energy and resources on repairs and temporary fixes that could be completed in a tight time frame and placed 2.7 million cubic yards of material in 86 days. That’s an average of 31,000 cubic yards of material a day. With those critical repairs completed, efforts have turned to geotechnical investigations and execution on permanent solutions to restore the level of flood risk reduction in the basin.

To answer these questions, USACE is performing screening-level risk assessments on levee systems in its portfolio to be complete by fiscal year 2015. Central to this approach is how USACE quantifies inundation risk associated with three scenarios – breach before overtopping, breach with overtopping, and component malfunction.

The screening-level risk assessment includes a limited engineering assessment of levee system performance-related items such as seepage, erosion, and settlement. This assessment relies on readily available information, such as design, construction, inspection, and historic performance records. This assessment is followed by a consequence analysis (life safety and economic damage) for several ways by which the floodplain could become inundated due to poor levee performance. The screening-level risk assessment concludes with experts interpreting and discussing the outcome of these assessments and associated recommendations.

“We are aggressively moving forward with screening-level risk assessments. We have initiated more than 800, but we have more than 2,000 to go,” Conforti said.

Putting levees in a risk context is a consistent and credible way to prioritize actions especially in a time of constrained resources.

USACE plans to use the risk assessment results not only to prioritize areas with high life safety risk for its own levee safety activities, but to communicate the results to levee sponsors and other stakeholders so they can make more informed decisions.

Federal Alignment

Effective partnerships with other federal, state, and local agencies are another USACE priority.

One priority is to work more closely with FEMA, which executes the National Flood Insurance Program. USACE and FEMA have distinct but complementary roles and responsibilities when dealing with levees. Both agencies are working together to make communities more aware of their flood risk through concerted education and outreach efforts. A recently formed USACE/FEMA task force is working on recommendations to better align processes related to levees.

“Our relationship with FEMA is the strongest it’s ever been,” Conforti said. Coordination between the two agencies is now standard practice. Local outreach is particularly important since local government and even private entities may have prime responsibility for the levees.

“We think it’s important that local entities are engaged,” Conforti said.

In this way, the federal government can be a major partner – but not the only one – in assessing and managing U.S. infrastructure. “It’s a shared risk,” said Halpin, “and a shared responsibility.”

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FLOOD RISK MANAGEMENT Coordinating within the federal family

By Craig Collins

W

hen the Federal Interagency Floodplain Management Task Force (FIFM-TF) was first established in 1975 to develop a unified national program for floodplain management, it signaled an important realization: More than one federal agency was involved in decisions that affected the flood risks of American communities, and it was important that these agencies not unwittingly work against each other.

In 2009, when the FIFM-TF was reconvened after 15 years of inactivity, it signaled a reaffirmation of the principles that first united these agencies, as well as an evolution of the federal approach – away from the idea of isolated “flood control” measures, toward watershed-scale “flood risk reduction” activities that involve collaboration across the federal government and with stakeholders at the state and local levels.

This watershed approach was pioneered by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), which established its National Flood Risk Management Program in 2006 to synchronize its own programs and activities and to coordinate with partner agencies on a “life cycle” framework for flood risk management that embraces land use, dam and levee safety, planning and operations, and emergency management.

The 12-member task force, co-chaired by USACE and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), has three primary goals: public safety, sustainable floodplain resources and functions, and economic vitality. After its 2009 reconvention, some of the FIFM-TF’s first activities were aimed at supporting a collaborative culture among stakeholders – including the creation of the nation’s first Regional Flood Risk Management Team, in the Mississippi Valley, and the creation of state-level Silver Jacket teams, which are now at work in more than 35 states to facilitate life cycle flood risk reduction.

It’s been a busy, productive – and revealing – first three years for the FIFM-TF, said Ray Alexander, USACE’s director of the National Flood Risk Management Program. “We’ve been discovering that we need better federal coordination,” he said. “We must get our own house aligned and in order to make it simpler for nonfederal entities to work with us. We need for local and state governments to view us as the federal government, and not as simply the Corps, FEMA, EPA [Environmental Protection Agency], or another individual agency within the federal government. And

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we have to provide solutions when we learn a policy in one federal agency conflicts with a policy in another.”

Aligning the Battleships

It’s not surprising that federal policies are sometimes contradictory – it happens all the time – but it’s especially eye-opening when it happens between partners who share a common purpose, such as the members of the Floodplain Management Task Force.

Floodplain management was largely the purview of a handful of agencies, including USACE, until 1977, when Executive Order 11988 required all federal agencies to avoid, to the extent possible, adverse impacts associated with the occupancy and modification of floodplains. Alexander likens the coordination of all these different federal efforts to “getting battleships perfectly aligned.

It’s really hard to do all of this in sync.”

One example is the government’s own varying levels of compliance with a 1982 law, the Coastal Barrier Resources Act (CBRA), that addresses problems associated with development in ecologically sensitive landforms providing wildlife habitat, recreational opportunities, and protection from storm surges.

As Stephanie Bray, an environmental engineer who supports USACE’s Flood Risk Management Program, explained, the federal government attempts to reduce risk in these protected areas by prohibiting the expenditure of any federal funds. Thus, federal flood insurance should not be available in these areas, and federal funds should not contribute to the development of any infrastructure in these areas.

Since federal agency compliance with this law has varied over the years, USACE and the Task Force are trying to improve on federal compliance with the law. “Simply asking for compliance will bring to everybody’s attention, in the federal agencies, the fact that this law exists,” Bray said. “And savings will result from terminating inappropriate investing of federal dollars in CBRA zones before disasters. Further savings will be after a disaster because there should be no expectation that the federal government should restore the area to pre-disaster conditions.”

CBRA is administered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), whose enforcement efforts have run into a problem: The paper maps on which CBRA are based are a quarter-century old, and often not as definitive about boundaries as they need to be.

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U.S. Army Corps of Engineers photo by James Frisinger

Brig. Gen. Thomas W. Kula, USACE Southwestern Division commander, takes time during a Fort Worth District site visit to the Pavaho Pump Station Aug. 28, 2012, to recognize Dallas workers for their hard work and dedication to the project, which lowers flood risk for the citizens of Dallas. Recognized, from left, were Mark Reed, a city construction superintendent at Pavaho; Sirak Bahta and Vincent Lewis, city engineers at Pavaho; and Dhruv Pandya, assistant director of operations, Trinity Watershed Management, for the city of Dallas. Sarah Standifer, partially obscured, assistant director, Trinity River Corridor Project and Stormwater Management for the city, was also recognized.

This is potentially a huge issue; for example, someone who has unwittingly built a home and purchased flood insurance – with the government’s sanction – in a CBRA zone could have a future claim denied. Through a cooperative agreement with FEMA, FWS is working on updating and digitizing a number of the CBRA zone maps.

In working to resolve issues such as CBRA compliance, USACE is evolving into the role of problem-solver or conflict negotiator on floodplain management issues of national significance.

Recently, for example, it was discovered that a USACE project to reduce flood risks in the Red River floodplain around the cities of Fargo, N.D., and Moorhead, Minn., would affect the base flood elevation, or BFE – the elevation associated with a “100-year flood” or a flood with a 1 percent chance of occurring annually.

The BFE is the basis of FEMA’s National Flood Insurance Program, and activities that potentially change the BFE – which

USACE’s flood risk reduction project has the potential to do – are disqualifying, explained Bray. “By strict interpretation of FEMA’s regulations, a community that participates in the National Flood Insurance Program cannot permit activities, which include construction of flood risk management projects, that influence the BFE … So after this conflict arose in the field a few times, and most recently and prominently in the design of the project to reduce the flood risk to the Fargo/Moorhead area, the headquarters staffs of FEMA and the Corps were able to sit down and talk through this issue – to find different regulations and policies we each had that could help the staff get through this issue when it comes up again in the future, so that the projects can be developed to help the community manage the flood risk without resulting in their being disqualified from the Flood Insurance Program.”

The workaround devised by USACE and FEMA is already being discussed and adapted for other communities seeking flood protection in other parts of the country.

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The Federal Interagency Floodplain Management Task Force Member Agencies

NASA image courtesy MODIS Rapid Response Team; Goddard Space Flight Center

USACE photo

Department of Homeland Security’s FEMA (co-chair) U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (co-chair) Department of Agriculture Department of Commerce Department of Defense Department of Energy Department of Housing and Urban Development Department of the Interior Department of Transportation Environmental Protection Agency General Services Administration Tennessee Valley Authority Council on Environmental Quality (adviser) Office of Management and Budget (adviser)

TOP: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers multipurpose reservoirs are an important part of the flood damage reduction system. During the flood of 1993, the water held back by USACE reservoirs decreased the crest in St. Louis, Mo., by 4 feet. Above: The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite acquired images on April 14, 2011, depicting the floodplain area of the Red River spilling over its banks along the Minnesota-North Dakota border. Recently it was discovered that a USACE project to reduce flood risks in the Red River floodplain around the cities of Fargo, N.D., and Moorhead, Minn., would affect the base flood elevation.

Meanwhile, an exhaustive review of federal policies and program alignment within the agencies is under way, to identify which programs are working and which ones may conflict with others. The expected outcome of this review is an objective

measure of how effective federal policies have been in protecting the nation from floods, and a list of recommendations for continued action.

Of course, no member of the FIFM-TF wants to continue to address such problems and conflicts on an ad hoc basis. The purpose of reconvening the Task Force has been to coordinate floodplain management at the highest levels of government, to prevent such conflicts from occurring in the first place. In March 2012, it took an important first step, issuing a simple half-page document titled, “Guidance on Unwise Use of Floodplains” (http://www. fema.gov/library/viewRecord.do;jsessionid=E437F2953778848A E51D8F28C6F5D586.WorkerLibrary?action=back&id=6190).

The production of a half-page document may not seem like much, said Alexander, but when you’re trying to align battleships, it’s a major accomplishment – an important milestone in the federal coordination effort. “It is the start of saying: ‘Here’s the definition of unwise use, as the federal government views it – not as the Corps views it or as FEMA views it, but as viewed by 12 agencies within the federal government,’” he said. “As we go forward and start working on individual agency guidelines and regulations, we will have this one document to guide those efforts, so that we’re all trying to take the nation as a whole in the same direction.”

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Implementing Quality Business Deals Contracting and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

By Jan Tegler

A

cquisition, in the form of contracting, is vital to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE). Without the ability to purchase services and supplies from contractors large and small, USACE simply could not perform its missions.

Dedicated to critical engineering services to support both the warfighter and the American public, the 37,000 civilians and Soldiers who make up USACE are thought of primarily as engineers.

However, USACE personnel represent a wide range of engineering, scientific, and business specialties, including acquisition.

More than 1,300 members of the command’s workforce are directly involved in contracting, responsible for the purchase and oversight of $30 billion worth of contracting per year. Stuart Hazlett is USACE’s top contracting professional. As the USACE director of contracting, he is keenly aware of the importance of contract labor to USACE and the immense quantity of services and goods the command purchases.

“We buy a very wide range of commodities,” Hazlett said. “The term ‘commodities’ encompasses all of the supplies and services we acquire. The Corps, by law and regulation, does predominantly architecture, engineering, and construction. Those types of commodities represent about 73 percent of everything we buy. We also support R&D [research and development] out of our Engineer Research and Development Center [ERDC] and our Geospatial Center [USACE Army Geospatial Center]. We acquire facilities-related services that will help us perform sustainment, restoration, and modernization of military installations and other structures. The Corps Civil Works mission, historically related to federal river and harbor improvements, now encompasses a broad range of water-related missions to include flood damage reduction, shore and hurricane protection, hydropower, recreation, water supply, and wetland restoration.”

“Acquisition is a life cycle value proposition provided by USACE for our customers,” Hazlett added. USACE engineers write requirements for a given project that include construction and design specifications and other obligations. Then the command ensures proper financing is in place before the contract is solicited, evaluated, and awarded.

“We establish and provide oversight of the terms and conditions of a quality business deal,” Hazlett explained. “Once we have awarded a construction or A-E [architect-engineer] contract, we

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transition to a post-award team led by technical personnel who have functional expertise in design and construction and experience in contract administration. The teams also include a contracting officer and a specialist who support the technical staff and ensure full compliance with applicable contracting policy and regulations.”

Striking a “quality business deal” is a chief priority in USACE contracting efforts. Over the first decade of the 21st century, USACE experienced a historically high operational tempo. Two ongoing conflicts (Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom), the latest round of BRAC (Base Realignment and Closure, 2005), responding to natural disasters, and the institution of the Obama administration’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in 2009 led to a heavy workload for USACE. Keeping pace with the work generated by these efforts in addition to USACE’s normal civil works and military duties often resulted in less-than-efficient business practices. Contracting took some policy shortcuts in order to meet customer expectations on aggressive project schedules.

“We were working at such a high tempo that we took many shortcuts to keep pace,” Hazlett said. “Now, as the funding we have decreases and work slows down, we have the time to ensure we are in total compliance with all acquisition policies. We’re not going to be so time-driven. We’ll have the fortitude to be qualityand cost-driven.”

Putting USACE contracting on a better business footing begins with choosing the right kind of contracting vehicles, said Hazlett, and providing better oversight post-contract award to ensure contractors deliver the quality they promise.

“One of our main priorities is emphasizing quality business deals on behalf of our customers and taxpayers. That’s very important to us. As funding is shrinking from the Corps’ budget, our needs are still there. Even after a best-value selection, we want to execute innovative contract types that will motivate a contractor to give their best effort for the taxpayers’ dollars.”

Hazlett stressed that 86 percent of the contracting USACE acquires is solicited via full and open competition. Only 14 percent of USACE contracting is other than full and open competition.

“We will either do best-value where there’s a trade-off between technical capability and price or we may accept the lowest price/

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USACE photo by Leon Roberts

Lt. Col. James A. DeLapp, USACE Nashville District commander, gives Nashville Mayor Karl Dean a tour on the work platform at Wolf Creek Dam Aug. 7, 2012, where a barrier wall was being installed to stop seepage through the karst geology in the embankment foundation.

technically acceptable offer,” he said. “Oftentimes, we may not go that route. We may do a competitive acquisition where we clearly know what the specification is and we evaluate contractors based on whether they’re responsive to the needs of the government.

What’s the best price and deal for the taxpayer?”

USACE is also putting quality assurance surveillance plans in place and emphasizing their use for oversight, said Hazlett.

“We’re working hard to make sure we have tools in post-contract award such as contract administration to ensure that the contractor who won the best-value award is living up to the terms of that award. So we are working to improve our project administration and surveillance utilizing from our project managers and engineers to ensure the contractor is living up to their promises. If not, we are seeking consideration from the contractor.”

Lessons learned from the last 10 years of high-tempo operations for USACE are being folded into the best business practices of the Army and the Department of Defense. These include better governance and oversight mechanisms to improve efficiency at all levels.

“We do reviews at different stratifications of dollar amounts, reviewing each other’s work internally to make sure we’re using

best practices,” Hazlett said. “Depending on the dollar amount of a project within a district we may say that we’ll allow for a peer review in that district. As the dollar amount gets higher, we’ll ask our principal assistants responsible for contracting [PARCs] to do peer reviews at their level. Then we go to the Head of the Contracting Activity [HCA] level. The Head of the Contracting Activity for USACE is Lt. Gen. Tom Bostick.

Any project of $250 million to $1 billion is reviewed at the HCA level. That’s very helpful to the team to make sure we’re executing quality business deals.”

In addition to improving its internal contracting processes, USACE is streamlining the acquisition process, saving money for defense contractors competing for contract awards.

“While we’re trying to execute more innovative contract types that provide incentives for contractors, we’ve also come up with innovative ways to help defense contractors save money,” Hazlett said.

“Increasingly, we’re using a two-phase design-build approach for contracting. Those opportunities are placed on the Federal Business Opportunities [www.fbo.gov] website. There may be as many as 30 contractors in a geographic area where a project is proposed who would like to bid on that work. With the two-phase

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PREVENT design-build approach, we look at their technical capabilities in the first phase. Then we do a down-select and head into phase two with perhaps five of those 30 contractors competing. Defense contractors like this approach because they don’t have to invest as much time and money as they would if they had to submit a complete technical and cost/price proposal. That’s why we like the two-phase approach.”

Becoming more efficient also means reaching out to small businesses. According to Hazlett, USACE is actively liaising with smaller firms through the USACE Small Business Office, educating them and helping them navigate complicated federal acquisition regulations and imperatives that apply to the government.

“In FY 12, we awarded $7.2 billion, which equates to 44 percent of our acquisitions, to small business. When you look at our mission and the type of things we buy, there are many opportunities for us to partner with small businesses. Unlike the acquisition of DoD major weapon systems, we have a different industrial base that we leverage. We deal with a highly competitive marketplace that is comprised of many A-E and construction small businesses.”

More broadly, Hazlett is working to grow the professionalism of USACE members who engage in the acquisition and contracting processes, emphasizing training and education for district contracting officers, contracting chiefs, and district commanders. With nearly half of the USACE workforce currently eligible for retirement, grooming new and recently hired members of the command in business deal quality contracting is essential.

“I’m very passionate about that,” Hazlett said. “Via the Defense Acquisition Workforce Improvement Act we receive continuous training and education. That’s where I come in as the director of contracting. One of my contributions to the command is to ensure that we have qualified and trained contracting professionals.

We need to make sure that our district commanders have acquisition and contracting professionals supporting their mission.

“We’ll send our people to a school house at the Defense Acquisition University and within the Corps of Engineers, we have our Proponent-Sponsored Engineer Corps Training [PROSPECT] courses. We build our own particular courses to educate our workforce since we’re the only ones buying construction,” he continued. “In addition, we put together refresher courses for the procuring contracting officers [PCOs].

“It’s a privilege to have a warrant from the United States government to obligate dollars, so we’re building what I call a ‘PCO boot camp.’ That will refresh their knowledge because laws, regulations, and policies are constantly changing. We’re also building a course for the district contracting chiefs. Our warranted PCOs may possess superior contracting knowledge, but when they become district contracting chiefs, they require additional skillsets. They may be responsible for obligating a billion dollars per year in their district. We need to provide them with training so that they know how to manage that contracting enterprise,” Hazlett said.

“Our district commanders are being educated in acquisition.

These people are superior engineers but they may lack acquisition awareness. We’re building coursework for them to boost their

TOP: Director of Contracting Stuart Hazlett, USACE’s top contracting professional, is keenly aware of the importance of contract labor to USACE and the immense quantity of services and goods the command purchases. Here, he provides an overview to senior leaders on the scope of USACE’s acquisition process. ABOVE: Col. Anthony Hofmann, USACE Kansas City District commander, and Bob Schoen (left) of the Kansas City District meet with ESI Contracting Corp. owner Alan Wolfe (center) Feb. 22, 2012, at the Rushville Sugar Lake Levee. The district contracted with ESI to repair the levee after it breached in several spots during the 2011 Missouri River flood.

knowledge so that they can monitor the health of their contracting enterprise from an acquisition standpoint.”

Though the effort to reform and streamline contracting within USACE has only been under way for the last couple years, Hazlett said USACE will make more progress.

“We’re still exploring our weaknesses and emphasizing our strengths, but we’re optimistic that over the next couple of years, we’ll become the best contracting organization in the Army.”

SERVING THE NATION AND THE ARMED FORCES

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More Competition, Better Value The Corps’ Small Business Program

By Eric Tegler

T

he U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) has often been misunderstood in its two centuries-plus history. One of the most common misperceptions has been that USACE personnel alone design and execute the myriad projects it undertakes. The truth is that today, more than ever, USACE works collaboratively with the private sector to fulfill its mission. Look no further than the 37,000 USACE employees who work with more than 300,000 contractor employees.

What’s more, the hundreds of thousands of contractor personnel do not all work for large firms. Small businesses play a major role in USACE’s success. In fiscal year (FY) 2011, USACE awarded approximately 45.4 percent of all contracts to small businesses.

For FY 2012, that ratio has been exceeded with small businesses winning 44.92 percent of all contracts, about $7 billion worth.

The numbers are impressive but their significance goes beyond simple participation. Jackie L. Robinson-Burnette is USACE’s associate director of Small Business Programs. She summed up the importance of small firms to USACE’s mission neatly: “The more competition we have, the better value we get and the better price we get.”

In the bargain, leaders at every level in USACE understand that the preservation and expansion of small business competition bolsters the economic well-being and security of the nation.

Robinson-Burnette said, “The new chief of engineers, Lt. Gen. Thomas Bostick, challenges us to continue to look for opportunities to maximize the Corps’ inclusion of small businesses in our missions across the globe. He asked us to work hard to ensure that USACE efforts are nested with Army, Department of Defense, and national priorities – and our small business industrial base is a priority.” That understanding is expounded by USACE’s Small Business Program, an integrated network of small business advisers who provide support to more than 50 sites in the continental United States, Hawaii, and Alaska.

There are more than 60 small business advisers serving within USACE. They support USACE’s division commanders, district commanders, center directors, and the Directorate of Contracting’s 1,200-plus contracting professionals. The small business advisers are an integral part of the procurement process, and work collectively with contracting officers as they plan and execute contracts. The advisers represent USACE in all small business matters

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and provide support to ensure successful execution of the organization’s mission.

Using and encouraging small business development is not only a USACE goal, it is also a law. The Small Business Act, signed into law by President Barack Obama in September 2010, requires all government agencies to “insure that a fair proportion of the total purchases and contracts or subcontracts for property and services for the Government ... be placed with small-business enterprises …”

Evidence that USACE’s Small Business Program is effective arises not only from the individual awards that small firms receive directly from USACE but from the business they get from prime contractors who subcontract approximately 50 percent of their work to small businesses. In FY 2011, the combination of USACE-awarded work generated more than 100,000 jobs for the American economy.

Robinson-Burnette has seen the effect of USACE’s emphasis on small business firsthand. The cultivation of small firm participation in USACE projects has improved the overall acquisition environment and mission success.

“Competition is definitely increasing,” she observed. “We have a strong focus at the Corps on competitive acquisitions. There are avenues for sole-source procurement but we definitely have a preference for competition, because competitive acquisitions guarantee best price and best value. When you look over the last four years, you can see a significant increase in participation of small businesses. Even as our overall contract obligations and dollars are decreasing as we finish our major BRAC [Base Realignment and Closure 2005] projects and American Recovery and Reinvestment Act projects, we are still increasing the percentage of contracts we give to small businesses.”

Working with USACE also leads to higher levels of business acumen among small firms, Robinson-Burnette said. “Though we want to meet our small business goals, we don’t want to meet them to the detriment of failing to meet the mission.”

The end goal of mission fulfillment is the focus of small business contract awards from the start. Each potential contractor begins the process by registering with the government’s System for Award Management (SAM) website (www.sam.gov). North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) codes indi-

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USACE photo

Maj. Gen. Kendall P. Cox, deputy commanding general for Military and International Operations, speaks with 1,600 small business industry leaders about USACE’s Small Business Program.

cate the type of work a firm will engage in and are needed for contracting purposes. Each NAICS code has an associated size standard expressed in total number of employees or total annual revenue. For instance, a construction firm listed under NAICS code 236220 with less than $33.5 million in average annual revenue over the previous three years is considered a small business.

Firms also identify themselves by subcategories if applicable.

Subcategory small businesses can be a woman-owned small business; a service-disabled veteran-owned small business; a veteranowned small business; an 8(a) small disadvantaged business; a small disadvantaged business; or a historically underutilized business zone business. The subcategory classifications may give such firms a leg-up in competing for contracts, because some contract opportunities are set-aside for subcategory small businesses. In addition, some 8(a) firms can receive contract opportunities non-competitively. However, Robinson-Burnette emphasized that competitive proposals, past performance, and technical capability are the most important determinants.

This mentality is reflected in the contract award process. After a firm searches the federal business opportunities website

(www.fbo.gov) for appropriate work and responds to the relevant request for proposal (RFP), the proposal is evaluated and ranked along with other proposals. The evaluation team determines which proposal has the best overall value, not necessarily the one with the lowest price.

A firm’s track record and capability are important considerations in reducing risk. The proposal ranking is visible to a contractor after the award is made. Firms can request a debriefing from the USACE contracting officer. The contracting officer will explain to each firm how it was rated/ranked with respect to the contract requirements of the RFP and the firm that won the award, pointing out substantive differences and explaining any mistakes made. This can be a learning experience for small businesses, not only helping refine their proposal skills but aiding them in better identifying and matching their capabilities to various USACE projects.

“The focus is educating firms so they can submit more competitive proposals,” Robinson-Burnette said.

Placing the emphasis on competition from the start yields benefits further into the mission, she said.

SERVING THE NATION AND THE ARMED FORCES

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USACE photos

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) Chief of Staff Col. Dan Anninos (left) and Maj. Gen. Todd Semonite, USACE deputy commanding general and deputy chief of engineers (right), speak with small business industry partners.

“The quality of the work small businesses are doing is excellent. For instance, a small service-disabled veteran-owned business undertook a contract that required them to construct a LEED® [Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design]-certified Silver building. They actually built it to LEED Gold [certified] standard and it wasn’t required. They’re just doing more. I think that because the economy is in turnaround, they are competing with large businesses and they have to bring value that’s equivalent to that large business.”

In turn, USACE’s small business advisers advocate for small firms with large business prime contractors.

“I encourage small firms to go after smaller subcontracting opportunities with our primes,” Robinson-Burnette said, “and I ask my staff to help facilitate the introduction of small businesses to large primes so they’re not knocking on the door by themselves.

“I sit down with large contractors like Balfour-Beatty, Clark, Parsons – companies that are getting millions of dollars of work from us – and talk with them about their subcontracting programs. What are they doing to train and develop small businesses?

How are they responding to the hundreds of small businesses that come to them asking for a piece of the work they’re doing for the Corps of Engineers? How do they vet small firms? I ask them to show us the numbers to confirm they are meeting our subcontracting requirements.”

The numbers show that they are and that USACE is meeting its small business mandate. For FY 2012, while USACE accounted for only 18 percent of the Army’s total obligations, it accounted for an impressive 30 percent of the service’s total dollars placed with small businesses, approximately $7 billion out of the Army’s $22 billion.

USACE led the Army for FY 12, and in comparison with other contracting activities that obligated more than $5 billion, USACE had the highest percentage of dollars in awards to small businesses (45.4 percent), small disadvantaged businesses (22 percent), women-owned small businesses (7.1 percent), service-disabled veteranowned small businesses (5.9 percent), and historically underutilized business zone businesses (11.16 percent).

Each fiscal year, the secretary of the Army’s director of Small Business Programs gives out five major Small Business Program Awards. They include excellence in the subcategories mentioned earlier: Small Business Program, Woman-Owned Small Business Program, Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business Program, Small Disadvantaged Business Program, and Historically Underutilized Business Zone Program.

USACE outperformed all other Army commands earning four of the five major awards on Aug. 3, 2012. In April 2012 the secretary of the Army awarded USACE’s commander with the overall Small Business Excellence Award for exceeding every assigned small business goal. For the first time in the history of the organization, USACE set new records Armywide and exceeded every assigned goal for two consecutive fiscal years.

Small firms are the most innovative players in the private sector, developing processes and technology that larger firms later integrate. They are also the most dynamic employers, producing higher rates of gross job creation. USACE success in obtaining better value while supporting small businesses is attracting more competition for its projects.

Robinson-Burnette stays engaged with USACE industry partners, large and small, and emphasized USACE’s desire to be accessible and transparent to small businesses. For those looking to win USACE contracts, she offered some advice: “I tell small firms, go after work where you have proven capability and past performance. When you do that, you minimize the risk to the Corps and the government as they consider giving you a contract. Some contractors want to start by going after a multimillion dollar project. There are hundreds of small firms that started with our smaller projects and have worked hard and proven that they can execute a million [dollar] or $2 million project. They offer less risk to us than an inexperienced contractor who is just starting out. We are pushing for small businesses on every contract where small firms prove capability, but we are also making smart business decisions and we are evaluating the risks to project completion.”

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Setting the Theater

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SERVING THE NATION AND THE ARMED FORCES

USACE and the Army’s Engineer Regiment

By Eric Tegler

ABOVE: A Best Sapper competitor makes his way toward shore after helocasting on day one of the Best Sapper challenge during ENFORCE held April 19-21, 2012, at Fort Leonard Wood, Mo. On April 18, the U.S. Army Engineer School launched ENFORCE, its annual regimental conference, bringing together more than 300 military engineers to focus on future operations, capabilities, threats, and how the regiment will engineer in future conflicts into 2020. The Best Sapper competition is a centerpiece of the conference, where Soldiers use their physical, mental, and creative abilities to compete on a rigorous 50-mile course in 50 hours. OPPOSITE: Chief Warrant Officer 3 Roy Stubbins, geospatial engineer course manager, instructs students Jan. 18, 2012, on aspects of geospatial engineering during the first week of the course at the U.S. Army Engineer School, based at Fort Leonard Wood, Mo.

U.S. Army photo by J.D. Leipold

T

he civil and military sides of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) are bound together by common missions, organization, and spirit. USACE’s motto, Essayons – French for “Let us try” – applies equally to a combat engineer erecting a perimeter around a forward firebase or a civil works engineer dredging sections of the Upper Mississippi River to alleviate drought.

In either case, engineers are “setting the theater” whether preparing for combat or emergency response.

The Army Engineer Regiment is a large and inclusive entity, Brig.

Gen. Peter “Duke” DeLuca pointed out. DeLuca is commandant of the U.S. Army Engineer School (USAES) based at Fort Leonard Wood, Mo. “This is a regiment that includes more than 80,000 total engineer Soldiers in the active Army, the Army Reserve, and the National Guard. It includes representatives of the more than 30,000 civilians in the Army Corps of Engineers and other members of the Army institutional staffs, as well as representatives of our joint service engineer counterparts. The regiment also enfolds many foreign military engineer delegations and representatives from our U.S. government interagency partners and even representatives of industry with whom we partner in the war zones and at home.”

Among USACE’s 30,000-plus personnel are 550 U.S. Army members spread throughout USACE districts and divisions nationwide and around the globe at various military installations. In addition, one Army battalion reports directly to USACE and the chief of engineers.

PREVENT months after taking command. Though these district commanders are experienced officers, each is apprised of developments, activities, and changes in the field. Likewise, USAES’ commandant makes an effort to stay abreast of the engineer art and news from the operational quarters in which it is being practiced.

“I stay in contact with the deployed engineers, both Corps leaders and tactical unit leaders,” he added. “I communicate with them via secure communications so we’re aware of how they’re nesting or working through issues associated with the mission. I share the situation report that I send to my superiors in the Army training and education arm with the senior leaders of the Corps of Engineers. They share theirs as well. I’m receiving the chief of engineers’ comments to his own people and situation reports to the chief of staff of the Army. The senior leadership has a single operational picture. Frequently we require the chief of engineers or the deputy chief to represent the regiment in meetings at the Pentagon that I’m not invited to.”

Fort Leonard Wood also trains geospatial cadres for the Army and maintains a tight relationship with the Army Geospatial Center, which is a major subordinate command under USACE. Geospatial specialists interact with the Army staff and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency in Washington, D.C. Uniformed

U.S. Army photo by Melissa K. Buckley

“The prime power battalion [the 249th Engineer Battalion (Prime Power)] is the only uniformed unit that falls under the Corps of Engineers directly,” DeLuca explained. “There are prime power specialists embedded in units throughout the Army as well.”

