...buildings, which is an advantage. Once the contractors do the first building, follow-ons are cookie cutter.” Sundt broke ground in September on a $30-million contract to build the first phase of a so-called Warriors in Transition complex at Fort Bliss, Texas, and recently received notice to proceed on two more in Texas: a $40.7-million complex at Fort Hood and a $48-million project at Fort Sam Houston. WT design is handled by the Fort Worth District COS.

“They give you a standard layout,” Flynn says. The repetition benefits subcontractors and helps with materials. “With WTs, 50% of the job is very predictable,” he says, and with that comes less risk and greater efficiency.

“It’s easier for the Corps to understand what they’re buying,” says Flynn. “It creates a consistent product type. Once you are successful on a project type and you’ve done a number of them, the risk to procure them goes away and you are comfortable to take that around to other places.”

The changes that MILCON Transformation set in motion were also useful in preparing the Corps for the ongoing $14.3-billion Hurricane and Storm Damage Risk Reduction System construction program in New Orleans that followed Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

“We took lessons learned from the MILCON program and applied them to the civil side,” Temple says.

“We couldn’t have soldiers come home from Iraq and sleep on cots, so it had to happen fast.”
— Mike Rossi, form er Corps Kansas City District Commander

Col. Peter DeLuca, Corps North Atlantic Division commander, says sharing the project load among many districts has been a key to delivery in New Orleans and is playing a similar role in BRAC and other military construction. The Mississippi Valley Division set up the Hurricane Protection Office and divided functionality, such as real estate, contracting and construction management, among several districts. Separately, his division has set up the Belvoir Integration Office in Alexandria, Va., as a synchronization center, with whole projects being turned over to districts from Maine to Norfolk for execution. Both are flexible arrangements and “are working great,” he says.

If the Corps is successful in demonstrating agility in delivering huge programs on both sides of the civil and military fence, it may pave the way for change in how civil works are funded. Now, civil works are first authorized and then incrementally funded by Congress.

“If you fund a program incrementally over 10 years, it will take 10 years to build,” says Temple. “We are showing if we are fully funded, we can deliver huge civil-works projects in a tight time frame. We are in a very interesting point in time.”