Military City

The $2 billion BRAC program in San Antonio includes high-tech building upgrades and renovations to 78 major facilities, amounting to more than 6 million sq ft.

By Eileen Schwartz

Randy Holman knows nearly every detail about the Army's $2 billion program at San Antonio's Fort Sam Houston.

Randy Holman, deputy director, strategic communications, Joint Program Management Office, San Antonio.

Ask him about any facet of the program, which involves more than 6 million sq ft of building and renovations, and Holman has an immediate answer. That's his job as spokesman for the Joint Program Management Office, or JPMO, the triservice group that is overseeing design and construction under the Army's base relocation and closure program, or BRAC.

The work involving the construction or renovation of 78 major facilities is taking place across San Antonio at Fort Sam Houston, Camp Bullis and Lackland and Randolph Air Force bases through September 2011.

Ask Holman, for example, how many sq ft are included in the new Armed Forces Reserve Center at Camp Bullis being built by Walbridge/Bartlett Cocke Joint Venture team of San Antonio, and he immediately answers 200,000. He adds, "The space will provide permanent facilities for 23 Army Reserve and four Texas Army National Guard Units."

Ask him about that massive new dining hall, awarded to SpawGlass of San Antonio, and Holman replies without pause that it will serve 4,800 people in one seating. Holman's comments came as he drove around the 3,000 acres where site and infrastructure work is getting under way.

Passing through a security gate, Holman notes that about 30% of the contracts have been let to small businesses in prime contractor capacity. Then he quickly shifts back to the site, pointing to everything from the location of a new tower to a corridor that will extend "out to that small grove of trees" where a temporary emergency entrance will function during construction.

San Antonio is not the Army's only focus in Texas. An even more daunting $4.1 billion upgrade and expansion is beginning at Fort Bliss in El Paso that will expand the base's structural and infrastructure footprint to accommodate 30,000 new soldiers. But San Antonio's Fort Sam Houston, one of the Army's oldest active installations, has the distinction of being the future center of the military's medical training programs.

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All enlisted medical training programs of all branches of the U.S. military including medics, corpsmen and nuclear medicine technologists, will be brought to one location for training at the Medical Education and Training Campus, or METC, a 1.9-million-sq-ft complex on Fort Sam Houston.

The Fort Sam Houston campus will eventually host 45,000 medical students a year, drawn from all services, Holman says. "Student classes are as short as a month and as long as a year, in a 365-day training environment," Holman adds. "They just rotate them through."

The METC complex will include 1.2 million sq ft of instruction and lab space and will be one of the world's largest medical training institutions, Holman says. "It's basically a campus being dropped into the middle of an active installation," he adds. He likens it to a "city within a city." The complex will include three dorms and five instructional facilities by 2011.

Economic impact The effect of BRAC on the San Antonio economy reaches beyond the military installations.

A rendering shows the San Antonio Military Medical Center North, designed by RTKL, with its planned expansion in excess of $500 million. To the right, new 5,000 space garage. Contracts are expected to be let by end of summer.

A study commissioned by the city of San Antonio in 2006 focusing on the impacts in the greater metropolitan area "set a nice foundation in terms of how big the military industry is and how much of an affect it has on the San Antonio economy," Holman says. "We have now taken a look at the BRAC program and realized at its conclusion we will end up with an immediate $5.7 billion boost to the economy."

According to the study, San Antonio is expected to receive more than 4,000 new personnel, 5,500 new families due to the program. Through 2011, BRAC will have an economic impact of $5.7 billion and support employment of more than 46,000 due to the impact of construction.

After 2011, BRAC's impact will support the employment of more than 11,000 additional people, providing an additional $621 million economic impact and increase earnings by over $500 million.

Contracts scheduled to be awarded in the 2009 fiscal year total more than $400 million, according to the JPMO. Average expenditures for military construction in the San Antonio are between $65 million and $100 million annually.

"The military is expected to support 195,000 jobs at the end of this program," Holman adds.

The expected surge in construction over the next several years prompted the military to hire Parsons Corp. of Pasadena, Calif., as its architect/engineer/integrator. Scott Smith of Parsons says his role is to help manage and integrate the work, "which come from many different sources and services."

A rendering shows the 150,000 sq ft Joint Center of Excellence for Battlefield Health and Trauma Research, designed by CUH2A of Atlanta, under way by Gilbane.

The triservices involvement means there is no single source for funding or management of the program, Smith says. Because funding comes from all three services--the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Air Force Center for Engineering and the Environment and the U.S. Naval Facilities Engineering Command--with each as an eventual end user, all are highly involved in management decisions, Smith says.

"Collecting and defining each service's unique requirements, then blending them into an integrated facility or campus design that meets individual service needs, can be difficult, he says.

Because of the rapid pace of the program and compressed schedules for design and construction, project funding has hit some legislative bumps. "Brief interruptions can compound the challenges because there is no relief from BRAC deadlines or completion dates," Smith adds.