The relationship between USACE and the uniformed side of the Engineer Regiment is defined by USACE’s support of combatant commands worldwide and by the training both uniformed and civilian USACE people receive at USAES. Though the school is primarily for uniformed engineers, the training they receive facilitates work with USACE civilians and frequently future roles within USACE itself.

“Senior NCOs [noncommissioned officers] and officers will serve in roles in the field Army, but they’ll also transition to the Corps in certain leadership roles,” DeLuca said. “We have captains that have served in various units who will often transition to the Corps as project managers. Majors will do the same, sometimes becoming area engineers. We also have lieutenant colonel and colonel district commanders who come through the Engineer School before taking command.”

Each commander headed for a USACE district receives training in USAES’ pre-command course and further instruction three

origijfdjjdnal.tif SERVING THE NATION AND THE ARMED FORCES

49

PREVENT field specialists produce digital data from terrain analyses so that the Army can target and mission plan. The geospatial specialists, uniformed and civilian, also support emergency management, which is executed by USACE. DeLuca routinely interacts with USACE’s division commanders nationally and works to tie local USACE district professional development and training activities to various evolutions at his post.

“We have an arrangement here at Fort Leonard Wood, for example, where the [USACE] Emerging Leader Program from the Kansas City District sends people here and they spend a couple days seeing what uniformed engineers do, what their missions are, how they’re trained. The Corps’ civilian engineers then have a much better understanding when they’re embedded with a unit in a war zone or forward-deployed area of how to provide support.

“There are exchanges like that around the country. As a brigade and battalion commander, I would rotate my junior officers out to the districts to experience a part of the Army Engineer Regiment that they didn’t normally get to see until they were captains or, more often, at the major or lieutenant colonel level.

The sharing of information is higher than I’ve ever seen it.”

Information sharing takes on another dimension at Fort Leonard Wood with the annual ENFORCE conference. The conference brings together all senior engineer leaders, civilian and military, to participate in a variety of working groups.

USACE has its own set of meetings during the conference and merges with the larger group to discuss threats, response to threats (man-made and natural), and global strategy. DeLuca pointed out that the USACE’s global engagement overseas means that it uses ENFORCE and other information exchanges as a way to assess the work done by troop labor versus work done by contractors in support of combatant commanders.

The conference incorporates other ceremonial and participatory aspects, including the Memorial Wall for Fallen Engineers, Best Sapper competition, a ball, and various awards. Industry is also on hand to display its latest equipment and software offerings to the Army and USACE. The nature of the education and training engineers receive at USAES has changed significantly in the past few years, and new emphases have been factored in this year, according to DeLuca.

Oversight and supervision training are more important than ever given both the more expeditionary footing on which the Army will find itself in the future and the need to work with a variety of actors in battlefield and civil works scenarios.

“The reason is, we are going to become an Army that is based almost entirely in the United States in a couple years,” he said.

“We’ll have few combat forces deployed in overseas bases. That means we’re out of the business of reinforcing a theater or potential theater of war that has pre-positioned forces, equipment, supplies, developed airports, and ports of entry. So in a year or two, wherever we deploy, the first thing we’re going to have to do is open the lodgement, open a port or a beachhead, or an airport to receive large quantities of military combat and supply cargo very rapidly. That’s an engineering-intensive role that requires a

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limited number of engineers initially on the ground executing every kind of engineering there is.”

Though there will be fewer permanent overseas installations, the military will still need intermediate staging areas to shorten the distance to the fight and to aid in opening lodgements as quickly as possible. As in the past in far-flung places from the Philippines to Vietnam, USACE will play a pivotal role in preparing such staging areas.

“Kuwait is still an intermediate staging base,” DeLuca explained. “We used it prior to the invasion of Iraq. All the work that was going on there prior to the invasion was managed by the Corps of Engineers. In potential theaters of war, there are not just combat actions that the Corps responds to. There’s also what we call ‘setting the theater’ activities that go forward in peacetime. There may be airfields developed and we may add fuel storage to them in certain situations. We do that in partnership with the host nation for their benefit and ours. We might increase the amount of taxiway space and parking so we can position more aircraft. Those sorts of activities are happening all the time and the Corps is involved with them every day.”

The Obama administration’s strategic “pivot” to the Pacific announced in early 2012 is already sending ripples through the Army Engineer Regiment with discussion of the potential intermittent use of previously developed facilities like Clark Air Base in the Philippines and Udorn Royal Thai Air Force Base in Thailand.

The need to re-establish strategic military staging areas ties in with the need to refurbish American civil works infrastructure for the uniformed and civilian members of the Engineer Regiment. Both must accomplish these missions with greater consciousness of cost and resource efficiency as well as the need to work with multiple partners, DeLuca stated.

“If you’re going to emphasize project management and [best] business practice, which the Corps of Engineers is committed to, the art of managing expectations and divergent interests is key.

Developing your negotiating skills with people that don’t have to listen to you or managing things that have not traditionally been seen as uniformed Army tasks are a couple of new challenges.

“Even in the Corps of Engineers there was a lot of decisionmaking based on old programmatic practices. They no longer suffice. In today’s war zones, we are trying to get the cooperation of a huge proportion of the population, with host-nation governments and other factions. The business of negotiating requirements and solutions is critical and we’re embedding practical exercises and scenarios into the curriculum for our Soldiers. This has to become part of the education of young engineers. All construction is risk management – who is assuming risk and who is being rewarded for the assumption of that risk. Given all the stakeholders in any project, whether civil works, military construction, or a project supporting another federal agency or outside client, the process of developing a mutually agreed plan and executing is a central skill that 10 or 15 years ago would not have been as highly valued by the Army or the Corps of Engineers.”

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The Civil Works Challenge USACE undertakes transformation to meet 21st century water-resource demands.

By Jan Tegler

T

he U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) faces a massive challenge: America’s aging water resources infrastructure is deteriorating rapidly.

Tasked with operating, maintaining, planning, and constructing a significant portion of that infrastructure under the banner of Civil Works, USACE is coming to grips with the difficulties that lie ahead in the execution of one of its core missions.

The bottom line, according to USACE Director of Civil Works Steven L. Stockton, is that USACE needs to start making tough decisions about its vital water resources assets – what to recapitalize, what to repurpose, and what is no longer serving any useful purpose and therefore should be divested.

Complicating the decision-making process is the certainty that solutions must take into account what is likely to be a protracted period of fiscal austerity for the nation’s prime provider of public engineering services.

“We’ve invested about a quarter-trillion dollars over the last century in water resources infrastructure,” Stockton explained.

“That’s locks and dams and levees, those kinds of things. We have about a $60 billion backlog of authorized projects, but we only get about $2 billion every year to actually chip away at that backlog. It’s just not enough federal resources to meet the needs that are out there and to do the things people expect us to do.

“What we’re dealing with is: ‘How do we continue to operate, maintain, and rehab what we own, as well as meeting new water resources challenges?’ That’s the Civil Works challenge.”

To address the situation, USACE has spent more than a year crafting a transformation plan aimed at improving the management of the nation’s water resources infrastructure and making investments for the future. Transformation is based on four pillars – managing the water resources infrastructure portfolio; planning modernization; enhancing product and service delivery methods; and transforming the Civil Works budget to better address America’s water resources needs.

Planning Modernization

Transformation begins with planning modernization, said Stockton. Currently, USACE has a very rigorous planning process that considers the engineering feasibility of solving water resources problems, the environmental acceptability of a given project, and its economic viability. Over the last two decades,

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planning studies have become excessive and complex because of litigation associated with USACE efforts – whether deepening a channel or building a dam. Answering those three questions has led to bloated tomes, which are years in the making.

“Unfortunately, some of our studies could be poster children for enormously expensive undertakings,” Stockton said frankly.

“Our Savannah Harbor Expansion Project to deepen the channel there by about 5 feet has taken more than 16 years and $40 million – just to do a study. That produces a report that’s about 3 feet wide. So we’ve really tried to rethink how we make investment recommendations to the administration and Congress and how to get back to the basics – how to make good, solid investment recommendations with rigorous analysis without trying to answer every foreseeable question before trying to make an investment decision.”

Getting back to basics has led Stockton and the architects of the transformation plan to emphasize execution, accountability, and improvement of the organizational and operational model regionally and nationally to ensure consistent quality in planning. USACE planners will improve their capabilities via mandatory training and professional certification. Updated planning processes and planning guidance will allow management to streamline the development of projects, putting a premium on performance and the timely delivery of quality solutions to water resources needs.

To more clearly illustrate the goals of planning modernization and provide simplified guidance, the transformation plan applies a metric known as the “3-by-3-by-3 rule.”

“Three years is our stretch goal for the completion of projects studies,” Stockton stressed. “Three years, $3 million dollars, and three levels of vertical coordination are part of the ‘3-by-3-by-3 rule.’ You can add to that the recommendation that you put your report in a binder less than 3 inches thick.

“A lot of the problems we have are created because we have a very complicated set of principles, guidelines, policies, and rules that we have to adhere to, as well as the National Environmental Policy Act. Together with the potential for litigation, those considerations have convoluted our process. We’re trying to refocus and do what’s necessary without going overboard. When you produce a report that’s 3 feet thick, no one reads it. And a lot of the data and information gathered is compiled simply as a preventative measure to address potential litigation.”

SHAPE

The dredge Brunswick performs maintenance dredging in the Savannah Harbor, Savannah, Ga. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Savannah District oversees maintenance of the harbor.

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers photo by Billy Birdwell

Accordingly, the main report associated with any feasibility study will be targeted for encapsulation in 100 pages or fewer.

Any schedule or budget exceeding these guidelines will require USACE Headquarters approval. Finally, a thorough review of the total number of studies in USACE’s planning portfolio will be completed to help focus available resources on the most viable studies.

Transforming the Civil Works Budget

“Planning is the first pillar of transformation and the second is how we budget,” said Stockton.

Transforming USACE’s budgeting process for meeting water resources demands is a work of reconciliation with a central question. How will USACE square a budget affected by decreased funding with the need to address critically aged and deteriorating infrastructure?

Focused on the construction, operation, maintenance, repair, and replacement of major navigation, flood risk management,

and hydropower infrastructure, as well as on environmental mitigation and restoration of natural resources with infrastructure, USACE’s budget is already under severe strain. At stake is USACE’s ability to fully ensure the safety of the infrastructure, maintain it to meet performance goals, and efficiently provide the economic and environmental benefits for which projects were originally designed and constructed.

Answering that central question dictates that USACE makes tough decisions about water resources infrastructure and what it can afford going forward. Likely funding scenarios also mean that the organization will have to look for new avenues of investment.

To address this, the transformation plan calls for a new budget approach that establishes a systems-based, watershed approach to decision-making, as well as consideration of alternative financing vehicles. The plan acknowledges that effective use of funding will not be up to USACE alone. It will require input from and collaboration with stakeholders and other interested parties.

“Since we’re more in control of the budgeting process, we’re going to fund fewer projects at capability to complete them

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SHAPE

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Nashville District work crews from the Cumberland River Operations Center unwater Barkley Lock on the Cumberland River, near Kuttawa, Ky., to perform scheduled inspection and major maintenance repairs Aug. 12, 2011. The navigation lock is located on the left bank of the main dam structure and was opened to navigation in July 1964. It is 800 feet long and 110 feet wide. The gravity filland-empty system exchanges 37,500,000 gallons of water per lockage. The lock is operated 24 hours per day.

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made? What’s the state doing? What projects are NGOs [nongovernmental organizations] implementing?

“We’re trying to be smarter in recognizing the needs in a watershed and find context, not just looking at one project with blinders on.”

Modernizing Management of the Water Resources Infrastructure Portfolio

Comprised of dams, locks, levees, hydroelectric power plants, and much more, the majority of USACE’s water resources infrastructure portfolio is more than five decades old. This critical infrastructure enables efficient transportation of goods and commodities; reduces risk to communities from floods, hurricanes, and droughts; provides clean, renewable hydroelectric power to homes and industry; restores significant aquatic ecosystems; and effectively supports millions of water-based recreation visits each year.

The simple fact is that much of the portfolio needs significant investment to remain viable and to meet future demands. The transformation plan also acknowledges that some infrastructure is no longer viable and should be divested or repurposed. To

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers photo by Mark Rankin

quicker so they can start delivering their output on a more efficient schedule,” Stockton emphasized. “But that also has implications. If we’re trying to do them quicker and cheaper at full capability, and if you assume the amount of money you have to work with is fixed, you’re going to be doing fewer of those kinds of projects.

“We’re trying to shape the budget so it aligns with national priorities. It’s a performance-based budget so there are metrics and outputs in terms of benefit/cost ratios or similar metrics for other business lines. We have to have metrics that show if an investment is made what benefits will accrue.”

In tandem with the goal of ensuring that USACE’s budget supports projects that address national priorities is the objective of funding projects that make sense within the context of any watershed.

“Our USACE program has been accused of being nothing more than a collection of projects, which is true,” Stockton admitted. “So we’re trying to ensure that if we’re making a budget recommendation for a project within a watershed that we have a common operating picture of what else is going on in that watershed. What other federal agency investments are being

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SHAPE

properly evaluate what should be kept, what should be stood down, and where there are opportunities to deliver services with new approaches, USACE will take four steps. It will: • develop reliable methods of assessing the current value and levels of service of its infrastructure systems to determine where priority investments need to be applied; • emphasize the interdependence and interrelationship of assets within a watershed or system to provide reliable, resilient, and adaptable infrastructure systems that deliver the required levels of service; • evaluate assets in terms of their value to the nation; and • systematically evaluate infrastructure based on current performance in meeting original authorized project purposes, and how demands within the watershed or system have evolved and changed over time.

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“The first piece of our strategy is asset management based,” Stockton explained. “Know what you’ve got and know what condition it’s in. For every dollar you invest, you try to buy down risk – performance risk such as unscheduled outages of hydropower plants or locks, etc. We’ve spent a lot of energy developing an asset management program to do operational condition assessments and to do a smarter job of taking the scarce dollars we do get and make smarter investments, reducing risk as much as possible.

“An example of that is instead of doing rehabilitation on one lock and dam at a time, it’s a smarter investment if you look at the criticality of certain components like gates. Maybe it makes more sense to replace all the lock gates at six locks and dams instead of completely rehabbing one lock and dam for the same amount of money.

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers photo by George Stringham

Steve Hobbs, structural engineer for the USACE St. Louis District and Level I rope access technician, prepares to inspect the top chords of the railroad truss at the Holston Army Ammunition Plant in Tennessee. The St. Louis District employs this unique technique to conduct inspections of USACE bridges, dams, and other structures as well as those of other federal agencies.

SHAPE “The other piece of the strategy deals with the fact that most of our infrastructure was built during the last century and it’s getting old. Some of our locks are over 100 years old. The median age of our dams is about 60 years. So we need to start making decisions toward the end of the life cycle of infrastructure on what to keep, what to recapitalize, and what is no longer serving any useful purpose. Or perhaps things have changed over the last hundred years and maybe we need to repurpose a project that was originally designed for navigation but recreation or water supply has a higher priority.”

Making decisions concerning critical infrastructure often comes down to identifying which assets are most at risk, Stockton said.

“That’s how we set priorities as with our dam safety major modification program. We’ve gone in and had a very rigorous approach to looking at projects and prioritizing them. We call it Dam Safety Action Classification. We’ve assigned them different categories based on the risks that they pose. The risk is really two components. One is the probability of failure of the project or its individual components, but also the consequences if it were to fail.

“For instance, if you had a levee fail and you flooded agricultural land, that would be relatively low risk even though there was a high probability of failing. If it did fail, the consequences would be pretty minimal. We have a rigorous approach to setting priorities for dams and levees. We’ve done the same thing for the inland navigation system and our hydropower plants.”

Finally, USACE recognizes that there likely will not be enough federal dollars for USACE to meet all of its Civil Works responsibilities. According to Stockton, the organization is examining public-private partnerships, leases, and divestiture of projects.

Other options include removing unnecessary administrative or regulatory obstacles and streamlining procedures for non-federal parties to move forward on their own with important water resources activities, while ensuring federal interests are maintained.

Available technical assistance programs will be utilized to further enable non-federal partners to solve complex project and system challenges.

“Really, we’re looking at ways to perhaps utilize other people’s money to accomplish our mission. That’s politically charged and complicated but necessary.”

Enhancing Product and Service Delivery Methods

The final pillar of transformation acknowledges another shortcoming in USACE’s performance. The organization must improve the manner in which it delivers water resources infrastructure. USACE must produce better consistency in the design of its products, enhance technical competence, and improve its ability to meet or exceed customer expectations.

“We’re focused on ensuring we have the most efficient, costeffective, and timely delivery of projects, programs, and activities.

We’re focused on how we improve quality, how we link technical capability to desired levels of service, retain expertise and core competencies, reduce risk, and ensure consistency throughout this large decentralized organization.”

Stockton said the organization has closely examined how it delivers products and services. For instance, engineering design and construction is currently done at the district level. The transformation plan looks to encourage a sharing of capabilities to deliver products and services at the regional level. The objective is that service delivery methods are consolidated and viewed with an enterprise-wide perspective nationally.

“What are the things we need to be world class at and have more of an enterprise approach to?” Stockton asked. “For our 702 dams, we’ve examined Dam Safety Production Centers.

This is a complicated, critical, very expensive business, and we can’t have every one of the 38 CONUS [continental United States] districts be managing these if they’re only doing it once every 25 years. You just can’t maintain the skills and expertise you need. So we’re going to have seven of these centers – one in each of the seven CONUS divisions – to do dam safety major modifications.

“In the area of inland navigation design, we’re going to have two centers handling that for the nation, since most of those are within the Lakes and Rivers Division and the Mississippi Valley Division. The third area is deep-draft navigation economics. It’s a very specialized area. Not many other people do it and to get consistency we’re only going to do that in one place. The reason is it’s pretty easy when you’re doing bulk cargo because it typically goes from point A to point B. But when you’re dealing with containerized cargo it’s much more complicated. What depth of channel do you need? It really depends on what they’re dropping off and what they’re picking up.”

Cultural Change

With the process of transformation little more than a year old, Stockton knows USACE has a long way to go to implement the changes the plan requires. USACE’s senior leadership has “bought in” to transformation. The next phase is to get the word out to USACE Civil Works personnel and to continue refining the plan.

“We’re doing a lot of that with our planning pilots, changing our budget guidance, and we’ve actually implemented some of these methods of delivery,” Stockton said. “The infrastructure strategy is probably the most immature at this point. A lot of this just amounts to doing a lot of missionary work, meeting with all of the different divisions and districts and creating some incentives for these entities to participate in the transformation initiative.

“This is more of a campaign than an individual battle. The cultural changes are probably the most difficult to complete. Getting people to take some risks and do things differently is going to be tough. Some things won’t be favorable to some of the people impacted. I think we’re resolved to creating forcing functions so that people are incentivized to comply. The planning piece is a good example. People must be 3-by-3-by-3 compliant or they have to seek a waiver and they don’t get money unless they show us what they’re going to do and how. We have to get everyone involved in the Civil Works challenge.”

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THE NATION’S ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERS

By Craig Collins

I

From left, Scott D. Cotner, Kevin Florence, and James Graham inspect electrical equipment while performing a districtwide assessment at the Cordell Hull Dam Switchyard in Carthage, Tenn., March 6, 2012. Cotner is the senior electrical engineer and Florence is an electrical engineer, both with the Hydroelectric Design Center (HDC) in Portland, Ore., and Graham is the senior electrical engineer with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) Nashville District Engineering Design Group. The HDC is the USACE national center of excellence for hydroelectric and large pumping plant engineering services. Hydroelectricity is one of many renewable energy sources.

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U.S. Army photo by Leon Roberts

t’s no exaggeration: The U.S. Corps of Engineers’ (USACE) work in the United States, and in support of military installations and other international customers around the world, comprises one of the nation’s largest federal environmental missions. USACE’s Environmental Community of Practice (CoP) includes professionals specializing in virtually every conceivable aspect of environmental work: restoration and resource management; regulatory compliance; conservation; pollution prevention, cleanup, and response; contracting; sustainable development and construction; and much more.

In its Civil Works mission, as steward of nearly 12 million acres of public lands and waters in 43 states, USACE has taken a balanced view toward the development of the nation’s water resources. It develops and implements sustainable solutions by applying its Environmental Operating Principles, first

SHAPE devised in 2002 and refreshed in 2012, to encompass the full range of its environmental activities.

While varied, USACE’s environmental work breaks down into four main categories: • Ecosystem restoration. USACE leads several of the largest environmental restoration projects in the world, including the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan, the Louisiana Coastal Area, the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, and the Missouri River Recovery Plan. For smaller-scale restoration projects, USACE has helped to pioneer the systemwide “watershed” approach to problem-solving and management.

• Waterway regulation and resource management. USACE’s Regulatory Program works to ensure no net loss of the nation’s wetlands, while issuing about 90,000 development permits annually.

On the 12 million acres under its own stewardship, USACE uses Environmental Management Systems to reduce waste and achieve energy efficiency.

• Cleanup and protection. USACE engineers design, manage, and carry out numerous cleanup and protection activities at federal sites contaminated with hazardous, toxic, or radioactive waste; over the years, it has developed significant expertise in the cleanup of discarded military munitions, unexploded ordnance, and chemical warfare materiel. USACE’s cleanup expertise supports the Department of Defense’s (DoD) 2005 Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) initiative, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Superfund, Brownfields, and Urban Waters programs.

• Building sustainable facilities. With its design criteria, waste-diversion techniques, and applied research and expertise from its Center for the Advancement of Sustainability Innovations, USACE designs sustainable communities and facilities for the DoD. In fiscal year 2011, USACE executed about $1.9 billion in environmental cleanup and compliance work and program management, and in FY 2012, the figure stood at $1.6 billion.

The U.S. ARMY CorpS of Engineers Environmental Operating Principles, v. 2.0 In 2002 – though its projects had long demonstrated awareness of the interdependence between the economic value of the nation’s water resources, their environmental health, and national security – USACE articulated the seven Environmental Operating Principles that continue to guide its work.

A decade later, while these principles have not changed, USACE’s environmental mission has become more complex. The effects of global climate change, a strengthening trend toward publicprivate partnerships and solutions, an energy market that emphasizes both reduction and renewable resources, and the proliferation of “green” professions are transforming environmental work – mostly for the better, said Christine Altendorf, Ph.D., chief of USACE’s Environmental Division.

USACE wanted its Environmental Operating Principles to encompass these changes. “We wanted to make sure we’re capturing many of the things we spend a lot of time talking about – for example, sustainability is a big word right now – while making sure we mention the full range of our work, from civil works, military programs, and research and development,” Altendorf said.

The motivation behind the new, pithier Environmental Operating Principles, Altendorf said, is not to alter course; it’s more about renewing USACE’s environmental vows.

“Ten years later, our workforce is made up of many new and different people,” she said. “And even though the intent is to use these Environmental Operating Principles in everything we do, we want to make sure our people don’t lose sight of that. It’s really about saying: OK, it’s time to remind people what we stand for.”

USACE’s Environmental Operating Principles, unveiled in 2012, are to: 1. Foster sustainability as a way of life throughout the organization.

2. Proactively consider environmental consequences of all USACE activities and act accordingly.

3. Create mutually supporting economic and environmentally sustainable solutions.

4. Continue to meet its corporate responsibility and accountability under the law for activities undertaken by USACE, which may impact human and natural environments.

5. Consider the environment in employing a risk management and systems approach throughout the life cycles of projects and programs.

6. Leverage scientific, economic, and social knowledge to understand the environmental context and effects of USACE actions in a collaborative manner.

7. Employ an open, transparent process that respects views of individuals and groups interested in USACE activities.

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Visitors bird-watch at Quarry Pond in Michigan following a dedication ceremony Oct. 23, 2010, to mark the Gibraltar Bay Unit’s entrance into the Detroit River International Wildlife Refuge. The former Nike missile site was cleaned up by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) as part of the Formerly Used Defense Site program. It was added to the Wildlife Refuge once USACE’s investigation concluded that no human or ecological risks existed.

Photo by Karen Skrocki; Grosse Ile Nature and Land Conservancy

Staying Customer Focused

USACE’s versatility in performing these varied activities at its own sites, and for the DoD and other customers, is enabled partly because of the way the Environmental CoP has evolved – and continues to evolve. No longer contained within the bureaucratic label of the Environmental Division, the CoP is a “matrix” organization; experts within dozens of specialties such as coastal zone management, green procurement, radioactive waste, environmental legislation, pollution prevention, and hydrology are assigned to projects as their talents are needed, often integrating people from Civil Works, military, and reimbursable programs. The scope, size, and structure of the Environmental CoP are constantly changing according to what USACE and its customers need.

Christine Altendorf, Ph.D., chief of USACE’s Environmental Division, offers this example of the CoP’s matrix structure: “Say, for example, you have to form a team to build barracks at an installation and the only site available is on an old firing range near a historic Indian burial site. The environmental portion of the team would be composed of munitions experts, safety staff, NEPA [National Environmental Policy Act] experts, and cultural resource specialists. The design of the facility would

require sustainability and energy expertise to obtain a LEED® Silver rating. You would look within the USACE organization to find the professionals whose expertise you need, and then you would pull them together to form your team. They would have different supervisors, but they all bring their various skills to the table to complete the project.”

Because much of the environmental work done by USACE is performed on a reimbursable basis, the applied expertise creates opportunities for improved customer relations, which are typically performed through a project manager.

Because of USACE’s matrix structure, Altendorf explained, this project manager may not be the direct supervisor of some of the experts at work on the project, a circumstance that has the potential to hinder information flow if lines of communication aren’t open.

Communicating in a way that enables project managers to respond to public concerns and inquiries is a top priority for Altendorf, who became chief in March 2012. “It’s all about relationships,” she said, “so that when something’s not working properly, it’s communicated, gets immediate attention, and can be fixed quickly … internally, there are many checks and balances set up to make sure project managers get the support they need, even though they may not be the direct supervisor.”

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U.S. Army Corps of Engineers photo by Jenn Miller

A major milestone for the Tamiami Trail Bridge Modifications Project was reached July 13, 2012, as the first concrete pour on the bridge deck was completed. The purpose of the project is to improve water flow within the Everglades National Park.

One of USACE’s largest customers, of course, is the Army: More than 6,000 USACE environmental professionals are at work worldwide to help the Army meet its environmental mission.

The unique resources within USACE’s Environmental and Munitions Center of Expertise, Munitions Design Centers, and laboratories help the Army to respond to existing and new environmental challenges.

USACE’s Engineering and Support Center in Huntsville, Ala., for instance, continues to refine and implement the Army Metering Program, creating an advanced energy data network that will help the Army meet its ambitious energy efficiency and management goals.

USACE maintains $2 billion annually in environmental cleanup and compliance contract capacity to service the Army’s environmental projects. According to Altendorf, the work USACE does at its Civil

Works sites, and for customers such as the EPA or the Department of Energy, helps sharpen its expertise and makes it better able to serve the Army’s environmental and energy initiatives. Applying lessons learned and skill sets among its different customers provides a kind of cross-fertilization, with one set of projects reinforcing another.

The Army and other customers know there are some things for which they will turn to USACE first – for example leading planned chemical warfare materiels responses – but Altendorf nevertheless wants to maintain a focus on the organization’s customers. “A lot of it is executing – doing really good work. We have excellent technical people. But we also want to focus on our relationships with our customers, whether [it is] the Army or other federal agencies. We want to let them know, through every interaction, that we want to continue to be the agency of choice for this kind of work.”

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Interagency and International Services: Carrying out the Nation’s Work Abroad

By J.R. Wilson

W

hile the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) is best known to most Americans for its domestic waterworks and disaster relief efforts, it has always had a primary mission to support the U.S. Army and the nation around the globe. A significant part of that is providing technical assistance overseas on behalf, and at the invitation, of non-Department of Defense (DoD) federal agencies, international organizations, and foreign governments through Interagency and International Services (IIS).

Total IIS services to more than 70 federal customers alone have exceeded $2 billion per annum in recent years, plus a roughly equivalent amount on DoD international projects – most funded on a reimbursable basis. Those services include engineering and construction, environmental restoration and management, research and development (R&D) assistance, water- and land-related natural resource management, and relief and recovery work.

“The nation principally is represented by State [Department] and USAID [U.S. Agency for International Development], so those are our chief clients in the international domain,” IIS Chief Jim Balocki said. “The people we send downrange are linked into centers of expertise. So if they go in to help in one area but find another problem on which they are not experts, we maintain a virtual capability to provide them with the technical expertise they need with just a phone call.

“We also work with the Millennium Challenge Corporation, which does development work overseas, and are now engaging with the World Bank on a limited basis in some areas. That is at the behest and clearance of state and synchronized as part of our nation’s national security and diplomatic strategy. If another agency had a project overseas and needed support in our core competencies, we also would and could partner with them as part of a ‘whole of government’ effort.”

The nations in and with which IIS works, as well as the requesting agencies, range from habitual relationships on an annual basis to once-in-a-decade events. Those include some of the nation’s

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oldest and closest allies, as well as some with a complicated past, present, and future, such as Vietnam, Russia, and China.

Vietnam involves an international effort to oversee development of the lower Mekong River and multiple requests through the State Department for USACE to provide technical modeling and other consultations. At the same time, IIS provided support to the government of New Zealand after an earthquake that affected the capital city of Christchurch. According to Balocki, there is not a standing mission to respond whenever an earthquake hits, but New Zealand became a one-off response when the government requested post-quake technical help on understanding structural stability.

“We send teams into a country to provide a technical assessment of the problem or do workshops with host-nation organizations and local authorities, all coordinated with our State Department or USAID partners to meet a particular requirement,” IIS Deputy Chief Lindy Wolner said. “We do dozens of those around the world each year. For example, we currently are working with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation on a flood mitigation problem in Australia, providing technical expertise to support Australia’s request.

“Another country where a growing relationship has developed in the past 10 years or so is China, which is developing at a very rapid pace and has a huge infrastructure and challenge regarding water resources. Through our Civil Works Program, we have a lot of experience in those areas in the U.S., so there is benefit to both sides in a technical exchange. They are developing at a pace and size we cannot imagine, but we have a lot of expertise in transboundary issues with Canada and the development of remote resources.”

USACE also has been involved with post-Soviet Russia, primarily with respect to the U.S.-Russia chemical demilitarization effort and technology challenges the United States overcame in its own demilitarization program. That applies even more broadly with former members of the Soviet Bloc, many now members

SHAPE

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers photo by Carol E. Davis

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Europe District engineers and construction control representatives give Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Dorko (second from left), USACE deputy commanding general of Military and International Operations, and Tim Hess (right), director of USACE’s International and Interagency Support Team, a tour of the U.S. Army Europe Mission Control Center construction project on the Wiesbaden Army Airfield, in Germany, Oct. 31, 2011.

of NATO, and some now-independent Soviet republics.

Every relationship USACE develops overseas comes with its own special needs.

“Each case is unique. New Zealand, for example, clearly was a one-way dialogue.

We really don’t use that as a grading criterion – we look at where we can add value, provide solutions, and be able to help develop and enable, within our core competencies,” Balocki said.

