Often, in nations hosting and building U.S. government facilities, U.S. armed forces engineers take plans to an early design stage and then hand off the projects to local government entities for execution, according to long-standing agreements worked out at diplomatic levels. For the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which builds in much of the world for the Army and often for the Air Force, Navy, Marines, various federal agencies and even foreign governments, agreements governing its construction tasks vary significantly.
“Every single place has different rules,” says Col. John S. Kem, commander of the Corps’ Europe District, whose area of responsibility includes Europe, the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa.