HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (Jan. 5, 2015) -- The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Engineering and Support Center, Huntsville's newest planner brings an additional set of capabilities and a fresh perspective to the Planning and Programming team.
A certified planner with 20 years of city planning experience, Daniel Reed served as the planning director for the city of Daytona Beach, Florida, before embarking on a planning career with the military. In Naples, Italy, where he just came from, Reed worked as a NATO planner representing Navy infrastructure requirements. He has also worked as a planner for the State Department in Iraq, Nigeria and Djibouti, and then with the Marine Corps in Japan.
"Because of the unique nature of Huntsville Center -- with a worldwide area of operations -- we deal with planning in countries all over the world," said Wesley Bushnell, a military construction economist with seven years of experience on Huntsville Center's Planning and Programming team.
The standards are the standards when it comes to military construction, Reed said. Planners must interpret each site through the lens of the headquarters regulations -- meeting sustainability, environmental stewardship and security goals -- while trying to make the most efficient and effective use of the allotted space to meet the needs of the organization.
"Customers come to us because they have a requirement to get a mission done -- whatever it might be," said Sally Parsons, program manager for the Planning and Programming Branch of the Installation Support and Programs Management Directorate Military Integration Division. "They want us to help them lay out where it should be located on the installation, how much space it will require and what should be in that space. In a nutshell, 'I have a need, help me get a facility or space to meet that need.' We help them develop the funding documents (DD Form 1391) that go to Congress so it can eventually be approved and funded as a project."
Primary customers include the Office of the Assistant Chief of Staff for Installation Management (OACSIM), Army Reserve Installation Management Directorate, Installation Management Command, Army Sustainment Command, U.S. Army Network Enterprise Technology Command and the U.S. Army Reserve. This year for OACSIM alone, projects range from maintenance complexes and stockyards to central issue facilities and line haul ammunition supply storage.
The planning focus in many locations -- both in the States and overseas where buildable land space is limited -- has transitioned more toward walkability, compatible mixed use spaces and building up not out. "The amount of space devoted to the automobile in the states is just crazy; everything is for the car here, nothing is for people," Reed said.
Overseas everything is denser -- more public transportation, more pedestrian and bike friendly urban environments. "You learn how to think about maximizing the available space," Reed said.
On the U.S. Marine Corps base where he worked in Japan, Reed said they designed for every road to include well-marked bike lanes and every building with covered bike structures in prominent locations for Marines and civilian employees.
Huntsville team members have a wealth of overseas planning and/or project management experience among them, and many have high-level security clearances that enable them to provide planning support in a broad range of environments. Team capabilities include facility requirements analyses, economic analyses, whole installation and area development plans, planning charrettes, centralized military construction planning, installation planning standards and vision plans. Parsons added that Bushnell's experience performing economic analyses for military construction is another capability that sets Huntsville Center apart.
Three Huntsville Center projects recently received awards from the American Planning Association: an area development plan for Guam, Saipan and American Samoa; an area development plan for Schofield Town Center in Hawaii; and the Logistics Readiness Center Project Definition and Validation Plan (PDVP). The first initiative of its kind, the PDVP served to catalogue specific data related to building deficiencies and property improvements, then prioritize work on Directorate of Logistics facilities at 48 installations worldwide.
"We are trying to cover the full-spectrum of possible needs and planning environments to respond to the individual needs of each organization, and we have to be able and prepared to fulfill planning needs anywhere in the world," Bushnell said.
Related Links:
U.S. Army Engineering and Support Center, Huntsville
Social Sharing