“I would describe the relationship with China as being as purely apolitical as it can get, based entirely on technical exchange and mutual benefit to learning about the practices and challenges for both parties. Some of those are similar to what we did in developing the U.S. West in the past century, so we have a body of lessons learned. But they also have experience in areas we have not seen. So it

all is sort of separate from military considerations between the two nations – although still related.”

Wolner said outreach programs to former Soviet Bloc nations in both Central Asia and Eastern Europe began shortly after the end of the Cold War, helping with development of infrastructure as well as civil and military training. Overall, when, where, and how USACE responds with an IIS effort is based on need and invitation, without respect to other government-to-government relations.

“The Corps has value in different eras and changes in the political landscape, but we bring a technological expertise related to engineering, environment, [and] water resources that every nation needs, along with defense, diplomacy, and development, which is true now and in the past,” he continued. “Those are the kinds of

technology capabilities other nations are seeking and we have the ability to provide through different authorities and partnerships, such as USAID. “For some of the programs in developing countries, capacity development is a principal driver. Doing small projects in places like Bangladesh and Southeast Asia are expensive, given the long distances involved, so it makes sense to reach out to local capabilities and then provide training to those to build schools or medical facilities, etc. The intent is to build capacity in that community for that project, not just come in with all our horsepower and do it ourselves.”

Building partner capacity has become a key element of U.S. foreign and military policy and, according to Balocki, a side benefit of the work USACE does through IIS. In part, that is accomplished through the employment of host-nation workers to the extent feasible.

“It depends first on what kind of technical capabilities the local government and workforce have – are they able to do things at the high end, technically, such as computer-controlled design and drawing, or is it simple manual labor? We will tailor the requirements of the work we do based on the needs of a particular project,” he said, adding that also can be complicated by language and local, often tribal, conflicts.

“For example, one of the challenges we have in Afghanistan is security and our ability to have U.S. quality assurance reps see that materials and construction specs are in accordance with the contract. That is hampered by the need to move them around in armored vehicles and with guards. A solution was to hire Afghan university graduates, who could learn our methods, then freely move around the country speaking local dialects with local contractors without interpreters. So it is a case of employing local nationals to implement appropriate practices and procedures.”

Occasionally, as in the Chinese water resources effort, USACE may learn as well as teach. But in all cases, the support provided is not to help build another nation’s army or police, but to help the civilian population as part of the effort

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SHAPE to stabilize nations and regions – and thereby enhance U.S. security at home and abroad.

“Is it quid pro quo? No, not in every instance. We participate in technology conferences where there are exchanges of papers and information,” Balocki said, adding that the effort in Afghanistan to develop water resources is more typical.

“We put some folks on the ground there to work with the Ministry of Water and Energy for a number of months or a year to help understand the challenges and develop programs to enhance water security, provide irrigation and hydropower.

“One might think, at the headwaters of the Hindu Kush [region], Afghanistan would be a water-rich nation, but it is not and faces a number of challenges. Our folks who deal in that environment, with the scarcity, develop a sustainable solution, which also pays back to us. So it is not a direct exchange where a technical person there shares with us, but learning challenges and solution sets by simply being there. The Afghans have been doing things for centuries that we have found interesting and have helped us improve our own capabilities.”

USACE is a military-led organization with a civilian technology workforce, which Wolner said is a power combination in dealing with the facilities, infrastructure, environment, and problems all nations face. While some of those are small projects, they combine to produce multiple benefits, both to host nations’ abilities to manage their own disasters or infrastructure facilities in the future and to work on common problems with longterm benefits.

“The Corps of Engineers, by virtue of unique authorities, works in the international environment where the technology connection we can make augments the diplomatic and military connections our nation makes. That makes the Corps uniquely positioned as a national security resource, with access and innovative small footprint solutions to needs, which is pretty powerful. And, frankly, the nation benefits from having an arm that can do internationally what other agencies of the federal government may not be able

Solar-powered streetlights have boosted commerce in busy business districts in downtown Kabul, Afghanistan, where USACE installed them late last year. In addition to improving commerce and security, the streetlights are improving residents’ perception of their city as well.

Since the lights were installed, more families walk along the street and shop at night, giving the area a busy, bustling atmosphere.

to accomplish,” Balocki said, but emphasized that is not done independently.

“At the end of the day, we respond to the guy who is paying the bills. We may or may not be privy to exchanges between our military and diplomatic colleagues.

We will tell them what is technically possible or the cost if a change is suggested, but what those may be is up to the guy operating in that space. IIS also allows leaders of foreign governments, whether ministers of defense or interior or public works, to see our Soldiers and key leaders as citizen Soldiers, drawn from the fabric of our society and leading areas of social development, things that lead to good

government and a strong national fiber, as opposed to just being warriors.”

Even so, he added, there remains one major misconception about USACE: That it is primarily a design, engineering, and construction organization.

“In fact, that is only one element of all we do. We have a rich and robust R&D capability, for example, in some cases with the nation’s top experts on some of the technologies we are developing,” Balocki concluded. “Which makes the Corps an asset the nation owns that can be deployed anywhere on Earth to do the nation’s work or support others who may need our capabilities.”

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SHAPE

USACE Focuses on Recovery from 2011 Midwest Flooding

By Charles Dervarics

T

hanks to quick action and well-laid operational plans, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) and its many local, state, and federal partners helped avoid catastrophic damage to life and property in the recordsetting Midwest floods of 2011. But cleanup and repairs from the flooding continued in earnest throughout 2012 as USACE worked to address damages and vulnerabilities identified on various components of the Mississippi River and Tributaries (MR&T) and Missouri River flood risk reduction systems.

“In past two years, we’ve experienced historic Mississippi River extremes, going from highest water level in history in 2011 to the lowest water level in history in 2012,” said Scott Whitney, regional flood risk manager for the USACE Mississippi Valley Division (MVD). “For comparable flood levels, you had to look back to 1973 and 1927 and from a drought perspective 1988 or way back to the 1930s Dust Bowl.”

With this wide variation in weather patterns, one essential requirement for USACE is to employ a multilayered strategy to assess flood problems, develop short- and long-term solutions, and convey information to the public in a timely way. This was especially important across the 35,000-square-mile Lower Mississippi River floodplain, where a comprehensive system of levees, channels, floodways, and tributary reservoirs were designed to safely convey the waters of the mighty Mississippi. “Our primary goal from a flood risk management perspective is to provide riskinformed protection for the lives and livelihoods of our citizens and industry,” Whitney said.

Battling the Mississippi River

Caused by snowmelt and record storms in spring 2011, the flooding across the midwestern United States was particularly acute in the Mississippi River basin. With 3,800 miles of levees, embankments, and floodwalls from Cape Girardeau, Mo., to Venice, La., alone, the 2011 flood tested the system like none before, Whitney said. Yet despite damage in the region, no mainline MR&T levees failed and they are credited with preventing more than $230 billion in damage in 2011 – $612 billion in damage has been prevented since the early 1930s. With a current investment of nearly $14 billion, that is roughly a $44 return on every $1 invested. Since its inception in 1928, the MR&T project has evolved into one of the largest, most comprehensive, and most successful flood risk reduction systems in the world.

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In planning its immediate response to the disaster, he said, USACE organized Operation Watershed, focusing on three core endeavors during the flood period: •C urrent ops – an emergency operations unit dealt with current flood-fight events in real time, helping to safely pass the flood waters while also working closely to assist and inform local and state officials with appropriate flood-response actions necessary to ensure the safety and security of human lives, homes, cities, and businesses; •F uture ops – a futures unit looked ahead 24 to 48 hours for near-term threats or consequences as floodwaters continued down the river toward New Orleans, La.; and •R ecovery ops – a recovery unit planned for damage assessments, post-flood evaluations, interagency collaboration, and construction repairs.

“Experience has shown effective and timely response to and recovery from such a natural disaster requires an aggressive and a comprehensive approach involving experienced professionals and well-established and proven operational plans,” Whitney said.

“We began organizing and mobilizing our recovery teams even as flood waters were still rising to ensure protocols and tools for timely assessments, evaluation, collaboration, preparedness, and repair.

“Effective recovery is about focusing your efforts to purposely and aggressively reduce the system’s flood risk by triaging damage repairs in a purposeful and prioritized fashion. Where you cannot affect immediate repairs, you look for a variety of measures to incrementally reduce or mitigate risk until full repair can be achieved,” Whitney said. “A history of recurrent flooding has taught us that we must remain vigilant and ensure we look at the full life cycle of flood risk management, including the four primary stages of preparedness, response, recovery, and mitigation.”

ASSESSING DAMAGE

After dealing with immediate response needs to protect life and property, USACE conducted an extensive damage assessment of levees, floodwalls, floodways, channels, and reservoirs in the Mississippi River basin. For this process, engineers relied on physical data collection (during and after flood), historical analysis, and a detailed examination of repair options, according to Whitney.

USACE experts also classified repair projects into four categories, with Class 1 projects representing those that posed the

SHAPE

Photo by Doug Young

Memphis District (Tenn.) team members form a sandbag relay line with city of Memphis employees during the flood of 2011 to ring a sand boil at the Ensley berm near the USACE Ensley Engineer Yard just south of Memphis. Sand boils occur when water under pressure wells up through a bed of sand, making it look like it is boiling.

greatest threat to human life/safety, requiring immediate action.

Classes 2 and 3 were projects with significant economic and human safety risk that could worsen without near-term action.

Class 4 were low-priority, non-critical repairs.

Through this framework, the MVD rank-ordered 143 projects requiring critical (Class 1-3) repairs at a cost of $1.04 billion, plus 262 non-critical (Class 4) projects costing another $543 million.

Until Congress and the Obama administration provided more than $1.7 billion in the Disaster Relief Appropriations Act, 2012, (enacted Dec. 23, 2011) to fund much of this work, USACE diverted funds from other civil works projects in June through December 2011 to begin tackling the highest-priority projects right away, Whitney said.

Thanks to the congressional supplemental appropriations, “we were able to sustain a continued and aggressive repair strategy through the 2012 construction season,” he noted. At this point, USACE reports that flood repairs in the MVD are about 40 percent complete. Current plans call for completing all projects by spring 2014.

Much to the agency’s relief, there was little flooding in spring 2012, and in fact, the region has remained in a drought state for much of the year. Such weather brings both pluses and minuses, Whitney noted. On the plus side, the good weather allows landside crews to work without rain-related delays. However, wa-

terside crews had a near constant battle to remove the excessive sedimentation in channels and harbors needed to maintain navigation and also had restricted access to shorelines where repairs were made from floating platforms.

Whitney said one top priority in the region was the rebuilding of the intentionally activated fuse-plugs at the upper and lower ends of the specially designed Birds Point-New Madrid (BP-NM) Floodway. The BP-NM Floodway is one of four “relief valves” purposely designed to make room for the river under extreme flood events. This was the first time in the 80-plus-year history of the MR&T that three of the system’s four floodways had to be concurrently operated and only the second time the BP-NM Floodway and Morganza floodway were operated. While the operation of the BP-NM Floodway spread flood waters across 130,000 acres of prime farm land, it is credited with reducing flood peaks by up to 4 feet for downstream communities and reducing intense pressure on the adjacent mainline levee that serves to protect more than 2.5 million developed flood plain acres.

Post-flood Evaluation

The MR&T post-flood evaluation was a concentrated multidisciplinary effort to investigate and document the performance of the MR&T system and how the entire

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Birds Point-New Madrid Floodway.

Mississippi River Watershed was managed as a system during the historic Mississippi River Basin flood event that extended from March through July 2011. The purpose of this evaluation was to (1) assess MR&T system performance, (2) identify and prioritize recapitalization requirements for system components necessary to repair the MR&T system for future events, and (3) assess effectiveness or areas of improvement for water-control communication and coordination across the watershed. The resulting documentation and data sets will be valuable resources for system management, operation, and improvements. They will also serve as reference guides for future flood risk management.

With more than a year of intensive data collection, evaluation, writing, and review, three key documents were produced as part of the MR&T post-flood evaluation: a 50-page “FloodFight Handbook,” a 350-page “Main Technical Report” with appendices, and a 32-page “Summary Report.” These documents are intended to serve as educational tools and reference points for citizens, decision-makers, and future flood fighters. Facts, figures, and lessons learned from the 2011 flood serve to hasten and guide endeavors to rebuild and improve the MR&T project, ensuring continued safety and security of citizens’ lives and livelihoods. Copies of these reports can be accessed via MVD’s Regional Flood Risk Management website.

During the rise and fall of floodwaters, teams of engineering specialists and levee district personnel carefully inspected, analyzed, and documented the nature and extent of flood-related vulnerabilities and damages throughout the region. Early rough-order-of-magnitude repair estimates were on the order of $2 billion to return levees, floodways, channels, and structures to pre-flood conditions. “The path to recovery was strewn with challenges at nearly every turn, such as funding, Mother Nature, endangered species, LERRDs [lands, easements, rights-of-way, relocations, and disposal areas], NEPA [National Environmental Policy Act], etc., that promised to impede the repair process unless the region was able to come together for collaborative and innovative solutions,” explained Whitney.

USACE districts have close working relationships with local levee districts and state/federal officials; however, the magnitude and regional nature of this recovery challenge required a higher level of collaboration and perspective. This recognition prompted the creation of the Interagency Recovery Task Force comprised of senior-level representatives from 10 federal agencies and governorappointed representatives from seven states. Launched during the height of the flooding in May 2011, this task force continued to meet for months, holding eight meetings during the past year. “The primary intent of this forum was to establish an integrated, collaborative, and holistic approach to repairing flood risk management and navigation systems damaged by the historic 2011 flood,” Whitney said.

Aside from regular local and regional meetings, USACE also provided real-time updates on repairs via its newly created Regional Flood Risk Management, providing comprehensive access to documents, meeting minutes, videos, pictures, maps, and regularly updated project repair status information. “The process would not have gone as smoothly had we not had the task force and multiple layers of interagency communication and collaboration,” he added.

The USACE and Mississippi River Commission, working hand in hand with its strong partners, continue to keep an ear to the past, maintain a hand on the present, and project a steady voice for the nation’s bright and productive future. Visit the website for additional details and resources: www.mvd.usace.army.mil/Missions/FloodRiskManagement/RegionalFloodRiskManagementProgram.aspx Missouri River Cleanup

Elsewhere, record snowfall in the Rocky Mountains in early 2011 combined with near-record spring rainfall in the region to produce high water levels in the Missouri River basin that lasted through October 2011. As a result of this flooding, 72 levees were eligible for federal assistance in completing minor to major repairs.

Of the 66 levee rehabs that opted for federal assistance, 52 are complete, said John Leighow, chief of the readiness and contingency operations division at the USACE Northwest Division. Most levees will have been completed by the onset of flood season (Spring 2013), although there may be additional work

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SHAPE

Bonnet Carré Spillway, located about 12 miles west of New Orleans, La., is shown in operation during the 2011 Mississippi River flood. The spillway allows water from the river to flow into Lake Pontchartrain and on to the Gulf of Mexico.

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USACE also convened a Missouri River Flood Task Force with state and federal agencies and Indian tribes. After Congress

PREPARING FOR THE NEXT FLOOD To combat future flooding, USACE has organized a series of teams under an initiative called Operation Watershed Recovery. Key processes include: • A System Performance Evaluation Team is seeking answers to key questions on system performance. It will make recommendations for future studies and improvements.

• A Damage Assessment Team ranks the most important ongoing repair needs.

• An Interagency Task Force will examine system needs from a regional perspective.

In addition, at the national level, USACE has convened a team of external reviewers to look holistically at how the Missouri, Ohio, and Mississippi rivers work together. As part of this process, reviewers will examine the possible need for additional floodway systems as part of a comprehensive protection strategy.

SERVING THE NATION AND THE ARMED FORCES

USACE photo

on stabilizing berms that continues. For USACE-operated projects, the damage was more extensive to spillways and gates and repairs could stretch into FY 2015.

Some of the most challenging problems along the Missouri River were caused by miles of seepage, in which the long-standing high water worked its way down into the ground and established multiple pathways to the other side of the levees. To fully identify the breadth of damage, extensive geotechnical investigations were conducted that included the use of electrical currents to analyze the quality of the ground.

Similar to the Mississippi River basin work, USACE engineers working on Missouri River repairs utilized a four-phase analysis system that ranked top priorities from Class 1 through Class 4. Within all the levees, regardless of priority, a variety of approaches are used to “fix” the damaged levee including seepage mitigation blankets, levee setbacks, and non-structural alternatives. “We are always looking at flood plain management,” said Leighow, and setbacks are “one of the tools in your tool bag as you collaborate with others on a rehabilitation project.”

approved funding last December, the repair process moved ahead swiftly, Leighow said. Until that time, USACE worked with the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works to reallocate funds from other projects for repairs. “Our philosophy was, ‘fund it and fix it,’” he noted.

Federal agencies in these meetings included the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Natural Resources Conservation Service, formerly the U.S. Soil Conservation Service. The task force conducted weekly phone calls and three face-to-face meetings. It also created work groups on levee repairs, flood plain issues, and water management.

“If we didn’t have all the answers, we’d come back to the group with more information,” Leighow said. “It was a great united effort.”

As a result, knowledge was shared, questions more easily answered, and unexpected roadblocks were attacked from multiple angles. This constructive collaboration represents a long-term plus for the future. “Throughout this process,” Leighow said, “there was a strong focus on collaborative problem solving.”

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A SUSTAINABLE CORPS

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ sustainability program takes aim at ambitious federal requirements.

O

n Oct. 5, 2009, when President Barack Obama issued Executive Order (EO) 13514, titled “Federal Leadership in Environmental, Energy, and Economic Performance,” he outlined a series of ambitious objectives for executive branch agencies, including the goal for all new federal buildings – 100 percent – to achieve zero net energy by 2030. The government, the president wrote, had to lead by example: increasing energy efficiency; reducing greenhouse gas emissions; designing and constructing sustainable buildings; and improving the livability of communities in which federal facilities were located.

Many of the ideas in EO 13514 were not new; many were based on previous federal mandates and requirements, such as the Energy Policy Act of 2005, the Energy Independence and Security Act 2007 (PL110-140), and EO 13423 – “Strengthening Federal Environmental, Energy, and Transportation Management” – issued in January 2007, to name a few. Mandates and requirements such as these, as well as EO 13514, affect the work of federal agencies.

In October 2009, the idea of sustainability was not new to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE); in fact, it was a key component of the organization’s mission. In 2002, when USACE introduced its Environmental Operating Principles, the

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first of them read: “Strive to achieve environmental sustainability. An environment maintained in a healthy, diverse and sustainable condition is necessary to support life.” In 2006, USACE established the Center for the Advancement of Sustainability Innovations (CASI) to extend the expertise of its researchers and engineers to customers throughout the Department of Defense (DoD) and the nation. The “Campaign Plan” released by USACE in 2008 features sustainability as a guiding principle, and includes, as one of its goals: “Deliver innovative, resilient, sustainable solutions to the Armed Forces and the Nation.”

To organize these principles and activities in compliance with EO 13514, USACE has established a sustainability program under the leadership of Jo-Ellen Darcy, assistant secretary of the Army for Civil Works and USACE senior sustainability officer. She is assisted by the Strategic Sustainability Committee, which oversees the sustainability program, and the Energy Governance Council, which oversees all energy activities within USACE. As John Coho, USACE senior adviser for environmental compliance, pointed out: “The sustainability program to some extent was launched in response to EO 13514 – although many of the activities currently rolled into that program had been going on long before the executive order came out.”

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers photo by Carlos J. Lazo

By Craig Collins

SHAPE

OPPOSITE: This carport at Fort Hood not only helps keep cars cool from the scorching Texas sun, it also generates solar power to keep the buildings cool on the inside and reduce the energy bills throughout the military facility. ABOVE: The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Sacramento District’s (Calif.) regulatory office is located in the historic Wayne N. Aspinall Federal Building, which was built in 1918 and is currently undergoing renovations for the U.S. General Services Administration to reach a net-zero energy rating.

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers photo

A Record of Sustainability

Within USACE, sustainability generally follows two lines of operation: internal processes that improve efficiencies in the facilities it owns and operates, and products and services that help support the sustainability goals and targets of its customers.

USACE uses the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED®) standards in military construction projects, requiring a minimum LEED rating of Silver – though a LEED rating of Gold has been achieved on several projects, including a recently completed DoD headquarters office complex in Alexandria, Va., that provides working space for 6,400 employees. Within USACE’s Sacramento District, nine park and dam operations offices have installed solar energy systems. The Louisville District is in the process of replacing its entire fleet of vehicles with hybrids, and USACE is working in partnership with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to convert USACE’s waterborne fleet to biodiesel.

The most prominent customer for USACE is the U.S. Army itself, which has its own particular reasons for wanting to reduce energy consumption and reliance on fossil fuels. The Army measures sustainability not only in terms of energy efficiency, energy cost reduction, reduced impact to the environment, and

quality of life for its communities, but also in terms of increasing its mission capability through reduced reliance on fossil fuels, increasing installation security, reducing casualties in the transportation of fuel, and options for its future. To this end, the CASI has been conducting research into the creation of a virtual “forward operating base.” Also at the Army’s National Training Center on Fort Irwin, Calif., research is under way in the design of a hybrid wind/solar/battery/propane-powered DeployableRenewable Energy Power Station (D-REPS) that will save fuel, decrease the logistical burden of fuel transportation, and reduce harmful emissions.

The cornerstone of the Army’s strategy for sustainability and energy security is the “Net-Zero Initiative,” which aims to achieve net-zero energy and water consumption, along with netzero waste production, for its facilities. As David Williams, energy program manager at USACE Headquarters, explained, the Army has established 21 pilot installations for this initiative: six focused on achieving net-zero energy, six on net-zero water, six on net-zero waste, two focused on achieving all three, and one on achieving net-zero energy statewide for the Oregon National Guard. “The Installation Management Command has let the other installations know that they need to be trying to work toward net zero as well,” Williams said, “even though they’re not identified as pilot installations for this initiative.”

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The U.S. Army Corps of Engineer’s (USACE) Table Rock Lake Dewey Short Visitor Center in Branson, Mo., opened April 27, 2012. The center has exhibits about the White River Watershed, local habitats, Table Rock Dam, and USACE as well as several interactive exhibits including maps, power generation, and water safety. It also features an overlook that allows visitors to view Table Rock Lake, the dam, and Lake Taneycomo from one viewing deck. The center is built to Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED®) Gold standards.

One of the ways in which USACE is assisting net zero is through planning, implementing, and managing the Army’s metering program, which ultimately will provide the Army a definitive way to measure, monitor, and make decisions that will more effectively reduce energy consumption. The Army also is developing a single network (Meter Data Management System) for this purpose. But much of the sustainability achieved in support of the Army’s Net-Zero Initiative is not related to technology – which costs money, itself a scarce resource in today’s budget environment. Alternate methods of financing and contracting services, Williams explained, have proven critical to the Army’s efforts: energy savings performance contracts, utility energy service contracts, power purchase agreements, and enhanced-use leases have all been used to leverage resources and create efficiencies at Army installations.

In using such sophisticated financial instruments, USACE is following the Army’s lead, as Antonia Giardina, USACE sustainability program manager, explained: “Basically, a contractor comes and evaluates the facilities for the energy and water improvements, implements those that are determined to be economically viable, and then gets paid back out of the savings generated by those improvements. That’s a powerful tool that we’re trying to utilize, rather than trying to do it all with appropriated funds.”

Focusing the Plan

While sustainability isn’t new to USACE, EO 13514 introduces a structure that requires the organization to reforge these independent sustainability-related activities into a systematic approach, focused on a series of short- and long-term goals and sub-goals that will be evaluated in terms of established metrics: Under the order, agency achievements are graded on a scorecard by the Office of Management and Budget in greenhouse gas emission reduction (Scope 1 and 2 and Scope 3), energy intensity reduction, use of renewable energy, reduction in petroleum use, water intensity reduction, and green buildings.

To USACE, Coho said, devising a plan to meet these metrics has been both an opportunity and a challenge. “We’re reporting data on roughly 600 facilities, Corps-wide,” he said. “And about 583 of those facilities are civil works projects. The numbers are kind of mindboggling.” Under the federal requirements, the plan must focus particularly on the facilities that account for 75 percent of the organization’s total energy consumption. “We did the number crunching,” Coho said, “and found out that 75 percent of our energy is consumed at just 46 of our facilities.”

The USACE sustainability plan, first devised in 2010, is a dynamic document, due to expand and change as USACE refocuses

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SHAPE

activities throughout its 600 facilities and its fleet of vehicles – and works to achieve the sustainability goals of its customers – in a way that conforms to EO 13514’s targets and metrics.

Before it can implement the actions needed to meet some federal targets, however, USACE has work to do in gathering data needed for decision-making. While it has completed an in-depth analysis of its non-tactical vehicle fleet and formulated a plan to right size and right position the fleet by 2015, the organization is still in the process of gathering and refining information about consumption at its facilities.

“We’re focused on getting our energy and water evaluations done,” Giardina said, “basically audits that help us figure out where we have opportunities to make improvements in efficiency.”

Within the metering program that was mentioned earlier, advanced metering is another near-term priority for USACE, as it is currently training the energy managers who will execute both the audits and the metering at its largest facilities, in order to ensure that the goals and subgoals are met.

Another near-term priority, stated by Darcy in a June 29, 2012, policy statement, is sustainable acquisition: the purchase of environmentally preferable products, such as recycled or bio-based products, and making purchasing decisions in a way that takes into account the cradle-to-grave life cycle, from raw materials to disposal or recycling.

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USACE focus areas for FY 2012 and FY 2013 include: • Leveraging $2.5 million in performance-based contracts for energy and water efficiency in USACE-owned facilities.

• Implementing the Non-tactical Vehicle Fleet Management Plan.

• Creating and implementing the USACE Sustainable Acquisition Program.

• Expanding the High Performance Sustainable Buildings Program to encompass Civil Works and USACE-owned buildings.

• Completing energy and water evaluations of covered facilities pursuant to the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, Section 432.

• Creating and implementing the USACE national policy on sealevel change for coastal projects and developing and deploying a national policy on adaptation measures for inland hydrology adaptation as described in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers 2011 Climate Change Adaptation Plan and Report.

It’s been a steep learning curve, and while USACE has not yet met the reporting targets imposed by EO 13514, its efforts to lay the groundwork – establishing the data and management systems that will ensure rapid future progress – have gained considerable momentum in the past year.

“It’s all about making sure we are walking the talk,” Giardina said. “As we advise others on sustainability, we want to make sure we’re doing it for ourselves, too.”

U.S. Army photo by Susan C. Galentine

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Focusing on Today’s STEM Opportunities to Develop Solutions for Tomorrow

By J.R. Wilson

I

n the United States, a challenge is under way to increase the number of students who focus on preparatory courses leading to college degrees in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). The prospect of a shortage of trained scientists and engineers in the coming decades has led the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) to intensify its efforts to rebuild student interest in STEM courses and careers. Indeed, USACE – and the nation – will need the best and brightest.

“STEM fields are fundamentally important to our global competitiveness and national security,” former USACE Military Programs Director Bob Slockbower, USACE Human Resources Director Sue Engelhardt, and USACE Engineering and Construction Chief James C. Dalton wrote in an April 2012 memo to USACE leaders. “Recruiting the right talent to meet current challenges and projected workload is critical to the accomplishment of USACE mission requirements.”

The memo went on to state, “However, it will become more difficult to fill STEM jobs due to a decreasing supply of available candidates and competition with other federal agencies and the private sector for the same talent pool. In order to succeed, the Corps must be proactive and embrace programs and initiatives that steer individuals to STEM-related career fields in the federal service.”

Opening Doorways

That effort is taking advantage of a number of Department of Defense (DoD)/Army-level tools created to support national, regional, and local STEM outreach programs. These include: •D oD Education Activity STEM Initiative: Federal and Army STEM professionals create lessons and activities to inform and engage students in grades K-12 on the variety of high-tech careers available to them as adults, with an emphasis on federal government jobs; • e CYBERMISSION Program: A free Web-based STEM competition for students in grades six through nine, showing the importance of a STEM education for future leaders and the reallife applications of these subjects; • Great Minds in STEM™: A USACE partnership with Viva Technology™ to engage inner-city and rural K-12 students, teachers, and parents in the value of technologyrelated education;

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• USACE National STEM Awareness Program: Working with MYI Consulting to streamline the process USACE organizations and other federal agencies can use to host educational STEM-themed workshops; increase under-represented minority enrollment in collegiate STEM programs; and increase minority opportunities within USACE by “seeding” the future STEM applicant pool; • Long-term partnerships: USACE is working with a number of national organizations to encourage STEM outreach; these include the American Indian Science and Engineering Society, Black Engineer of the Year Awards Conference, Hispanic Engineer National Achievement Awards Corporation, Advancing Minorities’ Interest in Engineering, and the Women of Color Conference; and • Local and regional activities: USACE partners with elementary and high school activities to generate and encourage student interest in STEM-related fields; these include the Society of Military Engineers Summer Camps, Gains in the Education of Mathematics and Science (GEMS), MATHCOUNTS.org, Camp Invention, judging science fairs, making school presentations on STEM careers, offering “job-shadowing” experiences; and local USACE relationships with colleges and universities to promote STEM majors.

The Great Minds program also is seen as a prototype for future USACE initiatives.

“This is a multiyear approach, developing a relationship with a local university and the school district, teaching teachers about STEM, and talking to the local community and parents about it.

They also have reached out, literally, to rock stars who are doing promos on the program,” Slockbower said.

“What’s really exciting about this is we are tracking the students involved through the years, with the intent of looking at it as a model for a nationwide attack on all the issues – curriculum, teachers, home environment, outreach to business partners who can explain what they do, etc.”

According to Engelhardt, four of nine mission-critical USACE occupations are STEM-related, not only engineers, but also in USACE’s growing research and development (R&D) arena, with openings for graduates from bachelor’s to doctorate programs.

“This past year, our college student program hired more than 300 students, representing 30 states and more than 70 universities,” Dr. Jeff Holland, director of USACE R&D and director

SHAPE resource management, environmental remediation, and preservation. Energy and sustainability, for example, need researchers trained in engineering, math, and the environment to develop solutions. The civil works requirement to recapitalize the nation’s infrastructure also requires experts in geotechnology, a critical shortage where USACE is offering specialized training to current employees.

“That is a blend of academics – sending them back to college for specific courses or degrees – other types of training targeted toward skills and competencies such as risk management and, perhaps most important, experiential learning you get by working with experts in the field,” Slockbower said.

“Traditionally, we have focused our STEM activities on Corps professionals, but the Army now is seeking to get all DACs [Department of the Army civilians] in career programs. In the one for which I’m responsible – engineers and scientists for resource and construction – we have expanded from 12,000 to 22,000 DACs being given career maps, laying out their expectations regarding training, education, and experience.” sharing knowledge

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers photos

TOP: Lt. Gen. Thomas P. Bostick, USACE commanding general and chief engineer, interacts with GEMS students. ABOVE: The USACE Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) hosts many school science and engineering groups in seven laboratories to highlight the critical impacts R&D has on U.S. armed forces and the nation. Here students are informed about scale model projectiles that ERDC constructs in house for various military research projects.

of the Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC), said. “USACE realizes the importance of growing and hiring top-notch scientists and engineers.

For ERDC, STEM efforts are critical if we are to maintain our stature as a world-class R&D organization.”

