San Antonio BRAC and MILCON Program

The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) is reorganizing its infrastructure to support its forces more efficiently and effectively, increase operational readiness, and foster collaborative operations. Under the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) directive, the DoD is streamlining its portfolio of installations to optimize their value, significantly reduce cost of ownership, and facilitate transformation, common operations, and shared business functions. BRAC—combined with significant military construction (MILCON) projects and other Grow the Force Army and Air Force recruit training initiatives—created a more than $3 billion surge in construction at four military installations in the San Antonio area.

USACE hired Parsons as an integration contractor to provide professional services that support this increase in planning, design, and construction, which has a mandatory completion deadline of September 2011.

The San Antonio Military Medical Center (SAMMC) will
create one of the DoD’s largest inpatient facilities and
its largest ambulatory clinic.
(rendering courtesy of USACE)

Our team is providing program, project, and construction management to coordinate and support 180 construction projects that include 78 major facilities and more than 12 million ft² of new and renovated space. Two significant subprograms are the San Antonio Military Medical Center (SAMMC) and the Medical Education and Training Campus (METC):

SAMMC will encompass a north campus for inpatient medical care and a south campus for ambulatory (outpatient) care:

• The north campus will include additions and renovations to Brooke Army Medical Center on Fort Sam Houston. The existing facility will be expanded by 50% to include a multistory addition that will house a Level 1 trauma center, operating rooms, clinical and administrative space—and an extension of its internationally respected burn center. A 5,000-space parking garage will also be built, and 288,000 ft² of existing facilities will be renovated.
• The south campus will be located at Lackland Air Force Base and had originally required a $50 million renovation of Wilford Hall Medical Center. However, in lieu of the renovation, a new ambulatory surgical clinic to replace Wilford Hall Medical Center has been requested in the 2010 MILCON program.

METC is being constructed on Fort Sam Houston to consolidate medical training programs for enlisted personnel from all branches of the U.S. military. The campus will encompass 1.9 million ft² of facilities, and it will serve an average daily enrollment of 9,000 students. New construction for METC—the largest institution of its kind in the world—includes:

• Five medical instructional facilities and two field training facilities
• Three 1,200-person dormitories
• Central energy plant
• Administrative building
• An 80,000-ft² dining hall
• Fitness center

Creating specific facilities for medical research is another major component of this program. A new Joint Center of Excellence for Battlefield Health and Trauma Research will bring together tri-service research teams from the Army, Navy, and Air Force to improve the delivery of combat casualty care. The nearby Tri-Service Research Laboratory will house research efforts that examine the health and safety effects of exposure to various stressors in the field.

Fort Sam Houston has roughly 800 historic structures, more than any other active military installation in the United States. This program renovates several historic buildings to provide administrative space for 3,000 military personnel and civilian employees. These projects are proceeding within the parameters of the National Historic Preservation Act, as well as a special Army Alternate Procedures agreement that includes specific management practices to ensure that the visual character of the buildings is maintained.

LEED is the nationally accepted benchmark for the design, construction, and operation of sustainable buildings—and USACE requires that its projects be LEED silver certifiable. Parsons’ staff sets LEED and sustainability guidelines for contractors as we prepare requests for proposal (RFPs) and assess the feasibility of contractor plans.

Parsons is contributing its expertise in the following roles:

• Architecture and engineering (A/E) concept design work
  • Program integration and project management
  • RFP design development
  • Cost and schedule support
• Construction management and inspection
  • Project management and engineering support
  • Construction oversight and quality assurance on individual projects
  • Review of construction oversight and quality assurance when other firms perform these activities
• Staff augmentation that provides a cost-effective solution for USACE to meet critical, comparatively short-term staffing demands. This is one of the first projects for which the USACE hired a contractor to provide program and project managers who work side by side with their government counterparts to execute design and construction projects.
• Coordination. Our team of project managers, coordinators, project controls experts, engineers, architects, construction inspectors, and other professionals is coordinating and integrating the management and information flow both to and from the end users, designers, constructors, and tri-service stakeholders. The Army, Navy, and Air Force have their own unique standards, procedures, and requirements that must be collected, distilled, and consolidated to create a single facility or campus that meets the needs of all services—and when construction and renovation are required at existing medical facilities, they must progress while maintaining the delivery of their full range of healthcare services.

San Antonio’s new and renovated facilities will bring more than 12,000 additional military personnel and federal employees into the San Antonio area. Parsons is providing critical resources and capabilities to help USACE execute this unprecedented construction program—from initial planning and design through completion of construction and final closeout.