Known as Building 2000, one of more than 800 historic structures on Fort Sam Houston, the 1890s hospital is under renovation by RKJ Construction to accommodate BRAC-related administrative movement and future space. Killis Almond and Assoc. is the project architect. The BRAC program includes renovations to about a dozen structures. Photo by Eileen Schwartz.

Letting and labor Twelve contracts worth $386 million have been awarded for fiscal year 2008 alone for San Antonio's BRAC and ongoing military construction programs, with as many as 20 worth up to $1 billion, to be issued by September. The projects will allow for up to 11,000 additional military and civilian employees on base and a peak construction labor force of 1,800 by mid-2009. The fiscal year ends in September for the military.

"There's opportunity out there for small, medium and large firms," Holman says.

To help with construction oversight as work starts, Parsons provides oversight and quality assurance on individual projects as they're being constructed. "This includes management and support during the planning and programming, design and construction phases," Smith says.

Two contracting fairs held since last fall have brought together about 200 general contracting and subcontracting companies.

A rendering shows the future 48,000-person dining hall that SpawGlass will build, comprising 80,000 sq ft.

The JPMO has partnered with the county and city to push information about the job fairs into the community. Another fair is planned for Aug. 27. (See "Useful Sources," for details.)

"AGC San Antonio has participated in job fairs," says Doug McMurry, vice president of the local chapter of the Associated General Contractors of America. "We think it's off to a great start, and we're optimistic about the building program."

High-tech upgrades One of the largest projects in the program is the $500 million Brooke Army Medical Center, or BAMC, which has the largest contract value of all the planned projects. The project will expand the facility by about 50%, adding 288,000 sq ft of renovations; a seven-story, 738,000-sq-ft tower; central energy plant; and 5,000-car parking garage. At press time, the contract was expected to be let by the end of July.

One of five Medical Instructional Facilities that will each serve as a mini college campus containing classrooms for medics and corpsman.

"One of the things BRAC legislation called for was a more comprehensive partnership between the two military hospitals in San Antonio, including BAMC and Wilford Hall at Lackland Air Force Base," Holman says.

BAMC will become the San Antonio Military Medical Center North, or SAMMC North, and will house space for emergency, operating, clinical and administrative functions. Wilford Hall, where renovations will total 146,000 sq ft across three floors and the basement, will become known as SAMMC South and will serve outpatients.

Together the new center will house the military's largest in-patient ambulatory and outpatient clinic facilities.

A dozen of Fort Sam's historic buildings will undergo renovations under BRAC.

Among the campus' planned new research labs is the $92 million Joint Center for Excellence for Battlefield Health and Trauma Research, a 140,300-sq-ft center that will house all defense combat casualty care and trauma research missions. Design includes a full interstitial floor above the center's basement for maintenance access.

Approaching the site work where Hensel Phelps crews prepare to build two of the three dorms structures seeking LEED certification that will be part of the METC. Photo by Eileen Schwartz.

The project also adds about 36,700 sq ft to the existing Institute of Surgical Research vivarium facility. Gilbane Building Co. of Houston won the construction contract in September and broke ground in January.

At METC, which will become the center of medical training for the entire U.S. military but is only a small part of an eventual effort to upgrade and expand the entire base, construction began last month on the two dorms under a $140 million design-build contract awarded to the joint venture of Hensel Phelps of Austin and Jacobs Carter & Burgess of Fort Worth.

The two dorm structures, which are being designed to meet LEED silver rating criteria, will each house 1,200 service members.

Useful Sources :

August 27: Matchmaking fair hosted by the Joint Program Management Office to bring prime and subcontractors together to pursue BRAC projects. Free, but call ahead to confirm and register. Time & place TBD. 210-207-2712.
City of San Antonio, Office of Military Affairs: www.sanantonio.gov/oma
The Fort Worth District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers: swf.usace.army.mil

Key Players :

Owner: U.S. Department of Defense
Architect Engineer Integrator: Parsons Corp., Pasadena, Ca.
Design and Construction Supervisor: The Joint Program Management Office (The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Air Force Center for Engineering and the Environment, and Naval Facilities Engineering Command)

BRAC CONTRACTS LET TO DATE :

Walbridge Barlett Cocke Joint Venture, San Antonio: Armed Forces Reserve Center at Camp Bullis; $36.9 million
Gilbane Building Co., Houston, San Antonio: Battlefield Health and Trauma at Fort Sam Houston; $92 million
SpawGlass, San Antonio: METC Dining Facility; $28.7 million
URS Corp., San Antonio: METC Medical Instruction Facility No. 1 and No. 2; $89.9 million
Hensel Phelps, Austin: METC dorms one and two; $140 million
Mapco Inc., San Antonio: 300-space parking lot; $700,000
General Dynamics IT, Falls Church, Va.: METC Telephone Switch; $6.2 million
Tepa EC LLC, Colorado Springs, Colo.: METC HQ Admin. Building; $6 million
Primary Health Clinic: Satterfield & Pontikes Construction, Houston; $33.4 million