The confluence of two wars, the growth and reorganization of the U.S. Army and the enormous construction program required to accommodate those demands are the forces driving the federal government’s construction workhorse, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, through its own transformation to become a more efficient program-management machine.
Fiscal year 2009, from Oct. 1, 2008, to Sept. 30, 2009, “was one of the largest military programs ever” for the Corps, says Lt. Gen. Robert L. Van Antwerp, its chief. Including construction driven by the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure Act (BRAC), $3 billion in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act projects, as well as a facilities sustainment, restoration and modernization program, among other work, the Corps was responsible for a worldwide military construction program exceeding $32 billion in 2009 alone. That is twice the project value it handled four years ago, “all of which is being executed by approximately the same level” of Corps staffing, Van Antwerp says.