Rear Adm. Dean VanderLey, Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command (NAVFAC) commander and chief of Civil Engineers and Mark Edelson, program executive officer for Industrial Infrastructure (PEO II), shared the Department of the Navy’s (DON) approach to shore infrastructure revitalization at a Sea-Air-Space panel discussion April 8 in National Harbor, Maryland.
Panel members described how shore infrastructure provides the foundation for America’s maritime engagement in the world and discussed how the Department of Navy, the Department of Transportation and commercial shipyards are upgrading ports, shipyards and other infrastructure and equipment to support warfighting lethality and the United States’ economic interests.
VanderLey gave several examples of how NAVFAC is investigating different contracting strategies to award military construction contracts faster and at a lower cost than traditional methods.
“We’re doing things like early contractor involvement, where we bring the construction contractors on much earlier in the design process to provide input in the design,” he said. “That’s really important, especially on really complex projects where the cost and schedule is less about what you’re building, [and more about] how you have to build it.”
Edelson noted that early contractor involvement has also been important for building new dry docks as part of the Navy’s Shipyard Infrastructure Optimization Program (SIOP).
“We’re in unexplored territory now with the type of construction we’re doing,” said Edelson. “With the magnitude of the dry dock we are proposing to build at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, for example -- it will take twice the amount of concrete that it took to build the Pentagon -- we’ve learned to bring in prospective contractors early in the design phase to start talking us through considerations on how to build such a massive thing. How to share the risk in building something like this over several years.”
VanderLey also described how NAVFAC is looking to leverage new and emerging techniques that are gaining traction in the commercial construction industry. One promising area of innovation is industrialized construction, which is also known as offsite or modular construction, where the building parts are prefabricated offsite, and then the parts are brought onsite and assembled. Using this type of construction could result in savings in terms of cost and schedule of up to 30 percent.
“For certain types of projects, we’re seeing a lot of advantages to that [industrialized] construction. Things like child development centers or barracks have some sort of modular component where you can construct a lot of [the building] offsite and bring it onto the site,” he said.
Off-site or industrial construction can also have benefits in large construction projects, such as dry docks.
“With the large drydocks we’re building, there can be huge components -- the size of a four-story apartment building -- that are being cast offsite and brought to the location to [be assembled] on site on a very grand scale,” said Vanderley. “Those kind of approaches, and looking at how NAVFAC can do things better, smarter and really leverage the innovations with industry to make best use of the resources we do have.
NAVFAC is the naval shore facilities, base operating support, and expeditionary engineering systems command that delivers life-cycle technical and acquisition solutions aligned to fleet and Marine Corps priorities.
SIOP is a comprehensive, long-term recapitalization effort that is delivering integrated investments in infrastructure and industrial plant equipment at the Navy’s four public shipyards, expanding shipyard capacity and optimizing shipyard configuration to meet the Navy’s nuclear-powered fleet maintenance requirements. Recapitalizing the shipyards' century-old infrastructure increases maintenance throughput and improves quality of service for the Navy’s 37,000 shipyard employees.