“We also think very much about education as lifetime learning. When new employees come to us with certain backgrounds, we take on the responsibility to facilitate learning throughout their lifetimes as the needs and skill requirements of the organization change. So we need to

help them, from grade school through retirement,” Slockbower said, adding that is also one way in which USACE can compete for new scientists and engineers.

“In the private sector, there are opportunities where people could make more money than in the public sector. But we also offer an opportunity to really make a difference for their communities, the armed forces, and the nation.”

USACE focus areas also often require a combination of skills and education, encompassing not only applied engineering and science, but also design, construction,

Another USACE advantage is being a “local” presence throughout the nation, while offering international opportunities.

“We have a very diversified organization, with 40-some districts scattered across the nation. So unlike most corporations, we can develop great relationships with local colleges and universities nationwide. Where we have been most successful is students who have interned in their home areas and have local leaders who guide them; we convert a large number of those students,” he said.

“A lot of our success is because we have been able to provide these students with very good development paths through our internship program and the opportunity to do exciting and interesting work.

That truly is making a difference for the Army and for the nation.”

The real problem for the future is not in the colleges, but in the nation’s grade

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Anthony Kee, a member of the Vallejo High School robotics team, The Zombots, in Lake Mendocino, Calif., holds a robot he and fellow teammates built.

ERDC [Engineer Reseach and Development Center] is doing, such as robotics,” she said. “ERDC has a pre-college program, as well as university and faculty scholarships. So they start early, hoping to find people who will work for the lab.”

“As an R&D organization, ERDC has a very robust STEM outreach program,” Holland said. “This year we have already involved 567 teachers and more than 10,000 students. We sponsor several high school robotics teams that are award winners in several statewide and regional competitions.

“STEM efforts are strongly supported throughout USACE. STEM is one of our chief ’s [Lt. Gen. Thomas P. Bostick, USACE commanding general] great passions. When he visited ERDC in June 2012, he made it a point to stop by a GEMS camp bridge-building exercise. The chief discussed STEM with the students and told them, ‘Sometimes it’s [STEM subjects] the harder road to walk on, but it will open up doors for you and opportunities that you could never imagine … and, it’s fun!’ The chief realizes that STEM is an investment not only in their future, but in the future of the Corps and our country.”

According to Engelhardt, STEM efforts are long term. “We have records on the shortages we see for the future. Some problems are based on the economy, but eventually the economy will improve

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and we will have more opportunities for STEM majors. This is a world where you have to understand the technology or you can’t get anywhere. Unless we have sufficient people with STEM backgrounds who can help us become innovators for the future, we won’t have what has set us apart in the past. Sometimes, we are our own worst enemy.”

Slockbower agreed – but sees a spark of hope in the growing efforts of USACE and others.

“There is a long-range issue in generating enough people with STEM backgrounds – and our outreach efforts won’t show results for a decade or more. But if a student doesn’t start with algebra in middle school, the doors to further courses will be closed. [A given USACE outreach] may not spark a hundred students, but there will be some who have seen a future for themselves. And that is very important,” he concluded.

“We need to continue to grow this kind of talent for this generation and for generations to come. This nation does not generate as many engineers and scientists as other nations and there is risk associated with that. However, the quality of STEM graduates this nation is generating and we have seen in our workforce gives me great comfort in their ability to contribute. But we need to be thinking about those sixth graders and make sure the doors do not shut on them.”

Photo by J.C. Delgadillo

schools, where college majors and adult careers are distant and low-priority decisions. Unless foundation courses in math and science are made available – and students given a reason they understand to take them – taking more advanced classes in high school, much less college, will be far more difficult, if not impossible.

A 2005 report by the National Academies, “Rising Above the Gathering Storm,” warned that failing to invest in STEM education as a top priority at all levels would be a disaster. Throughout USACE, individual components have taken that to heart, often by offering or supporting extracurricular activities that are as demanding as STEM itself. One example was the creation of a robotics team at Vallejo High School in Lake Mendocino, Calif., by two teachers supported by the San Francisco District.

Working an estimated 300 hours each during the semester, the students created a number of robots – including one USACE allowed them to deploy to nearby Coyote Dam to crawl through a drain pipe, checking for rust and cracks.

When sludge in the pipe impaired the robot’s traction, the students immediately began looking for solutions rather than writing it off as a failure.

As team member Stephanie Bond, a Vallejo senior, remarked, being able to put into practice what they have learned makes the investment of time and effort “totally worth it.”

“We warn people, ‘Don’t join. You’ll sign away your soul in blood on paper to the teachers. You’ll have no life afterward. You’re done, don’t do it,’” she joked.

“I definitely want to take my experiences here and use them in college and my future career. It’s something I find interesting, figuring out how things work, working with my hands, building things, and making them work.”

“Which is exactly the result USACE is seeking,” Engelhardt said.

“We do a lot of branding of what our mission is – and it really is our missions that draw people in. The younger generation is very much into environmental issues, which is a major Corps mission.

The same is true with some of the things

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Engineering the Future: USACE Designs, Builds DoDEA 21st Century Schools

By Raini W. Brunson

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concentration, and adjustable furniture to good physical posture, all of which improve academic performance.

“We need to build for the future, build an infrastructure into facilities so that there is flexibility. We need to look ahead at the available tools,” said Russell Roberts, chief of the Logistics Division at DoDEA Headquarters. “The infrastructure needs to be put into the facility to where the capacity and the bandwidth are in place so that any type of a tool that a school district, teacher, or DoDEA feels will benefit the students, our facility is able to handle that tool.”

In April 2011, USACE worked with DoDEA to develop three symposiums to establish the framework supporting the 21st century education concept. The first symposium solicited external feedback from leaders in the nation’s education, information

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers photo

F

or years, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) has collaborated with the U.S. Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA) on the designs of education facilities. As studies emerged showing that evidencebased design measurably improves students’ academic performance, DoDEA approached USACE to help them develop new schools – 21st century schools – that would foster more productive learning environments.

The 21st Century Education Initiative is rooted in the philosophy that a child learns best at his or her own pace. Evidence-based design fosters the 21st century concept as desired behaviors in students, educators, and supporting personnel are more easily achieved if their environment reinforces and facilitates those behaviors.

“The 21st century school really is the framework for the type of environment that we want children to be able to learn in, this 21st century,” said Robert Slockbower, former director of Military Programs at USACE Headquarters. “When you develop a 21st century school, you don’t start the process with the question, ‘How do I build the school?’ You start the process with the question, ‘How do I teach in the 21st century?’”

Although the 21st century education concept had been around for some time, in 2011, the concept received momentum with the release of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

The NDAA stated that best practices and design innovations in public and private schools are to be incorporated into the design of DoDEA schools, and that processes should ensure that facility design can adopt and respond to emerging requirements related to dynamic curricula through teaching techniques and should also incorporate feedback from teachers, parents, military community representatives, and local school administrators. The NDAA established the criteria that schools should be constructed with flexible capabilities so that the learning environment meets the needs of every student. Technology is one way to introduce flexibility.

Other examples of evidence-based design are: • i ncreasing the use of natural lighting through windows and skylights; •d esigning the acoustics of a room so that the external noise is reduced; and •u tilizing adjustable furniture.

Studies have connected natural lighting to improvements in learning reading and math, reduction in external noise to improvement in

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers photo by Jennifer Aldridge

Rendering by Mitchell-Giurgola/ABATEC Joint Venture

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OPPOSITE: The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) Europe District, U.S. Army Garrison Grafenwoehr (Germany), and Department of Defense Dependents Schools-Europe (DoDDS-Europe), along with local students, officially cut the ribbon to open the Netzaberg elementary and middle schools Aug. 29, 2008. The district managed construction on the projects as part of the large “Efficient Basing Grafenwoehr” effort.

TOP: In a joint venture with Mitchell-Giurgola of New York and ABATEC of Belgium, the usace Europe District is managing construction of a $146 million project that will bring new DoDDS elementary, middle, and high schools and an international school to the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) community. The SHAPE facilities broke ground in 2011 and are expected to be complete by 2015, with the international school scheduled for 2016. ABOVE: The USACE Europe District, SHAPE, DoDDS-Europe, Belgian federal government and City of Mons officials, and other team members broke ground Jan. 11, 2012, on the $167.5 million SHAPE International School near Mons, Belgium.

The new campus will be built in three phases consisting of a 58-classroom DoDDS elementary school and a 48-classroom DoDDS middle school (phase 1), a 65-classroom DoDDS high school (phase 2), and an international school (phase 3, to begin in 2014).

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U.S. Army Corps of Engineers photo by Carol E. Davis

Neil Ravensbergen, a resident engineer with the USACE Europe District, gives students a tour of the Wiesbaden (Germany) Entertainment Center during the Department of Defense Dependent Schools-Europe-sponsored “Shadow Day” on Feb. 2, 2010, when school-aged children of district employees can see what their parents do. The day also included presentations on Geographic Information Systems and architecture.

technology, architectural, and engineering arenas. The second symposium solicited internal feedback from DoDEA’s students, teachers, and other personnel at the division and district levels.

“What I have seen with the Corps for 20-something years is that they really are customer-oriented,” Roberts said. “[The 21st century concept] is education driven, not facility driven. The Corps of Engineers was absolutely open about trying to find a solution for us.”

The solution came during the third symposium, which brought together the external and internal feedback from the previous symposiums. This collective feedback was used to establish the education specifications that would later become the basis for the designs of the 21st century schools.

In December 2008, USACE established a DoDEA Design Center at its Norfolk District. The center’s primary mission was to guide the designs of the DoDEA military construction projects. With the emergence of the 21st Century Education Initiative, project engineers at the center took on the mission of developing new facility education specifications for the 21st century schools.

DoDEA construction projects are “primarily new construction with some additions and renovations,” said Gerry Boyle, DoDEA national program manager for USACE.

All of the construction focuses on elementary, middle, and high schools with locations in the Pacific, Europe, and several U.S. installations.

Some of the major, multimillion-dollar projects are: the construction of the Antilles Elementary School at Fort Buchanan in Puerto Rico; the renovation of West Point Middle School at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y.; and the construction of elementary, middle, and high schools at the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe in Belgium.

Evidence of the 21st century education concept can be found throughout the designs of these schools. The designs have been patterned off of some of the most successful schools in the United States.

An abundance of windows and multiple skylights let in large amounts of natural light. Wireless capabilities and other technologies make the infrastructure flexible to meet current and future needs. Even what may seem like the most trivial of details, the size of a janitor’s closet for example, has been incorporated into the overall school designs.

USACE’s design specifications have helped standardize square footage and functional configurations, and are used to communicate with educators. Design improvements based on lessons learned have also been captured. In providing its 21st century solution for DoDEA schools, USACE’s designs will serve as a model for public and private school systems nationwide.

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USACE Support to combatant commandS Providing military-to-military assistance and humanitarian response for partner nations

By J.R. Wilson

P

roviding support to the nation’s joint combatant commands (COCOMs) is an important and critical mission of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), growing from previous combat command structures dating back to the founding of USACE. A large proportion of USACE mission assignments come from the Department of Defense’s (DoD) six geographic and three functional COCOMs. The oldest is the Pacific Command (PACOM), established Jan. 1, 1947, with headquarters at Camp Smith, Hawaii; the European Command stood up three months later at Patch Barracks, Germany. Since then, DoD has created four more geographic COCOMs (GCCs): Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) in Miami, Fla. (responsible for Latin America and the Caribbean); Central Command at MacDill Air Force Base (AFB), Fla. (the Middle East, North Africa, and Southwest and Central Asia); Northern Command at Peterson AFB, Colo.

(North America); and, in 2007, Africa Command (AFRICOM).

The functional COCOMs (FCCs) are more recent than most of the GCCs. Special Operations Command stood up at MacDill AFB, Fla., in 1987, Transportation Command at Scott AFB, Ill., in 1987, and Strategic Command at Offutt AFB, Neb., in 1992, replacing the old Strategic Air Command and, in 2002, merging with the U.S. Space Command and absorbing DoD’s primary cyberspace operations.

“The Corps of Engineers has aligned one of its subordinate commands – a division, commanded by a general officer – with each GCC. That is a formal lash-up and those commanders are an asset for the COCOM and his staff to use. It really expands his bandwidth, having 34,000 members of the Corps at his disposal,” Jim Balocki, chief of Interagency and International Services (IIS), explained.

“We also maintain a full-time liaison on each COCOM’s staff who is there 24/7/365, living and breathing that COCOM’s mission and reporting back up through the Corps’ command channels. They generally sit in the J-4 [Logistics] element of the COCOM staff, which is where the staff engineer – usually a colonel from one of the services – resides. We also spend time working with the J-5 [Plans], because it is important to understand future plans and what engineering resources may be needed.”

The relationship with the functional COCOMs has a significantly different structure that is still evolving, but Balocki said USACE is “making an effort to reach out for their global, rather than geographic, missions, trying to determine how we might best advise them.”

“We don’t have liaison officers sitting with them, so we don’t have the same day-to-day connectivity we have with the GCCs

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and their staffs. However, if you just think about the things these guys do, their need to maintain access to critical infrastructure – airports, roadways, ports, etc. – their ability to understand the utility of that infrastructure and find alternatives are all places where the technical skills and capabilities of the Corps are relevant. It’s about advising those COCOMs and their staffs that those skills are available to them – establishing a set of business principals and relationships and some way to keep that going through future leaders to make that an enduring relationship,” he said.

“A lot of the solution sets are the same, but get back to understanding the needs of a particular commander. Their needs are a little different due to the effects they are trying to achieve, but the projects of the Corps may be – or seem – very similar, even though the end-state may differ from that of the GCCs. There also are times when the Corps can be involved in a project that supports two different effects – one for a GCC and one for an FCC.” The most common area of support is capacity development.

Each GCC has a theater security cooperation plan, with USACE embedded at the planning level, seeking to understand the endstate objectives of those plans. As a result, a number of USACE programs executed in a given GCC may support many – or even all – of the COCOM’s theater objectives. In some instances, however, it is difficult to categorize what USACE does.

For example, a major PACOM objective is to strengthen U.S. regional alliances. The ongoing USACE effort to assist the four nations in the Mekong River Commission – including Vietnam – in close cooperation with the Chinese Water Ministry in conducting humanitarian assistance projects, is a major example of how USACE often gives the United States entry to nations and areas in which DoD otherwise may not be able to go.

“There is a deliberate effort to align our capabilities with each COCOM’s objectives – and those differ by region,” IIS Deputy Chief Lindy Wolner added. “So having our liaison officers colocated on site gives us a visibility and vision to help us align our efforts where appropriate, including understanding the GCC’s needs and requirements and helping them succeed.”

USACE has seen tremendous growth in the demand for such services since 9/11, especially as the COCOMs themselves have become more “interagency,” with representatives from the State Department, U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and other federal agencies also embedded in their headquarters. That daily interagency interaction has enhanced the ability of USACE to meet one organization’s needs – such

USACE photo

Mike MacMillan, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) Alaska District project manager (fourth from left holding the shovel), participates in a groundbreaking ceremony for the Sanxai Primary School construction project in Attapeu province in Laos in May 2011. USACE managed the $374,407 project for the U.S. Pacific Command. The school was built under the Humanitarian Assistance Program, which marked the first time the district has managed construction projects in Asia.

as building cyclone shelters that double as schools in Bangladesh for USAID – in ways that also help the regional (and sometimes functional) COCOM meet its goals and objectives in the area.

Supplemental budgets, which have become a major component of U.S. investment in Southwest Asia during the past decade, have also provided needed funding to place USACE liaison functions with the COCOMs. More important, that new, closer working relationship has expanded COCOM understanding and appreciation for what USACE has to offer.

“That has helped those commanders and their staffs see the value of adding the Corps to discussions of their plans and the value of small-footprint programs we can accomplish in their AORs [areas of responsibility],” Balocki explained. “We will transition those functions into the base budget in coming years because it is so important to keep them there. So since 9/11, there has been an increasing recognition by the COCOMs and their staffs that the Corps is an important actor in achieving security objectives in a given theater.”

As the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Southwest Asia continues – accompanied by a drawdown in the size of the military services and an anticipated decade of sharply declining budgets – USACE is anticipating an increase, rather than decrease, in demand for its services from all the COCOMs. “The general feeling here is that we are seeing less work in Iraq, but maybe a bit more in Afghanistan – although that may be because there was so much going on in Iraq for so long,” Balocki said, noting USACE has continued work in Iraq even after the withdrawal of

U.S. combat troops. “There still is a lot of work being done – and to do – in Afghanistan, but I can’t really say there has been an increase in work being done in surrounding nations.

“Surprisingly, we are seeing an uptick in the projects and kind of work we are doing in PACOM, AFRICOM, and SOUTHCOM. These are not spare resources – and it is not dramatic – but there has been a general trend toward a little more work in those regions.

Working on behalf of the State Department in each country, the assistance we provide tends to be humanitarian, capacity development, and technical advice, with most requests coming from the COCOMs, but also some from State and USAID. Everything we do really is so closely coordinated with each it sometimes is almost lost on us who the original requestor was. That is another outgrowth of post-9/11 – greater coordination in these projects between all elements of government,” Balocki said.

Because of USACE’s primary relationship with the COCOMs, any project proposed by another agency seeking USACE help is vetted to ensure it is consistent with that GCC’s goals and objectives and does not interfere with nor compromise another project.

That includes any requests that may be made by host-nation governments, which must go through diplomatic channels, beginning with the local U.S. embassy.

Despite the uncertainty of future funding and possible changes in foreign and military policy, the recent past may be a template for future USACE growth around the world, in projects and in new approaches to international cooperation.

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U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Europe District photo by Mark Nedzbala

USACE photo by Jennifer Aldridge

LEFT: Albania’s largest hospital, Mother Teresa University Hospital Center, in Tirana, as seen on Jan. 11, 2012. Twelve major regional hospitals will soon be linked through a virtual network enabling high-quality, uniform health care for all citizens. The construction of the new telemedicine centers, funded by the U.S. European Command (EUCOM) and managed by the USACE Europe District, will allow health care professionals to conduct e-learning, consultations, and even diagnose patients remotely. Once the Albanian government approved the telemedicine concept, EUCOM and USACE started working in tandem with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). The renovation of all 12 e-health centers is scheduled for completion in late 2013 or early 2014. RIGHT: (From right in foreground) John Curtis, deputy chief for the USACE Europe District’s Engineering and Construction Branch, and John Gerlach, a resident engineer and acting chief of the district’s Caucasus Project Office, meet with customers and contractors in Tbilisi, Georgia, Oct. 28, 2010, at the Akhalkalaki Hospital. The project, funded by USAID and managed by USACE, will renovate the Akhalkalaki and Ninotsminda hospitals. Renovations include installing a heating system, which will not only comfort the staff and patients, but also mean treatment can be administered without delays during the country’s inhospitable winters.

“One example would be Brazil, which started in 2007 with the establishment of an annual exchange of our chiefs of engineering.

That has expanded into USACE engaging with a number of other Brazilian agencies,” Wolner said. “In 2011, we signed an agreement to assist Brazil with development of the Sao Francisco River Agency, which basically is a water basin resources organization.

Brazil is paying USACE to put engineers in their offices to [assist them with] this development. That is the result of a military-tomilitary engagement some years ago that expanded into a civilian agency effort.

“That supports SOUTHCOM objectives for Brazil. It is a reimbursed arrangement. It is coordinated through the COCOM and embassy and reflects USACE support to the COCOM and to an important partner in this hemisphere. The same is true for the Lower Mekong Initiative in PACOM, which we were able to do because, in 2009, the Corps Mississippi River Commission signed an agreement with the Mekong River Commission to share information on those two major rivers.”

In both cases, USACE has been able to use previous agreements to bring its water resources expertise to support State and COCOM goals in two regions of long-standing – and still growing – importance to the United States.

“That has led to a number of workshops, study tours, and other ongoing activities that have direct support to the COCOM and to

a major foreign policy goal in the region,” Wolner added. “Those are just examples of growing USACE support in recent years to the various COCOMs.” Balocki sees USACE’s role in a post-Operation Enduring Freedom/Operation Iraqi Freedom world as one of expansion, even if some or all of their partners experience contraction.

“I’m personally engaging with COCOM leaders, as are other USACE leaders, including the chief of engineers. You don’t know what you don’t know. So if you don’t know USACE can provide water resource assistance or that another nation needs that capacity, you have no way to connect the dots. But by informing the COCOMs of what we can offer and receiving information on what they need, we can engage more deeply globally. Science and technology, infrastructure, the ability to do disaster recovery – all fit, along with water, into a broad suite of solutions and capabilities we can offer,” he concluded.

“I would expect demands [on USACE] to continue to grow as we provide an awareness and examples of the solution sets we can provide. Large training exercises may not be affordable due to budget constraints, but civilian-to-civilian or civilian-to-military contact, where the Corps might be an element, is something we might see growing. It goes back to our agreements, authorities, and presence, which provide a synergy with the COCOMs, the diplomats, and so on.”

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GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE: ADAPTING THE CORPS’ MISSION

By Craig Collins

I

n 2007, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported: “Observational evidence from all continents and most oceans shows that many natural systems are being affected by regional climate changes, particularly temperature increases.” It was a simple statement, validating the concerns of American scientists, the public, and policymakers about the future of the nation’s natural and man-made systems.

The fact that the Earth is getting warmer raises two questions for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) and its partners in the federal government: How will climate change affect our systems? And what are we going to do about it?

The federal government’s U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), begun as a presidential initiative in 1989, represents the world’s largest investment in global climate change research. The Department of Defense (DoD) is one of USGCRP’s 13 member departments and agencies. USACE, with its civil works and military construction missions, has been involved in the study of climate change longer than most people have been discussing it: In the early 1950s, as the Army began to study the suitability of Greenland’s ice sheet as a foundation for the Cold War’s distant early warning radar stations, scientists with the precursors to the USACE Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory (CRREL) helped to perfect many of the ice drilling techniques that supported early climate science.

USACE also – as one of the four agencies in the federal Climate Change and Water Working Group (CCAWWG), formed in 2008 – helped to produce the document that anchors the government’s effort to anticipate and adapt to climate change in the management of its water resources – “Climate Change and Water Resources Management: A Federal Perspective.” That document, released in 2009, identifies ongoing changes that have the potential to affect the nation’s water resources and infrastructure. Temperature increases are generally expected to result in more rain and less snow. Some areas will receive more precipitation, while some will receive less. And sea-level changes, both at the mean and at the extreme high, will increase shoreline erosion and change salinity in coastal and estuarine environments where land is also subsiding.

These changes have the potential to alter several aspects of the nation’s water resources, including:

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• the nationwide availability, demand, and quality of water; • infrastructure for stormwater, wastewater, and flood and storm protection; • navigation; • wildland fire intensity and frequency; • ecosystem and coastal zone function; and • energy production and demand.

Together and separately, these potential changes have profound implications for USACE’s civil works and military support missions.

Water Resources Management: A Holistic Approach

In 2009, President Barack Obama convened the Interagency Climate Change Adaptation Task Force and issued Executive Order 13514, requiring federal agencies, among other things, to identify climate change adaptation strategies in conjunction with this task force.

Adapting the way USACE plans and implements its civil works mission with climate change is a complicated task, with multiple variables. Water resources planning involves assumptions about future hydro-climatic conditions – temperature, precipitation, and river flows – but these are only part of the equation. People are involved, too: Over time, water resource locations experience changes in population size and distribution; land use and economic decisions; aging infrastructure; groundwater development; and social values. This complex web of variables is discussed and analyzed in the CCAWWG’s “Addressing Climate Change in Long-Term Water Resources Planning and Management: User Needs for Improving Tools and Information” document, released by USACE and the Department of the Interior in January 2011.

Devising a policy that embraced all these variables meant that USACE – which released its first sea-level change policy in 1987 – would have to combine many elements of its civil works mission. When Jo-Ellen Darcy, assistant secretary of the Army for Civil Works, submitted the “USACE Climate Change Adaptation Plan and Report 2011” to the White House in June 2011, she called for integrating climate change adaptation into all that

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NASA/Kathryn Hansen

On July 10, 2011, Don Perovich, Ph.D., a geophysicist with USACE’s Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory, maneuvered through melt ponds collecting optical data along the way to get a sense of the amount of sunlight reflected from sea ice and melt ponds in the Chukchi Sea. The 2010-2011 ICESCAPE, or Impacts of Climate on Ecosystems and Chemistry of the Arctic Pacific Environment, mission was NASA’s two-year shipborne investigation to study how changing conditions in the Arctic affect the ocean’s chemistry and ecosystems. The bulk of the research took place in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas in the summers of 2010 and 2011.

the organization does, based on the best available – and actionable – science. Furthermore, she directed USACE to consider climate change impacts when undertaking long-term planning and decision-making.

“Actionable” is a key word. Climate change science is a new field, relatively speaking, and according to Kathleen White, Ph.D., senior lead for global and climate change at the USACE Institute for Water Resources (IWR), USACE isn’t about to break out the heavy equipment right away. “We need to develop

policy and guidance before we can actually put a shovel in the ground and implement,” she said. Before USACE modifies a coastal project, for example, it needs an actionable model of sealevel change in that facility’s specific location.

With USACE leadership, actionable science is getting closer to reality. USACE has worked together with other agencies to address practical alternatives for “nonstationary” hydrology, for example. While current science is based on older hydrologic models that assume the frequency of hydrologic events to be unchanging, or stationary, over time, nonstationary hydrology takes into account the new reality introduced by global climate change. In a nonstationary world, future availability, quality, and demand for water will vary regionally and could be much different than in the past.

The nation’s water resources affect everyone, and USACE plans cannot be developed in a vacuum, warned White. Policies and plans need to be developed in concert with other agencies to achieve a nationwide approach. In addition to its partners in the CCAWWG – the Department of the Interior Bureau of Reclamation and the U.S. Geological Survey, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) – USACE works with other federal partners, including the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the Department of Energy (DoE) on the science that will underpin the way the nation’s water resources are managed.

As the agency that plans, builds, and maintains much of the infrastructure that makes waterways navigable, protects communities from floods, and provides access to drinking water and recreation, USACE is a leader in this national collaboration. “In the Civil Works Program,” White said, “we’re very interested and concerned about changing extremes of flood and drought.

We need to be able to proactively plan for them, because changes in extremes may cause us to need to change our operations to account for climate changes. We have policy for sea-level change available now – and we’re working on additional policy and guidance for adaptation, and making sure that’s done in cooperation with other agencies to be sure it’s nationally consistent.”

Climate Change and the Military Mission

Of all the work USACE does, the American public is most likely to interact with its civil works mission and infrastructure.

The assumption that climate change is, to USACE, all about

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SHAPE water resources is understandable, but incomplete. The 2010 “Quadrennial Defense Review” recognized that climate change has the potential to profoundly change how the nation’s warfighters live, train, and fight – and DoD will need to adjust to the impacts of climate change on its facilities and military capabilities.

The Pentagon, like the nation’s water resources agencies, recently produced a foundational document on its approach to climate change: “The Department of Defense and Climate Change: Initiating the Dialogue,” released in January 2012. The document presented several recommendations for continuing to develop the science necessary to understand the ways in which climate change will alter the future operating environment, and for framing appropriate responses to such changes.

Because USACE is responsible for building military facilities, its Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) – particularly ERDC’s Construction Engineering Research Laboratory in Champaign, Ill. – has been at the forefront of this research. One of its most significant contributions is funded by the Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP), a joint DoD/EPA/DoE effort to describe current or potential climate change impacts on the military’s missions and assets. According to one of the laboratory’s technical directors, William D. Goran, SERDP research programs include: • studies of how climate change in Alaska’s interior is affecting permafrost, setting in motion a number of results that could influence how, where, and when the military can train.

• studies of coastal risks associated with sea-level rise. ERDC has been involved in a study of the Hampton Roads area near Norfolk, Va., home to the world’s largest naval base and additional installations for all four military service branches.

• studies of how increased drought and higher temperatures may increase fire danger and reduce water availability for facilities in the American Southwest.

• studies of how and when installation management decisions are affected by changing temperature, precipitation, and water levels.

As USACE continues to develop adaptation plans for both its civil works and military support missions, its scientists continue to contribute to the science on which these adaptations will be based. In early 2013, for example, researchers from the crrel are scheduled to present the changes observed in the Arctic ice – an early indicator of climate change – over the past year at a meeting of the NASA/USACE-led Interagency Forum on Climate Change Impacts and Adaptations.

The forum, an informal gathering that provides a venue for presentations and discussion on climate change issues common to all government agencies, is yet another example of how USACE climate change adaptations are part of a government-wide partnership. “We’re very engaged with the interagency community to understand the phenomena impacting all of our missions,” Goran said, “and share with each other perspectives and lessons learned on how to adjust and adapt to these changes.”

Drought and climate change-induced physiological stress are causing extensive forest dieback in the western United States as well as worldwide. This photo shows dead ponderosa pines in the Jemez Mountains of New Mexico killed by a combination of drought stress and an insect outbreak of bark beetles on weakened trees.

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Military Missions Transformation

USACE is set to shape future force structure requirements.

“M

ilitary Missions” speaks to the changing requirements and missions of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) as it moves from the massive demands of a decade of combat, Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC), modularity campaigns, and growth in the Army to a new decade with new customer requirements.

“We have just come through a very, very great surge in our work, a workload several times beyond what might be expected.

We established centers of standardization, more disciplined approaches to contracting, etc., to deliver a large number of projects in a very compressed period of time to meet the needs of the nation and armed forces,” said Bob Slockbower, USACE director of Military Programs. “We focused like a laser on meeting schedule, scope, and cost requirements during the BRAC surge – with schedule being a uniquely important driver. In the future, as we implement Army Facility Strategy 2020, I expect that energy and sustainability will be as important a program driver as schedule was during BRAC. “An important question now is how do we add unique value to the Army and the nation as our workload returns to a level more commensurate with the past? We need to describe our value in terms of what we are delivering to our clients. During the surge

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era, we were producing a large number of projects with significant value – and if that is the sole measure of our value to the nation, our value in the future would be significantly less than in the past.

But I don’t believe that to be the case. So we have to take a different look at our value proposition.”

As USACE seeks to continue managing complexity while driving innovation to meet the nation’s current and future civil and military infrastructure needs, team members must become “solutioneers,” according to “Military Missions Strategic Direction 2012” – tackling the toughest challenges through a blend of critical thought, creativity, and technical leadership. “… The term Military Missions signifies the need to shift our thinking from stovepipe ‘programs’ to a more holistic, integrated approach to providing services drawing from the full range of USACE expertise (including our civil works and research and development partners) in support of the military mission,” he wrote in the foreword to “Military Missions Strategic Concept” (MMSC) for FY 12-15.

“In the coming years, we will use the MMSC to guide revisions to the USACE Campaign Plan so that our strategic initiatives are integrated into the Campaign Plan,” the foreword states. “Building organizational capabilities will take time. However, we will make progress if we use the MMSC as a road map and stay focused

USACE photo by John Helms

By J.R. Wilson

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USACE photo

OPPOSITE: The arrival of the first M1A2SEP at the vehicle maintenance instruction facility signified the emerging role of armor at Fort Benning, Ga. Featuring state-of-the-art classrooms and hands-on training facilities, it required 800,000 cubic yards of concrete to enhance the support for these 70-ton tanks. ABOVE: The Gen. John Shalikashvili Mission Command Center will be the new home for most of the staff of U.S Army Europe and is located at Clay Kaserne, Wiesbaden, Germany. The quality, sustainable, LEED® Silver-certified, state-of-the-art facility was constructed by the USACE Europe District in 22 months.

on the common Military Missions goal of being the nation’s most effective and dynamic provider of military infrastructure and engineering services.”

