Army installation inspections help set blueprint for funding plans

Senior Leaders at active U.S. Army installations are conducting walk-through inspections of all real property on their sites to identify requirements for prioritization at the annual Facility Investment Plan (FIP) wargame in San Antonio, Texas early next year.

“The Facility Investment Plan is the Army’s holistic multi-year approach to prioritizing facility and infrastructure requirements in line with Army senior leader priorities,” Lt. Gen.  Omar Jones, Commanding General, U.S. Army Installation Management Command, said in an email to installation senior commanders.

The FIP supports the leadership’s intent to initially focus on Soldier/Family qualify of life, strategic power projection and installation readiness. The annual FIP program review starts with the setting of priorities by Secretary of the Army and Chief of Staff of the Army and ends with their decisions.

“The purpose of the program review is to ensure command requirements and priorities are captured and understood,” Jones continued. “The vast majority of requirements are already in the FIP. Key to the annual review is ensuring we appropriately ‘inserted new requirements and accelerated’ other requirements when needed.”

U.S. Army Picatinny Arsenal garrison officials held a two-day tour for the installation’s senior commander, Brig. Gen. John T. Reim, earlier this month.

“Having our senior commander walk the ground and visit the infrastructure we are proposing to be included in the Army’s Facility Investment Plan is critical in validating Picatinny’ s facility investment requirements,” said Garrison Commander Lt. Col. Alexander Burgos. “The 12 projects toured allowed us to put eyes on what needs to be done and hear from the individuals working at these locations and their concerns.”

The tours on Nov. 8-9 included facilities dedicated to both the engineering mission at Picatinny as well as support areas, such as childcare facilities and the Network Enterprise Center that is responsible for information technology.

“Picatinny is the home of the Joint Center of Excellence for Guns and Ammunition, and the leadership here is working hard to make sure our Army senior leader priority modernization efforts are being accomplished with the right infrastructure in place for sustaining these efforts,” Burgos said.

The U.S. Army Materiel Command developed the FIP in 2020 and executes the active Army’s FIP cycle, which kicks off every July, based on input from supported commands.

The FIP is reviewed and updated annually in three phases:

Phase 1 validates installation master plans, conduct assessments of real property, and prioritizes all requirements in synchronization with senior leader priorities. Phase 2 is the FIP wargame, and Phase 3 is the analytics out-brief and submission for Army senior leader approval.

The approved FIP is then incorporated into the Army’s funding plans and submitted to the Secretary of Defense as part of the Army’s Budget Estimate Submission.