...former commander of the Corps’ Kansas City District. He points to when the Army announced the 1st Armored Division, based in Germany, was deploying to Iraq and would relocate to Fort Bliss, Texas, on return. The Fort Worth District came up with a plan to use assets from all districts, says Rossi. Corps headquarters took elements of that plan and developed the Centers of Standardization (COS), design and construction clearinghouses for the 44 facility types required by the Army. Eight Corps districts are set up as a COS.
“What forces change is the mission,” Rossi says. “The Army gave the Corps a mission, and it forces the Corps to figure it out.” The MILCON Transformation program “was the solution.”
“What we were charged with as a COS was delivering a quality product, faster and cheaper,” says Matthew Milliorn, assistant program manger for the Fort Worth COS. “Our goals were 15% cost savings and 30% time savings.” Every facility type is a standard design, except for the facade, which is customized to blend with the architectural theme of a base. “Every facility is designed to LEED Silver [certification],” Milliorn says.
Because design-build and ECI work when owners know what they want and want it fast, those delivery methods also were rolled into MILCON Transformation, Rossi says. “We couldn’t have soldiers come home from Iraq and sleep on cots, so it had to happen fast.”
The Fort Worth District COS also encouraged industry to use tools such as modular construction to save local labor and time, and the Corps standardized its request-for-proposals (RFP) format for all facility types. “Industry was telling us that an RFP from Sacramento is different from New Orleans or Fort Worth,” Milliorn says. The new RFP has universal formatting, contracting and code requirements, but variations on criteria per facility types. “That allows contractors to save money on the bidding process, and is less confusing,” Milliorn says.
A 700-page RFP is not unusual, says Bill Flynn, vice president of Sundt Construction Inc., Tempe, Ariz. “If every one is different, you’ve got to read 700 pages. Once they started standardizing, you know where to look for particulars. It’s predictable.”
But whenever there is something new, there is push-back. “Someone has to enforce decisions,” says Rossi, who says Temple is widely credited with being the teeth behind the changes.
COS designs reduce costs, says Robert Kreienheder, area engineer for the Kansas City District. “KCD has a very diverse program. We work with virtually all the COS,” he says. “We’re pretty good at building repetitive types of...