During the surge, USACE was primarily a provider of engineering and construction services, but not responsible for full integration of all items required to meet the mission needs for the end user of the facility, he added, part of a delivery transformation that emphasized on-schedule delivery as the top priority.

“In the future, our ability to bring innovation to bear will be very important to our ability to deliver products,” Slockbower said. “Now we need to become systems integrators; like the old commercial, we may not make the product, but we make it better. What we deliver in this post-surge era, including providing unique contributions to Army Facility Strategy 2020, will shape the Army’s footprint and force structure requirements into the next decade.

“Our role is to help the Army determine how to make best use of the facilities we now have, where and how some can be repurposed, what needs to be repaired or replaced, [and] what gaps remain to execute the Army’s mission. In addition, in taking a systems approach to energy and sustainability, we are not just looking at individual buildings, but the overall infrastructure, helping the Army with development of an investment strategy to reduce energy consumption, to achieve net-zero effects for energy, water, and waste, and to leverage private capital to achieve the requirements of an integrated Army facility investment strategy.”

That applies to facilities within the United States as well as overseas, including support for any future, post-Operation Enduring Freedom/Operation Iraqi Freedom conflicts. Facing a decade of change as dramatic, albeit in different ways, as the one just completed, USACE’s Campaign Plan is the central focal point, providing the enterprise-level strategic view on how USACE will

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WIN deliver value to its customers and stakeholders. Slockbower then defines the MMSC as a “lens with which we look to shape future initiatives, as well as strategies and actions that will eventually be integrated in[to] the USACE Campaign Plan.”

Another planning document, the “Military Missions Portfolio of Initiatives,” aligns with USACE’s transformation from strategic surge to post-surge. The original intent was to determine how best to meet potential future needs, but recent history has re-emphasized the unpredictability of the future, so the effort instead focused on determining the suite of competencies that would be needed to deal with any and all eventualities.

“That was the basis for our Campaign Plan, to identify the competencies needed for the business we are in, competitive competencies. Ultimately, if you want to be best-in-class, you have to have critical success factors that really define that. For example, systems thinking – the ability of this organization to build connections with others to help us bring in the best talent,” Slockbower explained.

“That’s a long-term, enduring framework. In the next five years, we need to determine what we really need to focus on to find solutions for our customers. And what is the most important thing for the individual to have to be of value to the organization?

The ability to bring solutions to the toughest problems.”

The heart of the MMSC are the Mission and Direction Statements, which define both mission and organization to lay the foundation for common understanding and unity of effort across the enterprise:

• Military Missions Mission Statement – “Provide premier engineering, construction, real estate, stability operations, and environmental management products and services for the Army, Air Force, other U.S. Government agencies and foreign governments.”

• Military Missions Strategic Direction Statement – “To be the Nation’s most effective and dynamic public engineering and technical services organization. In collaboration with customers, partners, and allies we anticipate and deliver innovative and sustainable solutions that support military readiness and operations, and national policies and objectives. We are a values-based organization and a force-multiplier with domestic and global capabilities.”

In identifying USACE core competencies to carry it forward as a high-value military and national asset, the MMSC determined those complex sets of organizationwide skills, knowledge, and resources that have evolved over time, are hard to replicate, imitate, or transfer, and cannot be contracted from external sources. By retaining veteran employees with that knowledge – and ensuring the next generation learns and sustains those skills – they can be applied across missions and product lines indefinitely.

The MMSC broadly identifies five essential USACE core competencies: • Execution Focus – The capability to execute complex programs and projects globally; • Integrated Project Delivery – Being able to marshal interdisciplinary teams with a full array of capabilities to execute facility and infrastructure programs and projects globally;

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Workers continue vertical construction at the 9th Commando Kandak project near Herat, Afghanistan. USACE is building a base that will provide Afghan commandos with housing, dining, office, and other facilities.

• Accountability – Delivering products and services with a full understanding of customer requirements and the importance of maintaining public trust as an embedded part of the military missions culture, people, processes, and systems; • Diverse Technical Knowledge – Accessing technical capabilities from across the three USACE mission areas – military, civil works, and RDT&E (Research, Development, Test, and Evaluation) – to leverage the diverse range of scientific and technical expertise; and • Expeditionary Support – The ability of USACE overseas elements to quickly respond to and support global contingency operations through Field Force Engineering and reach-back capabilities.

“We also have a suite of skills that sit above those core competencies: our ability to do risk management; provide effective and efficient delivery, to have a value proposition targeted to each unique customer; focus on continual process improvement; and our ability to reach across this organization, in virtual ways, and bring the skills and talents of 35,000 individuals to bear at the right time and place to solve problems,” Slockbower said.

“Lastly, the highest level that defines us is strategic sense-making – scanning the horizon for the next problems and opportunities and building the capacity to solve those problems; looking at systems, not isolation; building critical alliances; learning and

innovation, taking knowledge from those who know to those who need to know, at the right time and place; and being an organization that can feed the passions of people. Now more than ever, our engineers are faced with managing complexity while driving innovation to meet the current and future infrastructure needs of our military and our nation. They are really more like ‘solutioneers’ as they blend creative imagination with technical know-how.”

“The strategic concept and portfolio is important – how you think, how we adjust, how we think, about our value to our customers and their constantly changing needs,” Slockbower concluded. “As we come out of an era of expeditionary ops, we clearly need to spend a lot of intellectual capital, time, and energy on how to apply the lessons learned to position ourselves in the shaping phase for the next mission.”

“It is important we do not lose our focus on expeditionary capabilities, but we also need to improve our ability to help make investment decisions. There will be declining resources – but we are expected to get the same or better effects. So an important part of what we will do is to develop the business sense required to take the technology our labs develop, the engineering and science we are applying, and know how to help our customers and stakeholders make the right decisions.”

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USACE IS ON THE FRONTLINE OF DOMESTIC Contingency Operations

By J.R. Wilson

F

or the U.S. military, “contingency operations” traditionally refer to overseas engagements by one or more uniformed services, typically involving some level of combat.

A major exception to that is that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) can be deployed within the United States on domestic contingency operations, usually in response to a natural or man-made disaster. But how USACE responds nationally is an evolving process.

According to Karen Durham-Aguilera, USACE director of Contingency Operations and Homeland Security, “When we refer to ‘all hazards contingency response,’ it truly means all hazards – tornadoes, hurricanes, wildfires, man-made events. That is a change from how we used to do things. We evolved into that because the skills needed for overseas contingency ops are the same skills you need to respond domestically.

“So many of our folks, who have deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, are the same ones who spent time in New Orleans after Katrina and have responded to other domestic events, such as Hurricane Isaac [late August 2012]. A few years ago, all those would have been addressed separately.”

That dual role is possible because of the nature of USACE’s missions, both domestically and outside the continental United States, that largely fall into the category of public works engineering. USACE missions include iconic dam building in the United States, school and medical clinic construction overseas, and providing infrastructure and prime power for Army facilities at home and abroad.

Emergency – contingency – operations may incorporate some aspect of those, as well. When a natural disaster exceeds local and state capabilities to respond, the president, at the request of one or more state governors, issues a declaration of the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act (commonly referred to as the Stafford Act), authorizing the use of federal resources.

Under the National Response Framework, which integrates 27 federal agencies and departments plus the Red Cross, USACE is assigned as the coordinator for Emergency Support Function (ESF) #3 – public works and engineering – and, during disasters, is the primary agency for response activities, such as providing ice, water, and temporary power. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is the primary for ESF #3 recovery activities and can assign USACE missions to assist in the execution of recovery missions, including debris management.

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“That is a domestic authority through which we support FEMA and DHS [Department of Homeland Security],” Durham-Aguilera said.

Typical ESF #3 operations performed by USACE also include: • participation in damage and needs assessments; • management and emergency contracting to support public health and safety; • assessments of damaged streets, bridges, ports, waterways, airfields, and other facilities necessary for emergency access to disaster victims; • emergency restoration of critical public facilities (including temporary restoration of water supplies and wastewater treatment systems); • emergency demolition or stabilization of damaged structures and facilities; and • technical assistance, including inspection of private residential structures and commercial structures.

The official Stafford process for a domestic operation begins with a governor contacting the president, who then tasks FEMA to respond. However, Hurricane Katrina and other events in recent years demonstrated the need for more advanced planning and coordination by all agencies – local, state, and federal.

“Katrina was a game-changer and wake-up call,” Durham-Aguilera said of improvements those agencies have made in the past decade. “We refined that with Hurricane Gustav in 2008, so by the time of Isaac, our response was as good and fast as it ever has been. But we still struggle to improve some areas.

“Every storm has a different track, characteristic, and dynamic, so people who were not flooded during Katrina did not think Isaac would be a problem. Isaac also was a big rain event, which Katrina was not. So that rain event hovered and did a lot more damage than people expected. Some of the public perished during Isaac because they did not understand the dangers of that storm. That is really on our minds.”

Even so, Isaac demonstrated how lessons learned and other improvements are being applied to USACE domestic contingency operations and how USACE works with FEMA and other agencies.

“FEMA keeps an eye on the weather and where they might be called in. And where we see that, we go with FEMA, sending advanced teams to areas that may be hit,” she explained. “The new FEMA director’s philosophy is ‘go big, go fast, go smart’ – but also have federal teams already there. So when the Stafford Act

USACE photo by Chris Gardner, New York District public affairs

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Seen here on Nov. 1, 2012, USACE New York District drift collection vessels work to clear tons of drift and debris from the New York-New Jersey Harbor after Hurricane Sandy, which made landfall just south of Atlantic City, N.J., on Oct. 29. The district’s Caven Point Marine Terminal suffered extensive damage during the hurricane, but despite the destruction of the main facility, district personnel continued to support missions to ensure safe navigation of the harbor. USACE domestic contingency operations support the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) before, during, and after natural disasters, as well as in the event of man-made disasters, at the request of FEMA.

is triggered, we can go ahead and launch our teams. That is a big change post-Katrina. Before that, everything was very linear and it took a long time to get teams into place.

“We also do anything dealing with federally owned systems and work out arrangements on the ground with local authorities. That is a big improvement – teams set up ahead of time so we don’t have to wait until something happens to get to know the people we need to work with locally. One thing I do as the director is create a battle roster of teams around the nation, with their assignments, so we can deploy them as quickly as possible. It may sound easy, but a lot of rigor goes into making that happen.”

All that was demonstrated during emergency responses to major natural disasters in 2011-2012, from massive flooding in the Midwest to Hurricanes Isaac and Sandy.

Classified as a Category 1 hurricane less than 12 hours before landfall on Aug. 28, 2012, Isaac hit the Louisiana coast with 60 mph winds and a maximum surge of 6 to 12 feet along the central Gulf Coast. That surge and 10 to 19 inches of rainfall throughout southeastern Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida caused significant flooding and left nearly a million people without electricity at some point during the storm and

its aftermath. Remnants of Isaac continued to plague the region through Sept. 5.

According to USACE’s assessment of its response to Isaac, the $14.6 billion Greater New Orleans Hurricane and Storm Damage Risk Reduction System (HSDRRS), begun after Katrina, “worked as intended and significantly reduced flood risk in New Orleans.

As part of the HSDRRS, USACE has strengthened and improved nearly 133 miles of levees, floodwalls, gated structures, and pump stations, forming the new Greater New Orleans perimeter system.”

“When Katrina hit, there were two authorized hurricane projects – Lake Pontchartrain and the West Bank – neither of which were complete. Those were examples of the slow funding typical of such projects,” Durham-Aguilera said.

“HSDRRS was unique in being funded up front, without a cost-benefit ratio and for a specific purpose – to complete and improve what already was being done, but also bringing in unique features. There is nothing else like it in the U.S., although there are similar systems in the Netherlands, U.K., and Russia.”

As a result of Isaac’s storm surge, an 18-mile stretch of 8-foot non-federal levees in Plaquemines Parish were overtopped. USACE helped drain the floodwaters and is performing additional

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As of early September 2012, USACE had received more than 40 Isaac-related FEMA mission assignments totaling more than $20 million and involving some 400 USACE employees. That included deployment of USACE emergency power teams to Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana; commodities, debris, and temporary roofing teams to Louisiana; bottled water to Alabama and Louisiana; emergency command and control vehicles to assist with on-site communications in Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana; and coastal engineers to Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida.

“This was truly an ‘all hazard’ contingency response that reached across an extensive geographic area. Our teams were trained, prepared, and ready,” DurhamAguilera said. “Along with FEMA and the interagencies, we anticipate the needs of the states’ emergency managers and communities to ensure we have the right plan, the right people, and the right supplies to best serve the public. People count on us; our folks from districts, divisions, the 249th [Engineer Battalion (Prime Power)], our headquarters, and others contributed mightily and met the myriad challenges wrought by Isaac.”

At any time, with what USACE does in terms of formal public works, engineering, and water resources, it is preparing, responding, recovering, or determining what can be done with local communities to mitigate the damage future events may bring. That ranges from training USACE temporary power, housing, and engineering teams to storm response exercises with the U.S. Coast Guard and other federal and state agencies.

“We put in temporary levees and barriers for the flood fight, deliver pumps and sand bags to communities that need them, map areas that may be flooded by future storms. And if the Stafford Act is triggered, we have numerous missions worked out with FEMA,” she said. “We can tap agencies such as EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] to deal with wastewater or debris, with HUD [U.S. Housing and Urban Development] on shelter; we also

The 17th Street Outfall Canal Interim Control Structure in operation in New Orleans, La., on Aug. 30, 2012, following Hurricane Isaac. Once the Lake Pontchartrain water level triggers were reached, USACE closed the structure’s gates to prevent surge from entering the outfall canal. Whenever the gates are closed, the structure’s 43 pumps are used to evacuate drainage water from the interior of the city, which is a domestic contingency operation.

help stand up interagency recovery task forces to help states leverage federal and other programs and determine what else we might do.

“Anybody can call on us directly for help or technical assistance; what we can do comes down to legal authority and funding. We have funded planning assistance for states; we also can direct them to existing programs in other agencies. We don’t have to be the lead, but spend a lot of time on collaboration. We also work with state storm or dam safety officials to identify problems they see. So we may not always have to have an ongoing project for someone to call on us for help, but the better state and local agencies are equipped, the better they can help their communities during a disaster.”

Specially trained and certified subjectmatter experts lead – and staff – USACE field teams and advise local, state, and federal officials on national contingency operations. They go through specific formal USACE coursework, a federal readiness support center in Mobile, Ala., and associated training by other parts of the

Department of Defense, DHS, and state agencies. That includes team training, hydraulic modeling, and evacuation models for state and local managers. And a lot of the technical expertise covered is developed by USACE’s eight research laboratories.

The big domestic disasters – natural and man-made – since the turn of the century have led to numerous significant changes for USACE’s approach to contingency operations.

“We were fortunate to be able to have a huge construction program, funded up front, and creation of a huge team from multiple agencies, to go in and do HSDRRS, for example. To do new design criteria and modeling in just a few years is probably the most significant challenge we have had; it is amazing to do billions of dollars in construction programs in only a few years,” Durham-Aguilera concluded.

“I’ve been in the Corps a long time and all over the world, but I have never seen a better interagency cooperation effort than is now in place. We are in a totally different universe than [before] Katrina.”

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OCONUS Contingency OpS: USACE HELPS TO BUILD HOST-NATION CAPACITY

By J.R. Wilson

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he U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) is a global component of the Defense Department, providing civil works and engineering support to the nation’s nine combatant commands (COCOMs) and to the State Department for both military and foreign policy goals. But when American warfighters go into battle, USACE turns its focus to contingency operations outside the continental United States (OCONUS).

Such operations share much with USACE’s domestic contingency ops mission (see “USACE is on the Frontline of Domestic Contingency Operations” on p. 100) and with its peacetime projects overseas. However, meeting battlefield requirements for power, facilities, infrastructure, water resources, etc., also requires a more heavily military approach than is typical for the largely civilian USACE. For the past 11 years, OCONUS contingency operations have fallen to the Transatlantic Division (TAD), working with Central Command (CENTCOM), which is responsible for the Middle East (including Egypt) and Central and Southwest Asia (including Iraq and Afghanistan).

“We have projects in about 18 of the 20 the nations in that COCOM, with the largest effort currently in Afghanistan,” Maj. Gen. Michael Eyre, TAD commanding general, said, adding the TAD/CENTCOM connection is unique among USACE components and COCOMs. “The Europe District has a relationship with EUCOM [European Command] and AFRICOM [Africa Command], PACOM [Pacific Command] has the Pacific Ocean Division, and so on. Those have an alignment to support those COCOMs; we’re the only one with a direct reporting relationship.

So we are involved with the planning of missions, operations, training, etc. But the biggest difference is our mission in Afghanistan.”

According to USACE Interagency and International Services Chief James “Jim” Balocki, Afghanistan – and Iraq before, having fallen under the same USACE division and COCOM – provided a special learning experience for overseas contingency operations.

“We have gone through a very deliberate process, listening and learning lessons from those 11 years of deployments, and are beginning to institutionalize those into a playbook and make them part of our future doctrine. It’s not just this organization that will face such problems or just in CENTCOM, but in other regions where we will have to deploy in the future,” he said.

“The Corps maintains an expeditionary mindset of capabilities, where we can put small, tailored units on the ground to

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perform either narrow or broad missions. These teams, battlerostered within our districts and deployable on immediate notice, can provide a broad range of skills to the COCOMs. We also are able to stand up operations in a contingency environment that are not enduring organizations, but ramp up to meet a commander’s immediate needs.”

USACE has deployed more than 10,000 civilians, all volunteers, into Iraq and Afghanistan to support contingency ops and billions of dollars in work since the end of 2001. Balocki said that represents a rare ability to undertake projects in some of the toughest environments on Earth, working 16-hour days, six or even seven days a week, for up to a year at a time.

USACE’s “Military Missions Strategic Direction 2012” and portfolio of initiatives takes the lessons learned in Southwest Asia and lays out how USACE will employ them in future OCONUS contingency operations in support of U.S. warfighters, from all services, and the COCOMs. The key element identified in that document is matching USACE capabilities to COCOM requirements to develop efficient and effective solutions to expeditionary challenges.

That also includes leveraging “capabilities across the USACE enterprise to build relationships toward an Army approach to operational energy that integrates planning, water security and base camp design. Emphasis will be placed on the use of appropriate technologies (to include renewable energy sources, water reuse and others) and integrate initiatives with other Army elements to provide optimal solutions,” according to the portfolio.

“We have two liaison offices, one with CENTCOM and one with 3rd Army, who do the daily interactions,” Eyre said. “In Afghanistan, we have a headquarters augmentation cell in theater providing support for our two forward-deployed districts – TAD-North and TAD-South. Our district and area offices work directly with the regional commands and take that down to the brigade combat teams and, based on local requirements, different forward operating bases.”

A lot of that work is related to NATO Training MissionAfghanistan and U.S. Forces-Afghanistan projects, under the Afghan Security Forces Fund, to provide the Afghan National Army and Police with installations and infrastructure. Others involve working with various Afghan ministries, the International Security Assistance Force-Afghanistan, State Department, and U.S. embassy on projects falling under the Afghan Infrastructure Fund.

U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communications Specialist 1st Class (SW/AW) Chris Fahey, NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan

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Afghan National Army explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) students Sgt. Zahidullah Khairkhwa (right) and 1st Lt. Mohammed Naquib Sherzad ready an MMP-30 EOD robot for use during a training exercise at the Kabul Military Training Center, May 27, 2012. Afghan EOD students demonstrated their skills during a graded practical exercise in which they were tasked to render safe a command-wire improvised explosive device while ensuring maximum safety and minimum damage to property. NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan is a coalition of 38 troop-contributing nations charged with assisting the government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan in generating a capable and sustainable Afghan National Security Force ready to take lead of their country’s security by 2014.

“With our priority effort in Afghanistan, we work with all services because that is a joint effort, so you see a lot of coalition staff and personnel, depending on the specific project. We also will

work with the minister of public works or whomever, depending on the project,” he continued.

TAD already has had two lessons learned sessions on Iraq and one for Afghanistan, involving both TAD-North and TAD-South.

The primary lessons, Eyre noted, have involved organization.

“If we have another contingency op in CENTCOM, we now have a USACE division headquarters ready to deal with that.

When we first went into Afghanistan, we had to stand up an Afghanistan Engineer District [from scratch],” he said.

“Another big lesson learned is the use of USACE-wide reachback, which we demonstrated with our project awards this year, using 15 districts in the U.S. helping us out so the forwarddeployed units could focus on getting work done in theater.

Using more reachback can reduce our forward footprint, with fewer personnel, or having them in theater for shorter amounts of time. But while we can do a lot with reachback, we still need the right folks forward, some military, mostly civilian, to provide leadership.”

Personnel, especially given the rotation of assignments common to those in uniform, has been a challenge throughout the current conflict. That is expected to be even more difficult in the spartan years to come as USACE strives to improve both efficiency and effectiveness, yet be ready to grow quickly to meet any future contingency.

“It has been challenging to maintain the key leadership positions, so we really have to look at civilian manning of all the districts,” Eyre said, adding OCONUS contingency ops also face a common problem with USACE domestic efforts.

“Another piece – and this will be hard – is USACE business practices and procedures that may work well in the U.S. have to be more flexible OCONUS. “At times, there are different levels of authority and timelines, which work, but they don’t have the responsiveness we need. We can’t always wait weeks or months, although you can’t work on projects until the funding is approved. We don’t have any prework funding available to us right now, so we have to wait. But we are looking for what we can do to make things more responsive to the needs on the ground, which may require a change in law or policy or processes.”

The high operations tempo and need to quickly evolve new processes to meet urgent needs in Southwest Asia already are giving way to a more traditional set of requirements on USACE to support future OCONUS contingency ops, especially as the size of the military is sharply reduced.

“Our structure [in Afghanistan] will change significantly, going from two forward-deployed districts to a single in the next year. That’s really a success. Beyond that, I expect those district offices will transition to the Middle East District, similar to what happened in Iraq when we stood down the Gulf Region District. There is now an area office that is now co-located with the embassy in Baghdad, and a lot of their work is infrastructure support for FMS [Foreign Military Sales],” Eyre said.

“However, the Transatlantic Division is here for the long term and must have the capability to build ourselves back up to support

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LEFT: Col. Robert M. Taradash, commander, Task Force Protector (left), Col. Robert A. Sinkler, commander, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) Rock Island District (middle), and Lt. Gen. Thomas P. Bostick, USACE commanding general and chief engineer, tour the detainee housing unit at the Detention Facility in Parwan (DFIP), in the Parwan province of Afghanistan, on June 6, 2012, to determine current and future infrastructure requirements. Bostick serves as the senior military officer overseeing most civil works infrastructure and military construction in the United States, but USACE also has a key role in support of overseas contingency operations, including those in Afghanistan. RIGHT: Kajaki Dam powerhouse, as seen April 8, 2012, in Helmand province, Afghanistan, is on tap for repairs by USACE.

any future contingency in CENTCOM or build another engineering district. But that will be based on mission requirements, wherever that theater may be. We also are looking at whether we can, with other COCOM support, augment any other Corps district that may need additional resources anywhere in the world.”

Accomplishing that will bring the past decade of lessons learned deeply into future USACE planning, training, equipping, and even closer collaboration with the COCOMs. However, budget constraints mean USACE cannot simply maintain all the personnel and materiel it would need to do that.

“We have identified the minimum core organization requirements we need going forward, the baseline of folks we need for, say, the next five years in TAD, although that may be adjusted based on other requirements. We would look internally to USACE for resources, people with specific experience and expertise, which really is how we operate now with both a division headquarters and districts forward. If we don’t have the internal numbers, we would go outside and contract-hire to meet those requirements, which we also now do, depending on the length and expertise involved.

“For TAD,” He said, “our whole focus now is MATT: Mission – which we have to complete while preparing for the next contingency; Affordable – we can’t have too many resources on a project; Transition – we will be changing based on conditions

on the ground and mission requirements, with our workload decreasing as we go from two area offices to one; Transformation – what will we look like going forward, with the Middle East District as the enduring operation in charge of remaining work in Afghanistan.”

In the end, however, perhaps the biggest challenge facing TAD, CENTCOM, and their equivalents around the globe is money – how much and for what applications Congress approves funding as budgets contract in the coming years.

“At what point do we say we can’t take on any additional projects because they won’t be done by the end of December 2014 or we don’t feel it’s the right type of project going forward? At what point do we say there will be no more U.S. funding for certain projects?” Eyre concluded. “All the projects we are doing have been identified, but at what point in the next two years do we say we aren’t taking on anything new? We already are looking at no more U.S. military facility funding [in Southwest Asia].

“So our intent is to complete [currently funded] construction and turn it over to the end user, whomever that may be. But when we turn things over, we want to make sure they can operate and maintain the facilities and equipment we have put in place, can handle preventive maintenance, order spare parts, etc.

So we have efforts ongoing in Afghanistan to support that – a core cadre of USACE civilians, but mostly Afghan nationals.”

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The 249th ENGINEER BATTALION (PRIME POWER) Generating power in peace, war, and moments of humanitarian need

By J.R. Wilson

T

he U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ (USACE) 249th Engineer Battalion (Prime Power) – the Black Lions – is the only organization of its kind in the world. Its primary mission is to provide advice and technical assistance in all aspects of electrical power and distribution systems and to generate and distribute low- to medium-voltage electrical power in support of Army operations and disaster relief around the globe.

“We are the only prime power capability the government has, deployed worldwide to provide power and electrical systems to support Army operations,” said Lt. Col. Calvin C. Hudson II, battalion commander. “Prime power derives from the ability to operate centralized power plants and provide oversight of facilities for electric installation. What we call ‘prime’ is low- to mediumvoltage electricity. Low voltage is like the power breakers in your home, anywhere up to 400 volts; from 600 to 69,000 volts is medium; anything above 69,000 volts is high voltage.

“Prior to our standup, prime power expertise was provided by small detachments spread across the globe. We recognized the need to create an organization to coordinate prime power support and develop leadership. So we stood up the 249th in 1994, consolidating those detachments as four companies, two at Fort Belvoir, Va. – HQ Company and Charlie Company – and one each at Fort Bragg, N.C., and Schofield Barracks, Hawaii. We also have an Army Reserve component in Rhode Island, which does our overhead work [overhead lines, bucket trucks] wherever the 249th is deployed.”

The battalion’s services include electrical power requirement assessment and production; transformer inspection and test analysis; maintenance and repair of power plants, substations, and government-owned or -managed transmission and distribution systems, circuit breaker and relay maintenance; infrared surveys; medium-voltage electrical contractor oversight; and training personnel to operate and maintain prime power distribution and generation equipment.

“We would first seek to push our equipment into the area and, if combat, would have dedicated equipment there. If disaster, we have a worldwide contract office that can get equipment wherever

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it is needed. So in either case, we probably wouldn’t work directly with the host nation,” Hudson explained.

“Normally there is minimum involvement with a host nation when it comes to electrical, unless we need to tie into their local grid. We did in Iraq, for example, so they could sustain themselves and take care of their power plants,” Hudson said.

Under the current structure, Alpha Company Headquarters and four prime power platoons are based in Hawaii, providing support to USACE requirements in the Pacific, although that may be supplemented as needed by other companies. Bravo Company and four prime power platoons are based out of Fort Bragg, N.C., and Charlie Company and four prime power platoons are co-located with Headquarters and Headquarters Company (HHC) in Fort Belvoir, Va. Delta Company, the Reserve component of the 249th, is headquartered out of Cranston, R.I. The prime power military occupational specialty is so technical and so rare that the 249th must operate its own school. The U.S. Army Prime Power School, managed by 249th personnel, trains all prime power Soldiers who enter the battalion. It recently relocated from Fort Belvoir to a new campus at Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., where it provides students with a yearlong course of instruction, both theory and hands-on, that includes math, physics, engineering, and power plant operations and maintenance.

“Most students enter as E-4s [specialists, and less often corporals] and leave as E-5s [sergeants], with an AA [associate degree] in electrical engineering,” Hudson explained. “It’s a full-time faculty, plus some outside college professors who teach some courses.

They normally teach three classes, 30 students each, per year; in reality, the school typically produces about 70 to 75 Army graduates a year, all going to the 249th. We also have students from the Navy – all prime power production specialists – and a few from the Air Force. There have been no foreign students to date, but that may change soon.”

Delta Company, the all-Reserve unit, has its headquarters and three platoons in Cranston, and a fourth platoon at Fort Belvoir.

“We only had Alpha, Bravo, and HHC to begin with; we stood up Charlie [Company] in 2008 at Fort Belvoir because

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DoD photo by E.J. Hersom

Soldiers with C Company, 249th Engineer Battalion (Prime Power), install electrical generator equipment at a Carteret, N.J., fuel depot that lost power during Hurricane Sandy, Nov. 6, 2012. The 249th is a one-of-kind unit within the government whose mission is to deploy worldwide to provide power and electrical systems to support Army details and disaster relief operations.

requirements to deploy in theater and to disasters had us spread very thin, including more rapid than optimum reset time,” Hudson said.

The 249th has a small command contingent of officers, with the bulk of its members being noncommissioned officers, primarily because the Prime Power School is restricted to E-4s and E-5s.

Since its final reinstatement in USACE, the 249th has provided prime power in the majority of the nation’s major military operations, including response to the 9/11 attacks on New York City and the Pentagon, Operations Iraqi Freedom (OIF), Enduring Freedom (OEF), Noble Eagle, Provide Comfort, Uphold Democracy, Support Hope, Joint Endeavor, Joint Guard, and a wide range of disaster relief missions, domestic and international. In those, it has earned three Superior Unit Awards, four Itschner Awards, and three Sturgis Awards.

“We have been continuously deployed to war since 2001, starting with Afghanistan, and been in both theaters throughout. We normally have two platoons deployed to Afghanistan because we are spread throughout the nation, which also was the case in Iraq,” Hudson said. “We’ve also been pretty busy with disasters. In post-OEF/OIF, we probably will more frequently be called to respond to disasters.

“We have 420 Soldiers, about 290 to 300 prime power production specialists who go out on missions. In terms of command and control, we normally report to the commander on the ground, detached from the battalion for ops control, although we still have administrative control. If the mission changes, the commander on the ground will call us to request a change in our mission, which may require additional equipment or personnel.”

The three active-duty companies typically rotate through three primary yearlong postures. One will be assigned to support deployed forces in overseas contingency operations. A second will stand ready to respond to disasters as part of the National Response Framework (under which USACE is assigned as the primary agency for Emergency Support Function #3, public works and engineering). The third will focus on training, from weapons qualification to mandatory Army continuing education classes, in a “prepare to deploy on order” posture.

When called on to deploy, the 249th’s missions begin and end with area commanders or FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency), acting through USACE. “Requests come from the COCOMs [combatant commands], through USACE, which tasks us. Or if it comes from

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U.S. Army photo by Brooks Hubbard

TOP: Members of the 249th Engineer Battalion (Prime Power) work on electrical lines at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, August 2011. ABOVE: Soldiers with the 249th Engineer (Prime Power) Battalion visit the Red Hook housing complex in Brooklyn that lost power during Hurricane Sandy, Nov. 7, 2012. The Soldiers were working through FEMA and with city and state officials to conduct assessments to determine if and how electrical power could safely be installed. Note the high water mark they are inspecting.

FEMA, it also goes to USACE. So all our missions come from the Corps,” Hudson said, adding that the determination of when their job is finished is fairly basic.

“When the lights are on. The requests come to do assessments for critical facilities and once we have completed those missions and provided the resources or fixes, we typically are released by the COCOM. “For domestic disaster relief, that decision would be made by USACE or FEMA. Once our mission is complete and no other requirements come in for assessments or hookups, we are released.”

Post-OEF/OIF reductions in the size and deployment of the Army – and budget cuts expected to get more severe in each year of the coming decade – may not affect the 249th to the extent other military units are anticipating, Hudson predicted.

“I don’t think it will really have a big effect on us. Our mission will change some, probably doing more installation missions that have been contracted out [during the war], so our workload actually may increase. And we still will have the mission to respond to national disasters,” he said.

Hudson believes a dedicated prime power battalion is vital to USACE’s military missions and support for disaster relief.

“I’m very proud of these guys – they always manage to do the impossible, conducting their missions in a professional, efficient, and thorough manner.

As subject-matter experts in power, they can use their skill sets and lessons learned and, as a dedicated battalion, can better enhance our capability of response as a single point of contact,” he concluded.

“We are the only such unit in the Department of Defense. There are somewhat similar units in the Navy, but smaller and cannot sustain themselves for long deployments because they don’t have as many people or the experience and expertise in a greater variety of missions. Experience is the best teacher and we have a vast amount of that.”

Delta Company 249th Engineer Battalion (Prime Power) photo

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Built To Order Answering the nation’s historical challenges

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he evolution of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) has mirrored the nation it serves. One of the most enduring themes of the two-century history of USACE is that as technology has developed, USACE has embraced it, reflecting its advance in the systems and facilities it has constructed to meet America’s challenges. Whether facing natural disasters or realigning military infrastructure, USACE has always built to order.

“The Corps of Engineers has been around for a long time,” said John Lonnquest, chief of the USACE Office of History. “What it has done has changed based on what the nation needs.”

In the 20th century, the United States’ needs grew exponentially. A burgeoning economy, population, and sense of ambition dictated the construction of a civil and military infrastructure to support it all. America’s maturation as a nation and as a world power was inextricably linked to the water.

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The Panama Canal

USACE did not build the Panama Canal. But without the expertise and dedication of USACE engineers, America’s efforts to complete the canal project might have failed just as those of the French did before them.

In 1904, the Theodore Roosevelt administration established the Isthmian Canal Commission to oversee the project. Its first chief engineer, John F. Wallace, formerly chief engineer and general manager of the Illinois Central Railroad, resigned a year later, unable to brook the lack of infrastructure, bureaucratic inefficiency, and tropical disease hampering it.

John Frank Stevens, who had built the Great Northern Railway, was subsequently appointed chief engineer. Stevens successfully argued for a change in the design to a canal and lock system, significantly improved canal project equipment and logistics, and

Photo courtesy of Office of History, Headquarters, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

By Eric Tegler

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Photos courtesy of Office of History, Headquarters, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

LEFT: The middle and lower Gatun Locks of the Panama Canal, looking north from the lighthouse on the west wall. In the distance is the Atlantic entrance of the canal, Oct. 27, 1913. CENTER: The Bonnet Carré Spillway in operation. Mississippi River, La., 1973. RIGHT: The Bonneville Works Progress Administration Project on the Columbia River, 40 miles east of Portland, Ore., Oct. 26, 1936. Shown is the Bradford Island fish ladder from the south end of the main dam.

collaborated in efforts to reduce the incidences of malaria. Nevertheless, he left the project in 1907 for more lucrative work.

President Theodore Roosevelt appointed Col. George W. Goethals to succeed Stevens as chief engineer, using the logic that “No. 1, an Army engineer couldn’t quit as the first two [civilian] engineers had and No. 2, the new plan called for locks, dams, concrete, things that Army engineers were used to dealing with,” USACE historian James Garber explained.

While the Panama Canal didn’t break new engineering ground, it was distinct in scale, location, and number of concurrent projects. Multiple dams, three sets of locks, and 10 miles of deep excavation were all done within a 60-mile radius. Railroad trains arrived at excavation locations once a minute to remove dirt, often carrying it 35 miles away.

“It was systems engineering at its finest,” Garber added.

Goethals abetted the process by dividing the engineering and excavation work into three divisions: the Atlantic Division, under Lt. Col. William L. Sibert; the Pacific Division, under Sydney B.

Williamson (the only civilian member of the executive team); and the Central Division, under Lt. Col. David D. Gaillard.

Each of these men made huge contributions to canal construction and its ultimate completion in 1914. The decision to bring in USACE’s engineers to run the endeavor was instrumental to its success, said Garber. It was the highlight of the officers’ careers and a prime example of USACE personnel at work on projects beyond its specific scope.

The Federalization of Flood Control

Though it seems unimaginable today, flood control was not considered the responsibility of the federal government prior to the 20th century.

Beforehand, a patchwork of public and private dams and levees, many built during the 1850s, provided minor relief – particularly on the Mississippi River, where routine flooding became a vexing problem as human activity encroached. A succession of

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Mississippi and other large tributary floods would provide the catalyst for federal and USACE engagement. Such dams and levees as were previously built were funded by taxing state and local populations. Many of these were neglected and later destroyed during the Civil War, after which an impoverished South was unable to restore them.

But growing pressure for flood control and navigation improvements led to calls for federal involvement and to the 1879 establishment of the Mississippi River Commission, a body that included three members from USACE. The commission was authorized to build and repair levees largely to aid navigation, but dramatic Mississippi flooding in 1912 and 1913 led to federal legislation aimed specifically at flood control.

The first Flood Control Act of 1917, pushed by Democratic Sen. Joseph E. Ransdell of Louisiana and Democratic Rep. Benjamin G. Humphreys II of Mississippi, appropriated $45 million for flood control on the Lower Mississippi. A second Flood Control Act came in 1928, spurred by a catastrophic 1927 Lower Mississippi River flood that inundated more than 16 million acres, forced 500,000 people from their homes, and killed more than 250 residents.

“That was the big one in terms of convincing the federal government to direct massive resources to the flood control problem on the Lower Mississippi River,” USACE Historian Matt Pearcy said.

The Flood Control Acts drew USACE into a mission it had not participated in prior to 1917. Following the 1927 flood, the chief of engineers, Maj. Gen. Edgar Jadwin, drew up a new comprehensive plan requiring that the water be dispersed through controlled outlets and floodways as well as confined between levees. Congress approved this plan in the 1928 Flood Control Act, placing its implementation under the control of USACE. The legislation launched what today is called the Mississippi River and Tributaries (MR&T) project.

The MR&T project, designed entirely by USACE, is still under way. In 2011, it successfully handled floodwaters surpassing those of 1927, safely dispersing them to the Gulf of Mexico.

USACE’s responsibility for national flood control was codified in the 1936 Flood Control Act, the passage of which was inextricably linked to the New Deal civil works and jobs programs of the era.

The New Deal

Many images, mental and pictorial, of the New Deal are typically of huge water-related projects. This perception dovetails

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appropriately with USACE’s historical focus on water resources management, a mission that continues today. But the 1930s drive for New Deal civil works projects engaged USACE as never before, expanding its emphasis from navigation and flood control to multipurpose projects.

New Deal water management construction including dams provided flood control, irrigation, navigation, water supply, hydropower, and recreation. Navigation remained a priority with the dredging of a 9-foot channel on the Upper Mississippi, Ohio, and several other major tributaries.

USACE’s civil works portfolio expanded significantly during the New Deal. A slew of projects studied for possible execution in the late 1920s suddenly received federal funding and went forward as a result of New Deal initiatives. Their intent and execution were later echoed in the “stimulus bill” of 2008. For example, USACE historians can point to 1930s-vintage photos of men at work on USACE projects along the southeast Washington, D.C., waterfront that compare with similar photos of projects performed under the recently completed American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. While the level of mechanization is far different, the symbolism is similar.

Military Construction, World War II

“The Corps of Engineers’ only significant military construction prior to World War II was limited to coastal fortifications. We started with civil works in 1824 and that’s largely what we did, with the exception of coastal fortifications – Fort McHenry and the like,” said Lonnquest.

In the 1920s and 1930s, USACE engineers were utterly absorbed administering the organization’s massive civil works program, whose budget in 1938 was nearly 400 times greater than its military budget. But as the United States geared up for war, the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration judged that the Army

U.S. Army Air Force Combat Command, Bolling Field, D.C. Image from Office of the Secretary of Defense History Office, Box 1313

The War Department Office building, better known as the Pentagon, Arlington, Va., shown under construction, Jan. 17, 1942. The building was completed in just 16 months.

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Photograph from CEBMCO Historical Summary, Plattsburgh Area Office, Atlas F Construction Directorate, Aug. 1, 1960-Oct. 31, 1962. Office of History, Military Files XVIII-18-3

Office of History, Headquarters, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

LEFT: Steel workers install concrete reinforcing bar into an Atlas missile silo, Plattsburgh, N.Y., circa 1961.

BELOW: Launch complex 37 under construction for Saturn rockets at Cape Canaveral, Fla., circa 1962.

Quartermaster Corps was not up to the task of handling the sheer volume of military construction it foresaw.

After the Destroyers for Bases Agreement of September 1940, Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Marshall assigned USACE the job of constructing air bases in the string of British Atlantic territories from Newfoundland to British Guiana. USACE was also asked to begin doing runway construction for the U.S. Civil Aeronautics Administration. In 1941, Congress formally transferred the military construction mission to USACE. Tapping USACE was a logical decision. It had engineer districts nationwide with experienced construction managers. It also had established relationships with all major American construction firms.

“Overnight the Corps’ workload literally exploded,” Lonnquest explained.

Over the next four years, USACE completed 27,000 military construction projects valued at $15 billion, including housing for 5.3 million Soldiers, and aircraft, tank, and ammunition plant construction. It built signature American facilities like the Pentagon, which it completed in 16 months. It put up the infrastructure for the Manhattan Project at a cost of $2 billion, employing 120,000 people in the effort to develop the atomic bomb. USACE also built overseas, preparing staging areas in England and carving out the Ledo Road in Burma.

Missile and Space Programs

Coastal fortifications mark not only the first military construction projects taken on by USACE, they also signify its role in building the bulwarks of homeland defense. By the 1950s, heavy masonry and gun emplacements had long been superseded. The world had entered the nuclear age, and defending the country required a response to new technology.

Though the Nike missile program had its origins in World War II, its development was spurred by Soviet deployment of the atomic

bomb and the Korean War. It became the world’s first successful, widely deployed, guided surface-to-air missile system. Nike missiles were a “last ditch” line of air defense for selected areas within the continental United States, held in reserve in the event that Air Force long-range fighter-interceptor aircraft failed to destroy any attacking bombers at a greater distance from their intended targets.

Between 1954 and 1958, USACE built 265 Nike missile batteries, largely along the East and West coasts. Washington, D.C., was protected by no less than 16 such batteries. However, at the same time the Nike program was taking shape, a new technology, long-range intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) armed with nuclear warheads, emerged as a mainstay of the nation’s strategic deterrent. The Atlas, Titan, and Minuteman ICBM programs required numerous launch and housing facilities, construction of which USACE began in 1957. Over the next 15 years, USACE would build 1,200 long-range missile facilities in an effort whose urgency was paramount.

“It was round-the-clock work,” USACE’s chief historian explained. “We had well over 20,000 people working away in all kinds of weather. One of the things that got John F. Kennedy elected in 1960 was the so-called ‘missile gap’ that the Air Force and Corps of Engineers rushed to close. The program was pushed full-bore, with contractors pouring concrete in North Dakota in wintertime.”

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The intense pace and scope of ICBM infrastructure construction gave USACE valuable experience in building facilities with characteristics that would suit another national challenge, Lonnquest stated.

“When the nation decides to develop a civilian space program, the Corps of Engineers is probably the world’s foremost missile engineering firm. NASA [National Aeronautics and Space Administration] turns to the Corps to build all of its missile test and deployment facilities.”

Doing so eliminated the need for NASA to establish its own construction organization. USACE built NASA facilities all along the Atlantic Coast, including the Kennedy Space Center. Owing to the size of the Saturn booster and other spacecraft and launch equipment, USACE also built locks and canals linking NASA facilities together for water transport.

The Big Dam Era – Postwar Civil Works

Postwar USACE civil works were in many respects a continuation of the building boom of the 1930s. Nothing better exemplifies USACE’s role in ambitious civil works projects than the dams it built during the 1950s and ’60s.

The postwar boom was accelerated by two additional factors.

The Flood Control Act of 1938 had authorized a raft of big dam projects but local funding requirements remained onerous, curbing the start of many projects. In 1941 and 1944, Congress passed legislation lowering the financial contribution local authorities were required to provide.

As fiscal constraints eased, the recognition that hydropower could aid in meeting the nation’s growing energy demand took hold. The

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vision of multipurpose water resources management initiated in the 1920s expanded. What began as a regulatory role in hydropower grew far bigger. By mid-century, USACE emerged as the largest constructor and operator of federal hydropower facilities.

Dam construction took off with projects like the John Day, Chief Joseph, and Folsom dams transforming the landscape. USACE had more than 20 multipurpose projects under construction by the mid-1950s. By 1975, the energy produced by USACE hydroelectric facilities was 27 percent of the total hydroelectric power production in the United States and 4.4 percent of the electrical energy output from all sources.

But the power came with an environmental cost, and the late 1960s witnessed a backlash that all but halted dam construction. The environmental movement’s influence was such that just a handful of dams were completed into the 1970s. Even so, USACE never got away from its water resources management role, and other multipurpose uses including water storage and recreation became a focus.

The Big Dam era is largely over. Garber pointed out that 400 large dams were built across the country from the 1930s through the 1960s. “They mark a distinct era, bordered on one side by the Depression and on the other side by the environmental movement.”

Not surprisingly, USACE adapted to environmental concerns and in 1990, Congress directed the secretary of the Army to include environmental protection as one of USACE’s primary missions.

The War on Terrorism

The aftermath of 9/11 resulted in a significant increase in USACE’s military construction, much of it overseas. However,

Office of History, Headquarters, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers photos

LEFT: Chief Joseph Dam under construction on the Columbia River near Bridgeport, Wash., circa 1949-57. Right: The pool at Table Rock Dam, near Branson, Mo., is near its peak on June 5, 1957.

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set up in Greece, where the government was battling a communist insurgency.

USACE projects in Afghanistan expanded to include construction of facilities for the Afghan National Police as well as roads, dams, and water management facilities in support of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

Following the spring 2003 Iraq War, USACE flowed forces into that country, standing up a provisional command in the summer of 2003. In 2004, the Gulf Regional Division (GRD) was established, dividing Iraq into three USACE districts: south, central, and north.

Military construction for U.S. and coalition forces was a large part of GRD’s workload, and over six years it built dozens of barracks, runways, and other maintenance and support facilities. USACE also played an important role in the reconstruction of Iraq, completing 8,500 construction projects valued at $15.5 billion, including water treatment and power generation plants, 300 roads, 112 railroad renovations, eight port reconstructions, 27 aviation projects at five airports, and reconstruction of 1,100 schools.

More than 5,200 USACE civilians worked in Iraq, with more at regional staging facilities in Kuwait and Qatar. Sadly, several were killed in the midst of the work. The Iraqi effort wound down in 2009 and USACE activities in Afghanistan are likely to decrease as the American presence in that country shrinks. The war on terrorism remains, however, and USACE will undoubtedly be engaged in it for years to come.

Afghanistan Engineer District-North photo

few Americans realize that it began almost immediately following the attacks.

After the collapse of the World Trade Center towers, approximately 1.5 million tons of debris was removed from the site, trucked to Lower Manhattan, and put on barges headed for the Staten Island landfill. There, every bit of debris more than onequarter inch in size was physically inspected. But New York City was struggling to move the process forward until USACE stepped in to help.

One of USACE’s standard missions is cleanup following natural disasters. As such, it has a close relationship with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and what it calls “Advanced Contract Initiatives” with large firms that specialize in cleanup. USACE called on contractor Phillips and Jordan, which designed a system to inspect the debris. Based on this massively detailed inspection, New York City police identified the remains of scores of people.

In the fall of 2001, the U.S.-led coalition went to war in Afghanistan, and the following year USACE was called upon to build facilities there for the new Afghan National Army.

USACE initially stood up an Afghan area office that later became a full-fledged engineer district and ultimately two USACE districts – north and south. It was not the first time USACE established an overseas district staffed by civilians; precedent was set in 1947 when the first foreign district was

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Savannah District photo

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LEFT: Afghan contractors construct a barracks building at Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan, in November 2008. USACE designs and manages the construction for a wide variety of projects in Afghanistan. CENTER: The USACE Savannah District managed the design and construction of a $304 million state-of-the-art headquarters facility, seen here June 15, 2011, for the Army Forces Command and Army Reserve Command at Fort Bragg, N.C. Both commands moved from Fort McPherson, in Atlanta, Ga., as part of the BRAC 2005 process. The 631,000-square-foot facility is comprised of four buildings that provide space for 3,085 people. The facility was turned over to the U.S. Army on June 20, one day ahead of the scheduled contract completion date. Construction began in December 2008. RIGHT: An aerial view of the completed U.S. Military Academy (USMA) Preparatory School built at West Point, Jan. 20, 2012. The 250,000-gross-square-foot facility includes barracks, a dining facility, academic and athletic buildings, three athletic fields, and an indoor athletic building. It accommodates 240 cadet candidates. The USMA Prep School was moved to West Point, N.Y., from Fort Monmouth N.J., as part of BRAC 2005.

Photo by Dan Desmet, New York District pubic affairs

BRAC

Beginning in the late 1980s, the Department of Defense (DoD) began to streamline operations by closing surplus military installations and consolidating similar functions and activities at the remaining bases. The latest round of the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) process began in 2005. In addition to closing military facilities, BRAC 2005 also reflected three new DoD initiatives: Army force structure changes that resulted from transitioning the service from a division- to a brigade-based force; the Integrated Global Presence and Basing Strategy that pulled American forces back from overseas locations to bases in the United States; and the expansion of the Army to respond to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In support of BRAC 2005, USACE designed and constructed $18 billion worth of new facilities for the Army, Navy, Reserve, and Air Force. Planning for the program began in 2004-2005, and the congressional legislation required that it be completed by September 2011. That ambitious schedule, coupled with a firm

budget ceiling, prompted USACE to adopt new work processes to complete the work on time. The changes encompassed in that new methodology, originally referred to as Military Construction (MILCON) Transformation, now serve as the foundation for USACE’s MILCON Business Process.

The goal of the new MILCON Business Process was to provide well-built, adaptable, and sustainable facilities in less time and at a lower cost for USACE’s military customers. The approach was predicated on three principles: the standardization of business processes and facilities; establishing standard requirements; and adopting commercial best practices. The hallmark of BRAC 2005 was the $4.5 billion Fort Bliss, Texas, expansion program. Ultimately, the USACE BRAC 2005 construction program included 275 projects involving more than 1,000 buildings.

Hurricane Katrina

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Photo by Samantha Reho, Fort Bliss Public Affairs Office

LEFT: Aerial view of the area near the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway (GIWW) before Hurricane Katrina. This became the site of the USACEconstructed $14.5 billion Hurricane and Storm Damage Risk Reduction System (HSDRRS) West Closure Complex (WCC). CENTER: The GIWWWCC is located approximately one-half mile south of the confluence of the Harvey and Algiers canals on the GIWW. This risk-reduction feature minimizes risk for residences and businesses in three parishes on the west bank of the Mississippi River. The WCC cost approximately $1 billion to build and is part of the HSDRRS built by USACE for the Greater New Orleans Region. RIGHT: Mike McCord, Department of Defense deputy comptroller, along with Col. Edward P. Manning, Fort Bliss Garrison commander, and Sandra Richardson, Department of Defense American Recovery and Reinvestment Act resources coordinator, monitor the progress of the construction site for the stimulus-funded Warrior Transition Unit facility at Fort Bliss, Texas, Feb. 16, 2010.

disaster response, cleanup, and water resources missions back at the top of its priority list and it made USACE front-page news.

USACE had more than 3,000 employees respond to the hurricane.

As a part of the recovery process, USACE and its support contractors installed 193,000 temporary “blue roofs” (coverage of damaged roofs with blue plastic tarpaulins), cleaned up 50 million cubic yards of debris, repaired more than 1,000 public buildings, provided tons of ice and water, and rebuilt 220 miles of levees in nine months.

The initial recovery amounted to $5 billion in effort and a federal construction investment of $14.5 billion. With completion of the new system, USACE provided the people of New Orleans with sorely needed hurricane protection. The 2005 hurricane was also a reminder that comprehensive systemwide water resources management is not just a strategy, but a necessity.

The Stimulus – American Recovery and Reinvestment

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 was one more piece of a historically large workload for USACE. Commonly

referred to as the “stimulus,” it was a response to the great recession of 2008. It was in many respects a return to the New Deal policies of the 1930s, aimed at providing jobs, investment in infrastructure, education, and health. Unlike the New Deal, it included an emphasis on “green” alternative energy.

For USACE, it presented the challenge of quickly initiating an array of “shovel ready” civil works projects with no concomitant increase in staffing. By finding more inventive ways to accomplish the mission and adopting effective commercial practices, USACE put the $4.5 billion allotted to work and largely completed the stimulus program in three years.

The demands of stimulus work again forced USACE to rethink and improve its processes, an exercise the organization has undertaken since its inception. The exercise will carry on as USACE faces a near-term future of fiscal austerity.

The nation’s demand for water is increasing and its infrastructure continues to age. USACE will be forced to address these challenges by again partnering with states and municipalities. As it faces these new demands, USACE will adapt as it always has, creating engineering solutions built to order.

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THE GREAT OUTDOORS In partnership with public and private collaborators at all levels, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is reconnecting Americans with their public lands.

By Craig Collins

T

o the American public, the water resources over which the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) is charged with stewardship – 422 lake and river projects in 43 states, comprising a total of about 12 million square miles of public lands and waters – are perhaps most conspicuously notable for their economic importance: They provide hydropower, irrigation, drinking water, flood protection, and navigability. USACE has always recognized, in addition to these benefits, the value of public lands in terms of health and vitality. Through its recreation program, USACE strives to connect Americans with these resources, providing opportunity in the form of trails, boat ramps, fishing piers, visitor centers, campsites, and other facilities.

Early 21st century statistics have lent a feeling of urgency to this effort: 80 percent of Americans now live in cities, and over the past 20 years, adults, children, and adolescents alike have suffered staggering increases in related health problems: physical inactivity, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and hypertension.

In the spring of 2010, these circumstances helped motivate President Barack Obama’s launch of a grassroots campaign to reconnect Americans to their public lands. “Few pursuits are more satisfying to the spirit,” he said upon launching the initiative, “than discovering the greatness of America’s outdoors.”

As steward of millions of acres of public lands that receive more than 370 million visits a year, USACE has been an integral partner in the America’s Great Outdoors (AGO) Initiative. Conducted at the community level, with a nationwide series of listening and decision-making sessions involving more than 10,000 Americans, AGO aims to bring forth community solutions for conserving natural resources and for getting more people outdoors – both for recreation and employment – on public and private lands.

Recreation’s Big Tent

The AGO listening sessions produced 10 distinct goals toward which communities and their partners would strive – several of which mirror the existing aims of USACE’s recreation program.

Through existing and new partnerships, USACE has been able to add to the results of its recreation program: raising awareness of and expanding access to opportunities while protecting and renewing natural resources.

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For example, when Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar established the National Water Trails System (NWTS) in early 2012, he established them as a class of national recreational trails under existing federal law. According to Mary Coulombe, USACE’s chief of natural resources, one of the criteria for becoming a National Water Trail is that it be managed as a community resource. “What’s different about these trails,” she said, “is that they are public/private partnerships.” One of the most popular trails in the system, the Mississippi River Great River Water Trail, is a 121-mile trail that ends at the St. Louis riverfront. While USACE has the lead for managing the trail – developing rest areas, campsites, interpretive exhibits, and wildlife viewing areas – it is just one of many public and private partners in an effort that includes local governments, businesses, and organizations such as the American Canoe Association.

Partnerships have long been key to the USACE strategy for expanding its outreach. In August 2012, the organization teamed with Bass Pro Shops® – an outfitter serving 75 million customers a year, many of whom fish, hunt, and boat in and around USACEmanaged lakes and waterways – to help improve wildlife and fisheries habitat, develop outdoor recreation opportunities, raise public awareness about invasive species, and save lives through water safety outreach efforts. USACE was also one of seven federal agencies to sign a memorandum of understanding with Catch A Special Thrill (C.A.S.T.) Foundation for Kids, a nonprofit organization that provides fishing and boating events designed to accommodate children with a wide range of special needs.

C.A.S.T. also conducts the Take a Warrior Fishing Program, designed to support military personnel and their families. In May 2012, C.A.S.T. provided a free fishing opportunity for more than 20 veterans and their families on Eastman Lake Recreation Area, a USACE flood control and irrigation reservoir in the Sierra Nevada foothills. This fall, three more events were held involving more than 100 veterans and their families.

The USACE recreation program maintains an active commitment to service members and veterans, setting aside facilities for servicemen and women, sponsoring events, and recruiting among them for work at USACE facilities – an activity that conforms neatly with one of the AGO Initiative’s primary goals: to provide quality jobs, career pathways, and service opportunities. On the public lands under its management, USACE has

USACE photo by park ranger John Baird

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers photo by John Hoffman

U.S. Army photo by Carlos J. Lazo

WIN hired former military personnel, many of them with a serviceconnected disability, as park rangers, maintenance workers, lock managers, wildlife managers, and other positions.

In 2009, USACE created the Veterans Curation Program (VCP), which provides Iraq and Afghanistan veterans and disabled veterans with work skills and experience through the rehabilitation and preservation of archaeological collections owned or administered

by USACE. During the planning, construction, and management of its operating projects, explained Coulombe, USACE has discovered thousands of archaeological sites and has recovered artifacts that date from the earliest prehistoric occupations of this continent to more recent historic periods. The accumulation of thousands of cubic feet of artifacts and associated records has resulted in a significant challenge to properly curate, package, and document all of the finds. “This project helps us take curated artifact collections and restore, rehabilitate, and record them using the most current and advanced methods available,” Coulombe said.

While advancing the public stewardship of USACE heritage assets, the VCP provides veterans with an opportunity to receive competitive pay while learning new job skills through technical training and human resources counseling. Veterans acquire skills in areas such as computer database management, records management, digital imaging and scanning technologies, and knowledge of archaeology and history. The VCP participants also receive counseling in interpersonal communication and writing improvement with a focus on résumé building. A significant percentage of VCP participants have secured permanent jobs because of the new skills they have acquired through this program, and others have either resumed or begun their college-level education.

Another goal of the AGO Initiative is to engage young people with the outdoors – an activity already at the heart of USACE’s recreation program in its partnership with organizations such as the Student Conservation Association (SCA). During the spring and summer of 2012, about 20 secondary and college student volunteers, at more than 30 USACE recreation areas around the country, collected 20,000 comments from visitors, providing the organization with valuable information about why people visit its recreation sites, how long they stay, and what they do there.

TOP: A veteran and a local volunteer show off their catch during the Take a Warrior Fishing Program at Eastman Lake, Calif., May 12, 2012. The event was the first of its kind for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Sacramento District. MIDDLE: Crystal Bryant, Veterans Curation Program (VCP) participant and U.S. Navy veteran, labels artifacts as part of the curation process at the VCP laboratory in Alexandria, Va., May 1, 2012. The Alexandria laboratory is one of three VCP labs funded and operated by USACE, joining the two labs previously opened in Augusta, Ga., in October 2009, and in St. Louis, Mo., in December 2009. Each site was selected because it is home to high populations of veterans and returning wounded warriors.

BOTTOM: In Hendersonville, Tenn., Old Hickory Lake park rangers Amy Redmond (middle), Kathryn Wall (in water), Noel Smith (left), and senior multimedia design engineer Richard Scott work on the “reach” section of the educational video “Reach, Throw, Row, but Don’t Go.”

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Photo courtesy of USACE

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers photo by George Jumara

LEFT: As part of President Barack Obama’s initiative to fuel the economy and create jobs by promoting travel and tourism, the administration rolled out in August 2012 a new design, improved navigation tools, and expanded content for Recreation.gov, the interagency website that guides visitors to 90,000 sites on federal lands such as national parks, wildlife refuges, waterways, forests, and recreation areas. RIGHT: A view below the dam at the J. Strom Thurmond Dam and Lake Project, in Clarks Hill, S.C., managed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) Savannah District. Thurmond Lake is one of the Southeast’s largest and most popular public recreation lakes and one of the 10 most-visited USACE lakes in the nation. Its authorized purposes are flood risk management; water quality; water supply; downstream navigation; hydropower production; fish and wildlife protection; and recreation.

Organizations such as the SCA will form the backbone of a larger group formed under the umbrella of the AGO Initiative: the 21st Century Conservation Service Corps (21CSC), a public/ private partnership to engage youth and veterans in hands-on service and job training experiences on public lands, waterways, cultural heritage sites, and community green spaces. 21CSC, devised by an advisory committee that included Coulombe, is inspired by the Depression-era Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), with one significant distinction: Youth who work for organizations – such as the SCA – under 21CSC will not be government employees, but will earn certification in knowledge and skill sets under the auspices of the program. “With 21CSC setting up the standards for these programs,” Coulombe said, “people will then know that these organizations offer substantive training and skill building in conservation work – and that after completing the program, they can compete for all kinds of employment opportunities.”

21CSC is a prime example of how the AGO Initiative serves to leverage the resources of existing partnerships to advance recreation and conservation goals. Since the launch of the initiative, USACE and other agencies have co-hosted more than 100 events at or on public lands and waters in conjunction with the first lady’s Let’s Move Outside! initiative. In June 2012, USACE hosted such an event at its Blue Marsh Lake Dam project in Pennsylvania, in which more than 1,000 visitors kayaked, hiked, fished, learned water safety, and took in exhibits and demonstrations from 43 regional organizations.

The AGO Initiative has also given a boost to the White House’s National Travel and Tourism Initiative, established by executive order and led by the secretaries of the Interior and Commerce.

The initiative, which seeks to increase both international and domestic tourism to the United States, recognizes the importance of public lands in attracting visitors, and a key component of this strategy has been the recent overhaul of the federal government’s Recreation.gov website. Until recently, Recreation.gov – a site that received about 150 million page views in 2011 – was a site devoted primarily to making camping and tour reservations and purchasing permits.

“Last winter,” said Coulombe, “the federal agencies – the Army, DoI [Department of the Interior], the Department of Agriculture, NOAA [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration], and others – all recognized it could be a much bigger resource.” The new site, unveiled in August 2012, is an expanded information portal with content about the varieties of activities available at certain sites – and within specific geographic or metropolitan areas.

“If people go to the website,” said Coulombe, “they can actually see a one- or two-day itinerary that will take them outside that metropolitan area to enjoy different activities and visit federal lands ... there’s information about the national parks, of course, but also about USACE reservoirs, which have great areas to go fishing, hunting, or camping.” To further extend its reach, Recreation.gov also features a free mobile phone application to browse and locate available sites for federal campsites, day-use facilities, cabins, and other resources – complete with maps and photos.

“It’s part of the strategy to provide more useable information, for a new and different kind of visitor, and it’s a permanent solution,” said Coulombe. “It’s not something that will come and go. We want to make it easier for people to get outside.”

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Building a Culture of Safety for Employees and Contractors

By Charles Dervarics

S

afety hazards are prevalent at construction sites. Add in language and cultural barriers such as those presented by contract employees in Afghanistan and elsewhere, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) recognizes that only a comprehensive solution can do the job.

“We build safety into our business processes from cradle to grave,” said Rich Wright, chief of safety and occupational health at USACE. Whether at locks and dams in the United States or construction sites in Afghanistan, safety is part of the culture of work at USACE. “Instead of just talking about safety, we want safety as an embedded part of everything we do,” Wright noted.

While USACE always has valued safety, it initiated an organization-wide cultural change in 2007 that makes safety a priority in all business processes. All employees receive general and job-specific safety training, and USACE works closely with contractors across the world to reinforce the need for safety plans and regular safety reviews.

It’s all part of a “safety management system” approach that builds safety into all activities and operations from top leaders/administrators to front-line workers and contractors.

“Instead of wholly depending on a safety pro, we involve everyone in the process,” said Wright, who has served in this capacity since 2007 and has 12 years total experience with USACE. Key ingredients in this culture of safety include: • Leadership training that focuses on the meaning of safety and the individual’s role in promoting safety; • A risk management process in which everyone should be able to recognize hazards; • A comprehensive commitment to training, so that everyone has safety training and individuals have training that is specific to their job area; and • Employee buy-in so that every employee has responsibility for safety.

“In the old days, a safety officer would spend a lot of time walking through work sites with a checklist and clipboard, noting deficiencies without providing answers,” he said. “We still need to perform inspections, but we are much more focused on being integrated into our business processes, and providing assistance versus handing out ‘gotchas.’”

Now, a strategic plan helps set USACE priorities. This plan outlines specific roles, responsibilities, and actions across USACE to involve every employee in awareness and training.

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In addition, an annual safety management action plan contains specific objectives.

“In the new system, there’s never a time when someone says, ‘That doesn’t look right but that’s not my job,’” Wright said. “We are enabling mission success by having everyone involved.”

USACE sets key metrics each year – including accident rates – and tracks them at each command. Workers must detail any incident that happened on a given day. Any injury or accident has to be reported. The reports also list how many received training on a certain day.

“We have leadership buy-in to make this work effectively,” Wright said.

USACE actively analyzes potential hazards at each worksite, and a comprehensive safety manual includes not only safety procedures but also best practices.

So far, this approach already has yielded impressive results: USACE has won the Secretary of the Army/Chief of Staff of the Army Safety Award in two of the last three years, and accident rates continue to take a downward trend. But one loss or accident is too many, and USACE is constantly striving to perform better. “Not only do we have an obligation to ensure the safety and health of all of our teammates, we can get the job done much more effectively on a safe job site rather than an unsafe job site, since shutting down due to a serious injury or incident can mean a huge amount of lost time and money,” Wright said.

Wright manages a staff of eight at USACE headquarters, and provides leadership and oversight through a USACE Safety and Health “Community of Practice” for approximately 375 USACE safety and occupational health professionals who operate in the field and serve as the eyes and ears of the agency.

“Without support from senior leadership, this would not get done. Our senior leaders actively support this effort,” he said. “We don’t want safety to be an afterthought.”

Managing Contractors

Another major concern is with federal government contractors, who perform much of the work both domestically and internationally. Contractors must follow safety requirements and file accident prevention plans prior to the start of any work.

They also must submit daily quality control data, to include

WIN safety, to USACE quality assurance representatives, who also play an integral role in enhancing the safety culture within the organization. USACE quality assurance representatives and safety professionals are partners in helping build a strong safety culture.

“You never find safety at the top and quality and production at the bottom. If you have good safety, the other two are at the same level,” said Ron McDonald, a USACE safety specialist.

McDonald is one of USACE’s employees with some of the agency’s toughest tasks – promoting safety at worksites in Afghanistan. During a typical review, safety and occupational health specialists may • check for availability and use of safety shoes and hard hats; • demonstrate safe methods for stacking cinder blocks at construction sites; • photograph damaged equipment and request replacement material; • climb improvised ladders to check stability; and • make dozens of other safety checks to reduce accidents.

All contractors must have site safety and health officers (SSHOs), who interact with USACE quality assurance representatives to

explore common workforce problems and then provide solutions. In Afghanistan, for example, USACE quality control staff identified numerous challenges such as workers lacking appropriate protective equipment; working at unsafe heights without fall protection; and digging deep trenches without exit routes.

The issues are challenging in part due to the limited Englishspeaking skills of contract employees. Yet USACE promotes safety through modeling behavior, and it also has safety manuals in Afghanistan’s primary languages, Pashto or Dari.

“It took the U.S. centuries to develop its safety culture. We should not expect the safety culture in Afghanistan to develop overnight,” McDonald said. “The good thing is that most contractors appreciate our guidance and advice and are eager to improve their skills.”

USACE also publishes its safety manual in several languages, including Arabic, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, and German. Translators also are typically in place at many sites.

“We perform a large amount of work overseas. Contractors can come from [all] over the globe,” Wright said. “We have a moral responsibility to ensure that all of our team members, including our

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers photo by Dave Melancon

Jeffrey Ice, Afghanistan Engineer District-South safety and occupational health specialist, discusses improvised ladders with a contractor’s safety specialist during a project site visit on the Afghanistan National Army’s Shorabak compound in Helmand province May 9, 2012. Ice looked over several projects managed by the Tombstone Resident Office and worked with the construction companies’ safety personnel for several weeks.

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U.S. Army Corps of Engineers photo by Jeffrey Henon

Dorothy Harrington, a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) quality assurance representative, oversees quality assurance of contractor debris removal in Tuscaloosa, Ala., May 10, 2011. USACE was supporting the Federal Emergency Management Agency in Alabama through debris management, to include separating debris piles and conducting debris clearance and removal, and hauling and installing temporary housing units following the severe spring storms. USACE performed its work safely and in an environmentally sensitive way.

contractors, go home as healthy or healthier after a day’s work than when they arrived.”

USACE uses the same set of requirements for its own staff as well as contractors. Looking at the number of accidents resulting in lost work time, USACE contractors had .22 accidents per 100 workers in fiscal year 2011. The federal government reports an average of 4.7 per 100 workers nationwide in the general construction industry, based on 2009 data. “We’re at a low rate compared to the overall construction industry, and our contractor team should be very proud of the safety programs and systems they have in place,” Wright added.

USACE’s focus on safety extends beyond its worksites in the United States and abroad, however. With millions of visitors a year to USACE-managed recreation sites in the United States, the agency conducts extensive outreach to the general public. Many of the recreation sites include lakes and swimming facilities, and USACE has robust water safety programs to educate the public, Wright said. Park rangers provide classes and education, while brochures and other materials are distributed upon entry. Loaner life jackets also are available.

But this safety effort extends beyond parks and recreation sites.

USACE staff members also go out into nearby communities to offer water safety classes to the general public. This work is done in coordination with park rangers and USACE safety staff. “We’ve seen

a large decrease in accidents and fatalities as a result of this effort over the years,” Wright noted.

Moving Forward

Looking toward the future, a key USACE goal for 2013 is continued refinement of the Army Readiness Assessment Program, a tool for onthe-ground risk assessments as well as a gauge of safety culture within an organization. These assessments contribute to development of safety plans for each USACE worksite with appropriate staff training.

To promote feedback loops, an online survey also asks questions of USACE employees on how their organizations view safety. Among other questions, it asks employees whether they believe they have been adequately trained to do their jobs. They are also placing special emphasis on “high hazard” areas such as cranes and rigging, fall protection, electrical work, diving, and marine construction.

Such feedback is essential for the further evolution of this culture of safety. “That’s saving taxpayer money and getting our mission accomplished in a more effective manner.”

From diving and dredging to construction projects in war zones, USACE always is performing risky work, said Wright. “We can’t stop doing work that has a risk to it. But we want to do it in a way that manages and minimizes risk to the greatest possible extent.”

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THE CORPS’ PARK RANGERS Protecting natural resources and the public

By Craig Collins

A

s a boy growing up in the small town of Seneca, S.C., Scott Kelley lived an idyllic childhood in an aquatic paradise: Between Lake Keowee to the north and Hartwell Lake to the east and south, he spent much of his summers in and around the water.

With his passion for the outdoors permanently imprinted, Kelley went to Clemson University knowing he didn’t want a desk job. He majored in natural resource management. At a college career fair, he noticed one of the presentations featured several pictures of Hartwell Lake. “I asked the presenter: ‘What do you do on the lake?’” Kelley remembered. “He said: ‘Well, we manage the land with the Corps of Engineers.’”

At the time, Kelley had never heard of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) – but he knew he had found his career.

While completing his degree at Clemson, he worked for USACE as a summer park ranger at Hartwell Lake, and joined the staff full time after graduating in 1999. Today, he’s the chief ranger of the shoreline management team at Hartwell Lake, directing the Shoreline Management Program at the lake he’s loved all his life.

Despite the fact that USACE’s park rangers are the organization’s most visible ambassadors, most people who visit the organization’s 4,200 recreation sites annually don’t make the connection between USACE and the friendly uniformed people who patrol the waters and adjoining lands.

As the field agents of USACE’s recreation program, its park rangers have two primary responsibilities: promoting and protecting public safety, and practicing good stewardship of the public lands in their care.

A Love of Nature – and People

Those two responsibilities, on public lands that receive more than 370 million visits a year, are neither simple nor easy – but USACE’s park rangers have an unusual affinity for both people and the outdoors. In his nearly 15-year career, Kelley has filled several roles at Hartwell Lake, one of the Southeast’s largest and most popular lakes – in a single year, in fact, Hartwell, which straddles the South Carolina/Georgia border, sees about 10 million visitors to its public parks, marinas, and campgrounds, making it USACE’s third-most popular recreation site.

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Kelley began at Hartwell Lake as a park ranger in charge of the campground program, visiting with the public every day, and keeping facilities in safe and working order. Park rangers at USACE reservoirs, along with many private organizations and community volunteers, maintain a dogged focus on the organization’s Water Safety Program. Many rangers log thousands of hours interacting with the public, on patrol, or at various sponsored events, to urge the use of life jackets and educate people about water and boating safety. At the same time, they form the front line in protecting natural resources under their jurisdiction. In the Sacramento District (Calif.), for example, because rangers are the backbone of the everyday staff at 10 recreation sites, they have served as managers and monitors for mussel-detection stations throughout the district. The stations, designed to collect invasive zebra and quagga mussels, were placed as part of California’s Invasive Species Program.

After several years serving in the lake’s recreation section, Kelley spent four years as a contract administrator, coordinating with outside contractors who performed services – janitorial, landscaping, construction, and emergency work such as storm response – to ensure quality and timeliness.

Today, directing the Shoreline Management Program at Hartwell Lake, he and seven rangers interact daily with the people who own adjacent property, operate lease sites, and work along the lake’s 962 miles of shoreline. “The Corps mission is that we are given stewardship of land and water to manage to the best of our abilities for the public good,” Kelley said. “We manage permitted facilities – boat docks, walkways, light poles, and things of that nature – in that ring around the lake, and everything we do is based on the concept of protecting the resource: keeping it as natural as possible and keeping it public land.”

Given the amount of work to be done at most USACE lakes, it’s not surprising that a ranger’s duties would change over the course of a career – but at most sites, they also change within the course of a calendar year. Michelle Frobose is a park ranger at the Willamette Valley Project, which encompasses 13 dams and reservoirs within Oregon’s Willamette River Basin in a roughly 150-mile span from Portland south to Cottage Grove. Her official title, like Kelley’s,

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers photo by Catherine Dunlap

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers photo

WIN is natural resource specialist – but she rarely calls herself that. “Ninety percent of the people don’t know what a natural resource specialist is,” she said.

“But they know what a park ranger is.”

Much of Frobose’s time during the summer is spent assisting visitors – from basic orientation and water safety to helping them through medical emergencies at 200 campsites and 25 day-use areas spread among the project. Public safety is also a large component of her job, with improvement projects for accessibility as well as testing and educational outreach concerning toxic algae blooms. She also mentors and plans workloads for the seasonal staff among the 13 different reservoirs. In the offseason, she said, there’s a huge amount of legwork to be done in preparing for summer visitation – for example, trail maintenance, which she often organizes in conjunction with a mountain biking club from Eugene. “There’s so much work I can get done in the winter that would not get done without volunteers and organized groups,” she said. “Being able to give them not only the supplies but the support they need takes a lot of time, but it produces amazing benefits for the Army Corps of Engineers and for the visiting public.”

Every recreation site has its own challenges for USACE rangers, and the size and sprawl of the Willamette Valley Project often stretches the available staff, which has shrunk in response to budget constraints. The main recreation ranger office is at Cottage Grove Reservoir, at the southern end of the valley, where most of the public facilities managed by USACE are concentrated.

But some project sites are more than a two-hour drive away. Green Peter Reservoir, a hydropower and flood protection reservoir on the Middle Santiam River, is far away enough from Cottage Grove to create many challenges in managing dispersed camping. “We don’t get up there very often due to our available staffing and budget,” said Frobose. “And we have some higher levels of resource damage up there … a lot of litter, a lot of roadside dumping. We, on occasion,

TOP: A Eugene, Ore., local Boy Scout troop assists with constructing trail steps in Schwarz Campground at Dorena Reservoir on National Public Lands Day, the nation’s largest annual, single-day volunteer restoration effort for America’s public lands, Sept. 29, 2012. ABOVE: In honor of National Trails Day on June 4, 2011, a park ranger with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers New England District’s West Thompson Lake project office leads a paddling expedition down the Quinebaug River Water Trail in Connecticut.

have trees that are cut down illegally.”

To continue providing quality services to the public while still fulfilling their stewardship mission at Green Peter, the rangers are exploring a partnership with

a nearby county park to leverage the resources of each in the area.

At Hartwell Lake, a thinning ranger staff poses a real dilemma, said Kelley, given the fact that its 10 million annual visitors are

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HIDDEN HISTORY

Maj. Gen. George S. Patton shown during maneuvers in the Desert Training Center he established in the Colorado Desert of California. Patton lived in similar Spartan conditions to his soldiers during the months he commanded the training center. Sand clogged weapons and blew into food, water and food were rationed, and soldiers grew used to marches with full packs in 120 degree heat as they prepared to fight the Axis in North Africa.

DEFENSE

INDEPTH

Classic weapons and equipment, “brilliant mistakes” and “might have beens” of history, personality profiles of the famous and infamous, and regular series on World War II, the Civil War, and other military anniversaries.

DMN presents the unusual, unknown, untold, and uncelebrated moments in military history.

www.defensemedianetwork.com

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers photo by Michael J. Nevins

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers photo

WIN growing more diverse. “When you’re talking about that many people – people who own adjacent properties, the people who visit our parks, people from different cultures who come just for the day to go swimming at one of our recreation facilities – delivering our message of water safety and boating safety is our biggest challenge,” he said. “When I started here, we had a very good staff available to us to go out and preach this message, and we did a very good job covering that amount. But funding continues to get hit, which directly effects staffing … currently our biggest challenge is getting the amount of exposure we once had with fewer people. And that is a constant struggle.”

Recent weather patterns have complicated this struggle for Hartwell Lake rangers: Prolonged drought has significantly lowered the lake level. “That vastly changes our message,” said Kelley. “When we have normal pool levels we’re talking about safety in designated swim beaches and wearing your life jacket. But with low water levels, we’re talking about being careful about unexpected drop-offs, because our designated beaches are dry. We’re talking about underwater hazards.”

Because an increasing number of visitors to the lake are Spanish-speaking, Kelley and his colleagues are learning some rudimentary messages to deliver to them: “We’ve got an account with Rosetta Stone®, where we’re trying to learn some basic water safety slogans and messages we can give to customer groups that are starting to come in the area.”

Like most jobs with USACE, being a ranger isn’t easy, and it requires constant adaptation to changing circumstances – but most rangers wouldn’t have it any other way. Frobose said she’s worked hard to achieve what she calls her dream job: “I work for USACE because I really do believe in protecting natural resources, and I believe in guiding people to recreate responsibly and safely. I also really believe USACE plays a very important role, among all the different federal and local agencies, in creating

TOP: Youth and staff from Lincoln Middle School in Cottage Grove, Ore., volunteer for the Day of Caring event April 20, 2012, at Cottage Grove Reservoir. USACE park ranger Michelle Frobose helps youth plant shrubbery at the reservoir. ABOVE: Children from Maple Elementary School enjoy some exercise outdoors at the Effie Yeaw Nature Center, Carmichael, Calif., Sept. 27, 2011. USACE park rangers taught the life cycle of salmon with a jump rope game, where getting entangled represents the hazards of water turbines to the fish. The event was in support of President Barack Obama’s America’s Great Outdoors Initiative, established in April 2010.

those different niches for different recreational users.”

“I’m proud to be a park ranger,” said Kelley. “I have an opportunity every day to affect people’s lives in a positive way.

When you manage a resource like a body of water, people have a natural attraction to it. And we have the desire to give people a great recreational experience while protecting the land and water.”

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The USACE Regulatory Program

Implementing an efficient and effective process

By Craig Collins

New and Better Tools for Decision-Making

According to Jennifer Moyer, acting chief of USACE’s Regulatory Program, FY 2012 was a year in which USACE finalized updates to several tools that will help improve and streamline individual permit decisions, including: • The National Wetland Plant List – The federal definition of a “wetland” depends on three criteria: vegetation, hydric soils, and hydrology. In the 1980s, botanists from USACE, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), and Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), developed a list of plants that could help to delineate wetlands in the United States and its territories. The 2012 National Wetland Plant List, released in May, replaces this earlier version and is meant to be used not only to inform decisions on a variety of issues, from food security to wildlife habitat, but also as a resource for the scientific and academic communities.

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Botanists with USACE’s Engineer Research and Development Center led this effort, which involved 16 rounds of discussion about the list’s final contents. “This list is a living document,” said Moyer, “that enables the public to contact the professional panel and issue a challenge to say: ‘I don’t agree with what you’ve done, and here’s the evidence I’m providing to inform a dialogue on this issue.’ It allows for interaction and understanding and transparency. It’s something that not just USACE but all of the federal government can be proud of.”

The National Wetland Plant List is available online at wetland_ plants.usace.army.mil.

• The Cumulative Effects Assessment Tool – Another significant 2012 development has been the creation of the USACE Cumulative Effects Assessment (CEA) Tool. The impetus for development of this tool was the 2009 agreement between USACE, EPA, and the Department of the Interior to improve the environmental review of permit applications for activities related to surface coal mining in the Appalachian region. In their Memorandum of Understanding, the agencies placed a priority on assessing the cumulative effects of surface coal mining on aquatic ecosystems.

USACE photo by Chris Gardner, New York District Public Affairs

T

he U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ (USACE) authority to regulate development in or near American waters dates to the late 19th century, when it was charged with protecting and maintaining the navigable capacity of the nation’s waters. Initially, USACE regulatory activities were limited to keeping waterways unobstructed by dams or other structures.

Many factors – including changing public demands, policy evolution, legislation, and case law – have gradually altered this program over the last century, adding to its scope and complexity.

The most significant statutory mandate for USACE comes from Section 404 of the Clean Water Act, which authorizes USACE to issue or deny permits for the discharge of dredged or fill material into the waters of the United States.

Though the details of USACE’s Regulatory Program are constantly adapting, the program continues to maintain a focus on balancing the national concern for both protection and utilization of important environmental resources.

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U.S. Army photo/Mark W. Haviland

The CEA Tool, developed by USACE’s Institute for Water Resources, is a sciencebased analytical watershed analysis tool that uses specific data gathered from different sources. The CEA identifies stressors in a watershed and demonstrates their expected impacts. “It’s demonstrated some interesting things in the areas of eastern Kentucky and southern West Virginia, where we have good data,” said Moyer. “Specifically, that road infrastructure – which wasn’t previously thought to be a major stressor on the watershed – is one of the major impacts in those areas.

It’s allowed USACE and our agency partners to make better informed decisions, or to think about different options for compensatory mitigation, because it enhances our ability to look at other areas in a watershed where we wouldn’t naturally be focusing. The whole point of a tool like this is to do the right work in the right place, to offset unavoidable impacts.”

USACE is working vigorously, Moyer said, to collect the data needed to deploy the CEA in other areas of the country, with efforts currently focused in Washington, Virginia, and Texas.

• The Nationwide Permitting Process – The Clean Water Act authorizes USACE to issue general permits for activities that have minimal individual and cumulative adverse environmental effects. With this authority, USACE is able to improve the efficiency of permit decision-making on project proposals, while ensuring protection of aquatic resources.

The first suite of Nationwide Permits (NWP), developed in the mid-1970s, consisted of about a half-dozen permits; today the NWPs and other forms of general permits do the heavy lifting for USACE’s Regulatory Program, comprising somewhere between 80 to 90 percent of the organization’s efforts to protect the nation’s aquatic resources while allowing reasonable economic development via fair, flexible, and balanced permit decisions.

Because the NWPs are so crucial, USACE works hard to ensure there is no lapse in coverage at the end of a five-year cycle. At least two years before the permits expire, USACE seeks input from all 38 USACE

OPPOSITE: Brian Orzel of New York District’s Regulatory Branch works with West Point cadets as he delineates wetlands in Otisville, N.Y. The spot was marked with a pink flag and GPS devices so the data could be used later. The cadets spent a day with regulatory personnel learning about USACE and its regulatory mission. ABOVE: Norfolk District regulators Dave Knepper and Audrey Cotnoir compare notes during a wetland delineation in Chesapeake, Va., which is the process of determining the boundary between wetlands and non-wetlands through examination of vegetation, soils, and hydrology. The district’s 52-person regulatory staff processes more than 3,000 federal permit requests a year and covers the state’s 42,767 square miles. The USACE Regulatory Program gets its federal permitting authority from three sources: the Rivers and Harbors Appropriation Act of 1899 (the oldest federal environmental law in the United States), the Clean Water Act, and the 1972 Marine Protection, Research, and Sanctuaries Act.

districts, other federal agencies, the public, and its stakeholder groups about other areas that may meet the “no more than minimal impact” threshold and may warrant a broad NWP. After a draft proposal for a NWP is composed, USACE releases it for public comment.

This public feedback was instrumental in both the refinement and expansion of the latest Nationwide Permits, issued in early 2012. For example, NWP 21 for surface coal mining activities was revised to impose new limits on stream impacts, and gives operators who have not yet completed work in the waters of the United States the opportunity for reverification of all previously authorized activities.

The package includes two new Nationwide Permits: NWP 51, for the construction, expansion, or modification of landbased renewable energy facilities; and NWP 52, for water-based pilot projects involving wind or hydrokinetic energy.

Because NWP 52’s authorization is limited to pilot projects, Moyer said, “There

are a limited number of actual structures that can be put into the water, and only for a certain period of time. If a project proponent wants to keep the facility they’ve piloted, they’ll have to request authorization to keep the project going.”

• Tech Solutions: Information for Everyone – The renewal of the NWP is, for USACE, a process that showcases its commitment to efficiency, collaboration, inclusivity, and transparency. Information technology is a critical tool for keeping partners and stakeholders in the loop, and USACE recently developed a Webbased application to push data to stakeholders in the mitigation banking process – the program through which developers mitigate a project’s adverse impacts to a wetland, watershed, or conservation area.

The Regulatory In-Lieu Fee and Bank Information Tracking System (RIBITS) is an open database of information about existing and potential mitigation banks.

“The public can query this database,”

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Moyer said. “If they want to build a project for which mitigation is required, they can figure out: ‘Does this bank have credits I can buy?’ ‘Can I buy into an in-lieu fee program?’ ‘How big is the service area?’ ‘Who do I contact to do this?’” RIBITS is no longer limited to USACE wetland and stream mitigation projects; it’s been expanded to include information on conservation banks for the FWS and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS).

USACE is in the final stages of licensing a mobile phone application for the Regulatory Program, which will be made available free to the public. The application will link users to information on the permitting process, provide locations for the nearest regulatory office, links to maps and video, and more.

Strategizing for Better Federal Decision-Making

As one of the oldest federal regulatory agencies, USACE has been instrumental to a larger strategic effort on the part of the Obama administration to strengthen the nation’s economy. A presidential memo, issued in August of last year, and Executive Order (EO) 13604, issued in March 2012, both focused the attention of federal agencies on the importance of the nation’s infrastructure to the economy. In his EO, President Barack Obama instructed federal agencies to collaborate and increase the efficiency of the permitting and review of infrastructure projects.

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The outreach involved in streamlining these decisions is considerable. Consider a power transmission line, for example, or a road that traverses hundreds of miles, and the agencies that might be involved in reviewing it: USACE, EPA, FWS, NMFS, the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, the Department of Energy, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the Bureau of Land Management, the Department of Transportation, tribal councils, and a host of state, regional, and local partners could all be involved.

Technology, of course, plays a role in linking the public to these ongoing collaborative efforts. A Web-based electronic dashboard, permits.performance.gov/, allows the public to access information about what the federal government is doing to meet schedules for decisions.

USACE continues to play a leading role, said Moyer, working with interagency groups to develop protocols to ensure that federal decisions on projects are synchronized. Getting the federal government working together to speak with one voice so that permitting and environmental review processes across all federal agencies are understandable, coordinated, transparent, efficient, and effective is the ultimate goal. Moyer concluded: “The USACE Regulatory Program has focused on contributing meaningfully to this interagency effort over the past 18 months, and because we have a program that’s been around since 1899, we have a lot to contribute about what we’ve learned about how to be effective, efficient, and transparent in delivering a program that’s predictable to the public.”

USACE photo by Courtney Stevens

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) Savannah District hosted a workshop Nov. 3, 2011, in Covington, Ga., to educate consultants about USACE’s process for wetland delineations. Its Regulatory Division requires wetland delineations for potential applicants requesting a stream or wetland permit under Section 404 of the Clean Water Act. The workshop aimed to increase efficiency in the application process.

A Day in the Life: USACE Divisions, Centers, and Commands

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Great lakes and ohio river Division On June 21, 2012, the historic Connecticut Street Armory in Buffalo, N.Y., was the venue for a time-honored Army tradition dating back to before the Civil War, as Lt. Col. Owen Beaudoin assumed command of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) Buffalo District. Pictured, from left: Louisville District Commander Col. Luke Leonard; Great Lakes and Ohio River Division (LRD) Deputy Division Commander Col. Robert Peterson; Buffalo District Commander Lt. Col. Owen Beaudoin; LRD Commanding General Brig.

Gen. Margaret W. Burcham; Nashville District Commander Lt. Col. James Delapp; and then-Detroit District Commander Lt. Col. Michael Derosier. USACE photo by Andy Kornacki

Buffalo District

Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works JoEllen Darcy set sail on the schooner Spirit of Buffalo with school children participating in “Buffalo Urban Outdoor Education,” a program that encourages individual growth and discovery through interactive learning and shipboard education. Darcy spoke to the students about President Barack Obama’s America’s Great Outdoors Initiative. USACE photo

chicago District Chicago District Commander Col. Frederic A. Drummond Jr., discusses the Little Calumet River Project in Hammond, Ind., with Commanding General and Chief of Engineers Lt. Gen. Thomas P. Bostick, Aug. 29, 2012. The project consists of 22 miles of levees and floodwalls, installing a control structure at Hart Ditch, building almost 17 miles of hiking trails, and preserving 550-plus acres of wetland. More than 9,500 homes and businesses in Gary, Griffith, Hammond, Highland, and Munster will be protected at a 200-year level through this project, which will prevent nearly $11 million in average annual flood damage. U.S. Army Photo by Lynne Whelan

detroit District Operated by the USACE Detroit District, the Soo Locks at Sault Ste. Marie, Mich., is a major link in the transportation of dry bulk and liquid cargoes to and from all points of the Great Lakes and around the world. In addition to this, the Soo Area Office also offers a newly constructed, multilevel observation platform allowing visitors and guests to better view the ships.

A Visitors Center, seen on the far left, is open to the public from mid-May to mid-October and houses many locks’ photos and artifacts. A beautiful park, complete with a fountain and various interpretive artifacts, is also available to the public. Here, a member of the Soo Locks team assists the Cuyahoga into the MacArthur Lock, while tourists watch the ship locking process. USACE photo by Carmen Paris

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DIVISIONS

Huntington District

View of Bluestone Dam, shot from the public fishing pier below the dam. A steel work platform was built on the downstream face of the dam to allow the installation of anchors above the spillway. USACE photo by Sheila Tunney

Louisville District

Dive tender Isaac Pratis (right) handles the umbilical line for diver Eric Barnett, who had just surfaced after replacing a movable wicket that forms part of the dam at Locks and Dam No.52 on the Ohio River. USACE photo by Jon Fleshman

Nashville District

Brig. Gen. Margaret W. Burcham, LRD commander, and Capt. Erik Patton, division engineer aide, look at core samples taken from the barrier wall with Bernie Kearns, materials engineering technician for the Wolf Creek Foundation Remediation Project, one of Nashville Districtâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s major rehabilitation projects at Wolf Creek Dam. USACE photo by Sheila Tunney

Pittsburgh District

A welder from the Pittsburgh repair party works on severely corroded structural members of steel at the Montgomery Locks and Dam on the Ohio River. Pittsburgh District crews have been patching up the deteriorating dam gates until a permanent fix is funded. The dam gates are vulnerable to failure should a barge or large ice load strike the structure. USACE photo by Sheila Tunney

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Mississippi Valley Division Maj. Gen. John Peabody, Mississippi Valley Division commander, and president, Mississippi River Commission, fields questions from members of the media at the March 2012 Mississippi River Commissionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s public meeting aboard the M/V Mississippi.

Photo by G.A. Volb/USACE

memphis District Charles Crowley and other Memphis District hired labor crew employees remove HESCO bastions put in place as a temporary protective measure at the Birds Point-New Madrid levee in Missouri. USACE artificially crevassed the levee with explosives in three places during the 2011 floods to take pressure off the regional flood risk reduction system. Contractors are now hard at work making permanent repairs to return the levee to its full height and grade. USACE photo

new orleans District Photo taken on Aug. 30, 2012, one day after the order was called to start operation of the West Closure Complex, part of the overall Hurricane and Storm Damage Risk Reduction System, in preparation for Hurricane Isaac. The Gulf Intracoastal Waterway West Closure Complex is located approximately one half mile south of the confluence of the Harvey and Algiers canals on the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway. This project reduces risk for residences and businesses in three parishes on the west bank of the Mississippi River: Orleans, Jefferson, and Plaquemines parishes. The total construction value for the West Closure Complex is an estimated $1 billion. USACE photo by Paul Floro

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DIVISIONS

Rock Island District USACE monitors the water quality on the Mississippi River as part of the Upper Mississippi River Environmental Management Program. In the photo are Clint Beckert, chief, Water Quality and Sedimentation Section, Engineering Division, and Lucie Sawyer, hydraulic engineer, of the Rock Island District. Photo by Hilary Markin, Rock Island District

St. Louis District

The St. Louis District Rivers Project partnered with multiple agencies and organizations to host the 2012 Summer of Paddling St. Louis Adventure, Aug. 17-18, at the Riverlands Migratory Bird Sanctuary.

More than 550 participants paddled on the Mississippi River during the two-day event. USACE photo

St. Paul District

Brandon Olson, a survey technician at USACEâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s St. Paul District, participates in a joint cold water rescue training event with the Winona, Minn., Fire Department March 28 on the Mississippi River. This was the first time that both agencies trained together and they both plan on making it an annual event.

USACE photo by Patrick Moes

Vicksburg District

The Vicksburg Districtâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Mat Sinking Unit (MSU) lays connected articulated concrete mats on the banks of the Mississippi River with 24-hour operations. The MSU season usually begins during the low water season in late July and ends in December. These mats assist with erosion control. Photo by Kavanaugh Breazeale

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NOrth Atlantic Division Members of the official party rise for the national anthem at the Assumption of Command ceremony for Col. Kent D. Savre July 31, 2012, at the Fort Hamilton Community Club in Brooklyn, N.Y. From right, David J. Leach, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) North Atlantic Division director of programs; Col. Kent D. Savre, incoming division commander; Col. Christopher J. Larsen, outgoing division commander; and Maj. Gen. Todd T. Semonite, USACE deputy commander and deputy chief of engineers. Robert Bauer, acting chief of regional business at the division, emceed the event. Photo by Justin Ward

Baltimore District

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency New Campus East opened in 2011. The main buildings are as large as two aircraft carriers side by side. The project was the largest military construction project since the building of the Pentagon in 1943.

Photo by Marc Barnes

europe District Maj. Mike Lee (top left), Office of Security Cooperation chief from the U.S. Embassy in Bamako, Mali; Tom Anderson (second left), quality assurance chief from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Europe District; and Brian Trzaska (top middle), Europe Districtâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s special projects civil engineer, pause for a photo with the city of Doureboughou mayor, local school principal, and students Jan. 31, 2012, in Mali. Officials from USACE, the embassy, and the local community gathered together to celebrate the kickoff of construction on the local school. The $247,000 project includes the construction of two new buildings containing three classrooms each, a teacherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s office building, and six latrines with a septic tank. Roughly 450 will be able to attend the school when complete.

The project also supports the local economy with the use of a local subcontractor. Photo by U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

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DIVISIONS

new England District

Park ranger Christine Renzoni sets a bird free in Uxbridge, Mass., after it was banded and its information recorded. Photo by Kevin Burke

new york District New York District Commander Col. Paul Owen addresses district personnel during a town hall meeting at a warehouse at the districtâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Caven Point Marine Terminal in Jersey City, N.J., Nov. 20, 2012. Personnel have been working to clean up damage to the facility caused by Hurricane Sandy while also supporting the districtâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s regular missions in and around the New York-New Jersey Harbor (as well as managing any personal impacts to their homes and families from the storm). While significant progress can be seen regarding cleanup efforts in the warehouse, there is much more work to do. photo by Chris Gardner, New York District public affairs

norfolk District Erik Sherer, a deckhand aboard the USACE vessel Harrell, secures a dead tree to a dock after it was found floating in the southern branch of the Elizabeth River near the steel bridge after Hurricane Sandy passed by. The work is being performed as part of Hampton Roads Drift Removal Program, which is operated by the Norfolk District year round; its mission is to remove potential watercraftdamaging debris from the navigation channels in the Hampton Roads region of Virginia to keep boaters and commercial shipping safe. U.S. Army photo by Patrick Bloodgood

Philadelphia District

North Atlantic Division Commander Col. Kent D. Savre and Philadelphia District Commander Lt. Col. Chris Becking visited the Mantoloking breach Nov. 6, 2012. USACE worked with New Jersey to close the breach following historic Hurricane Sandy. USACE Photo

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NOrthwestern Division Col. Anthony C. Funkhouser, commander and division engineer, Northwestern Division, at the Bonneville Dam spillway for the 75th Anniversary Celebration held jointly with the Bonneville Power Administration. In 1937, President Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicated the Bonneville Dam and signed the Bonneville Project Act, bringing clean, efficient hydropower to the Pacific Northwest. The Bonneville Lock and Dam is on the Columbia River, about 40 miles east of Portland, Ore. Photo by Capt. Dan Larson

KANSAS District

Zachary L. White, project manager (center), leads the Missouri Clean Water Commission on a tour of the Jameson Island Unit Shallow Water Habitat Restoration Project near Arrow Rock, Mo., on June 11, 2012. The project is part of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; (USACE) overall Missouri River Recovery Program and provides mitigation for fish and wildlife habitat losses that resulted from the Missouri River Bank Stabilization and Navigation Project. Photo by Amy L. Phillips

omaha District

A group of dam safety experts from the Omaha District and the Northwestern Division of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers inspect damage done to the spillway apron of Fort Randall Dam in South Dakota on March 15, 2012.

The high velocity of releases experienced during the Midwest floods of 2011 led to spalling, or the creation of potholes, on the concrete surface of the spillway. Photo

by Kevin Wingert, public affairs specialist, Omaha District

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PORTLAND District

The Crystal Springs and Westmoreland Park Ecosystem Restoration project is a partnership between USACE and the city of Portland. It is authorized under Section 206 of the Water Resources Development Act of 2008, which allows USACE to partner with nonfederal agencies to restore degraded aquatic ecosystems. Photo by Matt Rabe

seattle District

The Hiram M. Chittenden Locks are the busiest locks in the nation and also receive more than 1.2 million visitors each year. Located in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood, the locks primarily operate as a navigation project, moving commercial and recreational vessels between Puget Sound and Lakes Washington and Union. The dam also controls the two lakes’ elevations, provides essential fish passage for salmon, including threatened species, and is home to the Carl S. English Jr., Botanical Garden.

Courtesy photo by Civil Air Patrol

walla walla District

Walla Walla District successfully repaired concrete spalling on a wall at the Lower Monumental Lock and Dam. USACE photo

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Pacific OCEAN Division American Samoa Governor Togiola Tulafono presents an “ava” bowl as a gift to Col. Gregory J. Gunter, acting commander for the Pacific Ocean Division, in appreciation for his support and attendance at the 28th U.S. Coral Reef Task Force (USCRTF) meeting in American Samoa August 2012. The USCRTF was established in 1998 by Presidential Executive Order to lead U.S. efforts to preserve and protect coral reef ecosystems.

The USCRTF includes leaders of federal agencies, U.S. states, territories, commonwealths, and freely associated states. The USCRTF helps build partnerships, strategies, and support for on-theground action to conserve coral reefs. Photo by Cindy Barger

Pacific Ocean Division’s (POD) Senior Cost, Value and Enterprise Geospatial Engineering System (EGES) engineer Thomas Taam (center) hosts representatives from all four POD districts, who converged at Fort Shafter for the FY 12 POD Regional EGES Workshop in September 2012. The workshop provided POD region participants a valuable opportunity for sharing information and collaborating on customer, USACE, and regional initiatives and issues related to technologies and services for computer-aided design and building information modeling and geospatial technologies.

The region actively pursues a corporate approach to implement geospatial technology that meets functional business process requirements in harmony with state, local, and federal agency programs to more efficiently produce geospatial products and serve customers.

Photo by Terri Kojima

AlASKA District Stan Wharry, program manager for the USACE Alaska District uses a tablet computer to show photos of plants and animals to villagers in Khulna, Bangladesh. Wharry wanted to know whether local residents had seen any endangered species in the area.

Since 2009, the district has managed construction projects in Southeast Asia for the U.S. Pacific Command’s Humanitarian Assistance Program. Projects include schools, medical clinics, flood management centers, and cyclone shelters in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Laos, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam.

Photo by MAJ Justin DeArmond

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Far East District

Sgt. Maj. David Breitbach, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Far East District Security, Plans, and Operations, shows equipment used in field force engineering to engineers from the Korean military in Seoul, Republic of Korea, Aug. 10, 2012.

USACE Photo by Patrick Bray

JAPAN District

Japan Ground Self-Defense Force (JGSDF) Maj. Gen. Masafumi Akamatsu (left), JGSDF Engineer School commandant, and Army Lt. Col. James C. Horton Jr., deputy commander, Japan Engineer District, exchange gifts during a bilateral exchange visit to the school in Tokyo Aug. 9, 2012. The Unit School Exchange Program is a 20-year-old U.S. Army Japan/I Corps (Forward) program where U.S. and Japanese forces visit commands to exchange ideas and mission-related information.

Photo by Mieko Yonaha

Honolulu District 565th Engineer Detachment Commander Maj. William Hannan (center left), Mike Bruse, and Sgt. 1st Class Gary Malkin case the detachment guidon. The Honolulu District-based 565th Engineer Detachment, Forward Engineer Support Team-Advance (FEST-A), held a Deployment Casing Ceremony April 24, 2012, at Fort Shafterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Palm Circle to mark its official deployment to support Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. The FEST-A consists of a detachment commander, a noncommissioned officer-in-charge, and six Department of Defense civilians who serve in the jobs of geographic information system specialist, and civil, structural, environmental, mechanical, and electrical engineers, with other engineering disciplines available for augmentation depending on the mission. The 565th deployed to Kandahar Air Base, Afghanistan, and is providing technical engineering support to Regional Command South, currently headquartered by the 82nd Airborne Division. The original 565th was constituted on Sept.

9, 1944, in the Army of the United States as the 3090th Engineer Service Detachment. On March 20, 1951, it was designated as the 565th Engineer Welding Detachment and allotted to the regular Army and eventually, as the 565th Engineer Detachment on April 22, 1965. Since that date, the unit has been activated and deactivated three times, with the most recent activation date of Oct. 16, 2007. The unit saw extensive action during World War II in Normandy and Germany, and during the Vietnam War. The current unit has the mission of providing responsive technical engineer planning and limited design capabilities in support of combatant commands and civil agencies for the full spectrum of operations. Photo by Angela E. Kershner

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South Atlantic Division

Vice President Joe Biden, right, and Howie Gonzales, chief of Jacksonville Districtâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Ecosystem Restoration Branch, at a spring 2012 event celebrating Everglades restoration accomplishments. USACE photo by Jenn Miller

Charleston District Alisha Means, biologist, and Danielle Feerst, summer hire, from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Charleston District, do a thorough inspection of the recently completed Oyster Pilot Project on June 14, 2012. The fully installed structure is 70 feet long by 6 feet wide, is constructed of approximately 800 blocks, and sits on the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway (AIWW) just south of the Isle of Palms, S.C. An oyster castle is designed to be an instant habitat for oyster spat and growth as well as to provide a cost-effective method of erosion control to protect dredge disposal areas along the AIWW. USACE photo

Jacksonville District

Capt. Erica Lager (right), project manager, directs construction activities on site at the Picayune Strand Merritt Canal Pump Station, the first project to begin construction under the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan. USACE photo by Terry Hines

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mobile District Following the devastating storms of April 2011, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) tasked the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Mobile District with providing support to the state of Alabama for debris removal. Under the National Response Framework, USACE is assigned as the primary agency for Emergency Support Function #3 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Public Works and Engineering.

USACE assists the Department of Homeland Security/FEMA by coordinating federal public works and engineering-related support, as well as providing technical assistance, engineering expertise, and construction management to prevent, prepare for, respond to, and/or recover from domestic incidents. USACE photo by Lisa Parker

Savannah District

The dredge Brunswick performs maintenance dredging in the Savannah Harbor, Ga. USACE photo by Billy Birdwell

Wilmington District

Philpott Lake operations manager and avid kayaker Craig Rockwell of the Wilmington District enjoys time out on the lake. USACE photo

by Hank Heusinkveld

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South Pacific Division Dave Thomas (left), director of the Folsom Dam Joint Federal Project, describes how the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation joined forces to improve infrastructure at Folsom Dam. Together, they are building a new spillway to improve the safety of the existing dam and reduce flood risk for the greater Sacramento area. Collaboration and shared resources are key. They are working in cooperation with the Central Valley Flood Protection Board and the Sacramento Area Flood Control Agency. U.S. Army photo by Capt. Michael N. Meyer

Soldiers, family members, and civilians of the Army Reserveâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 79th Sustainment Support Command will soon have a new energy efficient headquarters facility, organizational maintenance area, and acres of parking at the Joint Forces Training Base in Los Alamitos. The work is all part of a nearly $25 million construction project managed by Los Angeles District. Photo by Dave Palmer, Los angeles District Public Affairs

Albuquerque District

Ondrea Hummel, ecologist, Environmental Section, Albuquerque District, negotiates the high ropes course during the local Leadership Development Program Level II. USACE photo by Ronnie Schelby

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Los Angeles District Jeff Cole, USACE project manager for the Marina del Rey entrance channel navigation dredging project, speaks with a reporter at Redondo Beach about the projectâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s placement of sand there. The dredge Paula Lee (background) will deliver nearly 75,000 cubic yards of clean, beach-quality sand along a segment of the popular beach as part of a USACE navigational dredging project that removes about 1 million cubic yards of sediment at Marina del Rey, restoring navigational safety for the harborâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s mariners and first responders. USACE photo by Greg Fuderer

Sacramento District

Shauna England (right), civil engineer for USACE and construction representative on its American River levee work in Sacramento, Calif., meets with cycling enthusiast John Whelan Aug. 16, 2012, to discuss his suggestions on improving the American River Bike Trail detour scheduled to go into effect Aug. 20. England sought trail-modification input from multiple interest groups, including the local cycling community.

USACE photo by Todd Plain

San Francisco District

Rory Taylor, a San Francisco District fisheries biologist, transports coho salmon into Salmon Creek as part of a recovery program to boost the number of coho salmon in the Russian River Watershed. USACE photo by Jasmine Chopra-Delgadillo

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Southwestern Division Brig. Gen. Thomas W. Kula, Southwestern Division (SWD) commander, greets new military recruits as the Reviewing Officer during the Veterans Day Parade in Dallas, Texas, on Nov. 12, 2012. Photo by Capt. Ian Minshew, SWD

Brig. Gen. Thomas W. Kula, SWD commander, center, is briefed on progress of components of the Dallas Floodway System by Dallas officials during a site visit on Aug. 28, 2012. Photo by Jim Frisinger, SWD Public Affairs

From left: Brig. Gen. Thomas W. Kula joins Johnny Morris, Bass Pro Shops® founder and CEO; Col. Anthony C. Funkhouser, Northwestern Division commander; and Maj. Gen. John W. Peabody, Mississippi Valley Division commander, for the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Bass Pro Shops. Photo by Capt. Ian Minshew, SWD

Forth worth District

Biologist Danny Allen, with the Fort Worth District’s Westside Creeks Project Delivery Team, inspects a turtle during a site visit to the project area in San Antonio, Texas. As part of the Civil Works Transformation effort to reduce the amount of time it takes to complete studies, Westside Creeks is one of five pilot studies under the Civil Works Initiative, but is the only one to be part of the program since the study’s inception.

USACE PHOTO

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Galveston District

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) Galveston District workers remove 550 feet of submerged pipeline from the Houston Ship Channel. USACE Galveston District partnered with the U.S. Coast Guard and the Port of Houston to remove the obstruction and keep the channel free of navigational hazards.

USACE PHOTO

Little Rock District

Little Rock District workers perform routine maintenance and repairs on Dardanelle Lock and Dam during a dewatering in summer 2012. The last time the lock was drained was in 1995. At 54 feet, Dardanelle has the deepest lock chamber along the McClellan-Kerr Arkansas River Navigation System. During normal conditions the lock is designed to fill and dump approximately 30 million gallons of water in six minutes. USACE PHOTO

Tulsa District

For the first time in the McClellan-Kerr Arkansas River Navigation Systemsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; history, a major repair of a lock gate was made. A pintle ball that supports a swinging lock gate was replaced by the Tulsa District repair crew on Chouteau Lock and Dam 17. The ball was custom made from engineering drawings, as there are no off-the-shelf replacements available. Photo by Rodney Beard

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Transatlantic Division Left to right in military uniforms: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) Transatlantic Division (TAD) Sgt. Maj. Matt Unger, Farah Resident Office Officer in Charge Maj. Dolph Watts, TAD Commander Maj. Gen. Mike Eyre, and Afghanistan Engineer District-South Commander Col. Benjamin Wham met with representatives of ECC International LLC, the company building the 2/207th Brigade at Camp Sayer, Farah province, Afghanistan, June 28, 2012. USACE Photo by Karla Marshall

Afghanistan Engineer District-North

Project Manager Fred Nakahara from the TAD Afghanistan Engineer District-North Mazar-e Sharif Area Office gives Afghanistan Engineer District-North Commander Alfred Pantano Jr., a tour and project updates in the Mazar-e Sharif area. USACE photo by Mark Rankin

USACE employee Fred Nakahara updates Col. Alfred Pantano Jr., Afghanistan Engineer DistrictNorth commander, on construction progress during a tour, July 24, 2012. USACE photo by Joan Kibler

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Afghanistan Engineer District-South

USACE builds installations for the Afghan National Security Forces. This project, located outside of Kandahar Airfield, was inspected by Maj. Christina Cook, the Kandahar and vicinity officer in charge, June 26, 2012. USACE photo by Karla Marshall

Howard Stickley, (center), listens as Shawn Huebner (kneeling) explains the water recycling system of the vehicle wash rack at the Theater Vehicle Maintenance Facility at Kandahar Airfield. USACE photo by Mike Beeman

Middle East District

Middle East District military and civilian employees check the progress of renovations that will transform tent-style facilities into customs processing areas at a base in Kuwait. The district has a contract in place to perform minor construction and make small repairs to joint-use projects funded under the Defense Cooperation Agreement with Kuwait. USACE photo by Joan Kibler

Middle East District employees Joseph Campbell, Christian Nelson, and Neal Thibault review the workmanship of the foundation slab for a new fire station at Manas Transit Center, Kyrgyzstan. USACE constructs facilities at Manas Transit Center on behalf of the U.S. Air Force.

USACE photo by Deborah Duncan

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157

CENTERS

Engineer Research and Development Center USACE research performed by the Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) supports the nation and armed forces; ERDC technologies save Soldiers’ lives, enhance homeland security, energize the economy, reduce disaster risks, and improve the environment. ERDC provides innovative solutions for a safer, better world. all photos courtesy of ERDC

ERDC’s Blast Load Simulator allows researchers to develop and test force protection materials to protect Soldiers and improve windows, walls, and building components to protect citizens from terrorist attacks.

Through innovative testing and cooperative R&D agreements, ERDC can also support U.S. industry with unique facilities and expertise. Here, John Deere evaluates a new tractor cab design in ERDC’s Ice Engineering Facility.

The USACE Reachback Operations Center at ERDC supports U.S. military personnel worldwide and also humanitarian and disaster response operations with portable communications kits and other tools. Here, Soldiers use an Automated Route Reconnaissance Kit (ARRK) that has a GPS-referenced map, real-time video, and operator voice-over to plan convoy routes. The ARRK can also be flown to provide rapid post-disaster assessments.

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As the nation’s federal laboratory for river hydraulics and coastal engineering, ERDC uses a variety of small-scale physical models and advanced numerical models, including some that run on high-performance supercomputers, to help design navigation, flood and storm risk reduction, environmental, and other related projects for rivers, coasts, harbors, and reservoirs.

ERDC manages all five of the Department of Defense (DoD) Supercomputing Resource Centers and hosts one of the supercomputer centers. The DoD supercomputers allow Army, Navy, Air Force, and other military researchers to run advanced models to help solve some of the nation’s toughest problems. The powerful supercomputers at the ERDC are capable of almost 500 trillion calculations a second.

ERDC’s environmental research covers many diverse missions, including contaminated sediments and water, environmental chemistry, wetlands, ecosystem restoration, threatened and endangered species, and invasive species. This researcher is evaluating a biological control agent, an insect larva, that is feeding on an invasive aquatic plant that clogs the nation’s waterways.

ERDC’s advanced Ship/Towboat Simulator helps design safe and cost-effective navigation projects that foster the nation’s economy. Actual harbor and river pilots run simulations of proposed projects to ensure they are the optimum designs. Here, a ship pilot from Mobile, Ala., navigates his container ship while it passes an oncoming container ship in a channel.

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CENTERS

Engineering and Support Center Debra Valine, chief of public affairs, speaks with Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, Nov. 16, 2012, during the secretaryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s visit to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) External Affairs (EA) Joint Field Office in Lincroft, N.J. Valine deployed in support of Hurricane Sandy recovery efforts as part of a unified national response and was assigned as the USACE liaison for Emergency Support Function #15 (External Affairs).

External Affairs is a critical element in that it is through FEMA EA that any information pertaining to the emergency and recovery operations gets to the public, especially those who suffered loss during a disaster. Valine is just one of Huntsville Centerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s employees who volunteer to deploy in response to disasters. She is a member of the HQ USACE External Affairs Planning and Response Team. USACE activates a Recovery Field Office to provide support to local and state authorities through FEMA, providing engineering expertise when requested. Huntsville also has a Housing Planning and Response Team that is trained and ready to respond when USACE calls. Other center employees volunteer to deploy to support Overseas Contingency Operations.

At any given time, Huntsville Center, in Alabama, has nearly 30 employees deployed. Photo courtesy Liz Roll, FEMA contractor

Col. Robert J. Ruch, commander, U.S. Army Engineering and Support Center, Huntsville, welcomes nearly 650 contractors to the preproposal conference for a $7 billion in shared capacity multiple award task order contract for Renewable and Alternative Energy Power Production for DoD Installations, Aug. 22, 2012, at the Bob Jones Auditorium on Redstone Arsenal, Ala. Huntsville Center is working closely with the Army Energy Initiatives Task Force to award contracts that will help Army installations meet mandated energy goals. Photo by William Farrow

Tammy Learned (right), Energy Optimization Branch chief, U.S. Army Engineering and Support Center, Huntsville, speaks with Rachael Martin, a managing partner at GDP Energy Solutions LLC, of Birmingham, Ala., at the 2012 Huntsville Center Small Business Forum, Nov. 9. Martin said she attended the event to learn more about working with USACE. The forum gave small and large businesses looking for partnering opportunities a chance to speak with contracting officials and program managers for Utility Monitoring and Control Systems, Operations and Maintenance Engineering Enhancement, Initial Outfitting and Transition Services, Design/Build Services for Access Control Points, Energy Conservation Investment Program, and Architect and Engineering Services for Medical Repair and Renewal. The Huntsville Center supports worldwide mission areas in chemical demilitarization, ordnance and explosives, engineering, environmental and munitions, medical facility design, and a wide variety of installation support programs. Photo by James CampbelL

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USACE Finance Center

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Finance Center (UFC) is developing the next generation of leaders by investing in its people through hands-on training.

All photos by Jimmy Jacks

It takes a full cast to achieve excellence. The facilities coordinator at UFC in Millington, Tenn., works to ensure clocks are properly in sync after daylight savings time in order to render timely services to locations outside the continental United States.

A dedicated professional staff of accountants, accounting technicians, information management specialists, and various other support personnel analyze transactions that have contributed toward USACE receiving several consecutive unqualified audit opinions.

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CENTERS

Army Geospatial Center High-resolution BuckEye Unmanned Aerial System imagery over a town in Nagal, Afghanistan. BuckEye is an airborne, high-resolution geospatial data-collection system that combines high-resolution (10 centimeter) color imagery and (1 meter) 3-D terrain data collected with a Light Detection and Ranging sensor. It also enhances the geospatial accuracy of data derived from intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance sources.

Photo courtesy of the AGC BuckEye Program

A team of U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (usace) Seattle District and Army Geospatial Center scientists and engineers conducted a precise 3-D survey of the left abutment of Libby Dam, Libby, Mont., in June 2012. The survey will serve as the baseline terrain representation as USACE monitors the stability of the area. Photo courtesy of the AGC and Seattle District

Ray Caputo of the Army Geospatial Center delivers a briefing on GeoPDF products and capabilities to George Mason University ROTC cadets and staff members. Photo courtesy of AGC

Soldiers from the Army Geospatial Centerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Military Support Team demonstrate the capabilities of the Instrument Set, Field Reconnaissance and Surveying (ENFIRE) tool kit. Photo courtesy of AGC

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MARINE DESIGN Center The Dredge Murden, a new USACE shallowdraft dredge vessel, works in Clearwater, Fla. The Marine Design Center oversaw design and procurement of the vessel. Murden was named one of WorkBoat magazineâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 10 significant Boats of 2012.

USACE Photo

The Wheeler, a deep draft dredging vessel owned and operated by USACE, underwent major repowering in 2012 in Mobile, Ala. The Marine Design Center oversaw work.

USACE Photo

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CENTERS

Institute for Water Resources

Institute of Water Resources (IWR) Director Bob Pietrowsky takes the USACE Civil Works leadership message for sustainable, resilient, and systems-based water resources management to audiences around the globe. USACE photo

IWR team members work collaboratively with USACE, federal, global, state, tribal, and local partners to improve integrated water resources management worldwide.

USACE photo

IWR is the USACE center of expertise for integrated water resources management and focuses on planning analysis, hydrologic engineering, dam and levee safety, and the collection, management, analysis, and dissemination of Civil Works and navigation information, including the nationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s waterborne commerce data.

USACE photo

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COMMANDS

249th Engineer Battalion (prime Power) Sgt. Gabriel Arkham, 249th Engineer Battalion (Prime Power), shows an Afghan technician from Da Afghanistan Breshna Sherkat, Afghanistanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s electric utility company, how to maneuver the work platform on one of the two bucket trucks donated to the utility by the United States. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers photo

Spc. Arnold Wicker of the 249th Engineer Battalion (Prime Power) attaches cables to a power transfer box in Carteret, N.J., while installing generators at a power plant that lost power during Hurricane Sandy. DoD photo

by E.J. Hersom

Staff Sgt. Henry Howell and Sgt. Nathaniel Boecker of Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 249th Engineer Battalion (Prime Power), inspect generators at the Ocean Bay Public Housing complex after Hurricane Sandy. Through the Federal Emergency Management Agency and in coordination with the city and state, USACE is actively supporting emergency temporary power missions in New York City Housing Authority areas and at critical facilities throughout the city. USACE photo by Brooks Hubbard IV

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416th Theater Engineer Command 10S100 South Frontage Road, Darien, IL 60561 Tel:(800)315-6327 ext. 122 The 416th Theater Engineer Command (TEC) is a major subordinate command of the U.S. Army Reserve Command that conducts theater-level engineer operations supporting a joint force executing unified land operations while providing trained and ready units to support mission requirements. Headquartered in the Chicago suburb of Darien, Ill., the command has deployed in support of Operations Desert Storm, Iraqi Freedom, and Enduring Freedom.

The 416th TEC leads 135 units in 37 states across the United States, encompassing three brigades, 15 battalions, and more than 13,000 Soldiers.

The unique capabilities of the 416th TEC includes tactical- through strategic-level engineer mission command experience, skilled civilian and military engineers, modular deployability, theater-level planning, coordination expertise, reachback capability to CONUS-based engineer resources, and executing unified land operations.

During combat operations, the 416th TEC exercises mission command over a wide range of units covering the full spectrum of engineering missions.

The command serves as a principal engineer force provider and engineer planner for U.S. Central Command, U.S. Northern Command, and U.S. Southern Command and participates in annual exercises around the globe such as Beyond the Horizons (BtH) in Central and South America and Bright Star in Egypt. BtH emphasizes humanitarian assistance in Central and/or South America annually, while Bright Star emphasizes joint and international military readiness.

The 416th TEC’s motto is “Serving by Building.” www.usar.army.mil/ourstory/commands/416TEC/Pages/Overview.aspx

The 980th Engineer Battalion Personal Security Detail (PSD) team takes a group photo after receiving coins from Battalion Commander Lt. Col. Wyatt Lowery at the top of FOB Masum Ghar, Afghanistan, Jan 19. The 980th was one of the many units under the 416th TEC to deploy in support of Operation Enduring Freedom in 2012.

U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Valerie Willhoite, 980th Engineer Battalion

Capt. Scott Schwartz, 721st Engineer Company commander, presents an Afghan National Army (ANA) soldier with a certificate of completion for finishing a four-day engineer course in Azizullah, Afghanistan, in mid-February 2012. During its deployment, the 721st conducted monthly workshops with ANA soldiers to equip them with the skills necessary to operate construction equipment well enough to take over missions when U.S. and coalition forces exit Afghanistan.

Spc. Ronny Hislop, an engineer with the 364th Engineer Platoon, Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 244th Engineer Battalion, tightens the bolts on a recently renovated bridge at Fort Hunter Liggett, Calif. Hislop and his fellow engineers were at the installation in order to make improvements that will help turn Fort Hunter Liggett into the premier U.S. Army Reserve training facility in the western United States. U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Zach Mott, 207th

U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Joseph Koktan, 980th Engineer Battalion

Public Affairs Detachment

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412th Theater Engineer Command A convoy stages outside the Salang Tunnel during Operation Mountain Blade, an emergency road-repair effort to the Salang Pass section of Highway 1 in Parwan province, Afghanistan. The operation, conducted by engineering elements of Joint Task Force Empire, improved the road surface of the pass in preparation for winter. Photo by Staff Sgt. Derek M. Smith, 411th Engineer Brigade

Army deep sea divers jump from the rear of a CH-47 Chinook during helocasting training in support of Operation River Assault at Fort Chaffee, Ark. The 412th Theater Engineer Command, based in Vicksburg, Miss., serves as executive agent of the annual exercise designed to train and test Soldiersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; skill sets in bridge-building operations. Photo by Spc. Bradley Miller, 326th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment

Pfc. Christopher Sims, a combat engineer with the 449th Engineer Company, 478th Engineer Battalion, 926th Engineer Brigade, deploys a Puma unmanned aerial vehicle during pre-deployment training at the National Training Center, March 20, 2012. The Puma is equipped with infrared cameras and capable of flying out ahead of route clearance patrols to identify potential threats. Photo by Sgt. Devin Wood, 340th Public Affairs Detachment

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579th Theater Engineer Command The 579th Engineer Detachment Forward Engineer Support TeamMain (FEST-M), comprised of military and civilian members, provides technical engineer planning and design, contract construction, environmental and geospatial engineering support, and real estate acquisition and disposal. They also provide command and control of USACE operations and subfield elements in theater in support of fullspectrum operations. Photo by Alfred Dulaney

579th Engineer Detachment (FEST-M) military and civilian members participate in a planning meeting in their temporary office during their August 2012 deployment to Seoul, South Korea, in support of Exercise Ulchi Freedom Guardian. USACE Photo by Marilyn Phipps

579th Engineer Detachment (FEST-M) civilian team members Sam Stacy (left) and Alfonso Gonzalesmagdaleno assess a bridge on the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center as part of a field training exercise used to maintain team skills. USACE Photo by Marilyn Phipps

579th Engineer Detachment (FEST-M) S-3 Officer Capt. Jason Webb watches as Jimmy Hynum, a civilian construction inspector, and Sgt. 1st Class Jeffery Moran set up the BGAN during an August 2012 deployment to Seoul, South Korea. USACE Photo by Marilyn Phipps

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