The world is increasing in complexity. The uncertainty and speed of change demand innovative and adaptive leadership to meet the objectives of the Army Operating Concept. The Office of the Assistant Chief of Staff for Installation Management (OACSIM) and the U.S. Army Installation Management Command (IMCOM) incorporate innovative strategies to meet the ever increasing challenges facing today's Army. The OACSIM executes program policy, oversight, and proponency to ensure and support mission command as IMCOM delivers and integrates base support to enable readiness through power projection platforms for a self-reliant and globally responsive all-volunteer Army. As the Vice Chief of Staff of the Army stated, "The Army lives, works, trains, plays, and worships in facilities. Our installations are the Army's home and they support everything we do."
The OACSIM and IMCOM team is a diverse, dedicated and enthusiastic group of professionals, family members, survivors, and retirees interconnected by mission, family, and community, all working together to ensure the Army's strategic advantage in a complex world. Our efforts are shaping the installations of the future and setting the conditions for success.
MISSIONS
The Facility Investment Strategy (FIS) sets the conditions for an adaptive environment in which Soldiers, Families, and Civilians can thrive, a structure that supports unit readiness in a time of constrained resources, and a solid foundation for building the future. We will sustain what we need by maintaining required facilities to achieve the maximum designed lifespan. This avoids costly repairs or a pre-mature need for new construction. We will restore and modernize the most needed facilities, extending the life-span and improving their mission functionality and energy efficiency. We will dispose of those facilities made excess by force reductions and demolish or mothball buildings that are in disrepair. This will significantly reduce future-years energy and maintenance costs. Military Construction will only be used for our highest priorities after careful analysis proves this as the Army's best solution. This strategy reduces the global Army's footprint, high operations and maintenance costs and the number of new facilities. By exercising fiscal discipline in a constrained environment, installation management professionals strive to be exemplary stewards of our resources.
We are developing new concepts to guide the delivery of Soldier and Family Services to increase resiliency and readiness of our Soldiers and Families. Our unwavering commitment to provide essential services is demonstrated with our Common Levels of Support (CLS) initiative. This operating model accomplishes three major objectives: enables day-to-day operations and management of installation and base support services delivery to a common standard; manages garrison infrastructure to include prioritization of sustainment, restoration, and maintenance projects to support Soldiers, Families, and Civilians; and delivers Family and installation programs tailored to meet the unique requirements of each community.
Proactively enabling the right infrastructure and Soldier and Family services on our installations is one part of the Army's power projection platform; the spirit ensuring this success is our people.
FAMILY
As the Army's home, the mission of caring for those who defend our freedom requires every employee and leader to seek ways to promote and sustain mission success. It requires a passionate, committed and engaged workforce to meet these challenges. People define our culture, drive our performance, and embody our knowledge base. They are the center of our efforts to transform OACSIM and IMCOM culture to become the best place to work. Our Strategic Human Capital Plan lays the groundwork for re-shaping our workforce and culture to be agile and adaptive in meeting future needs of the Army, providing premier installation management and becoming one of the best federal workplaces by the year 2025. Over 50,000 civilian employees, in 329 different occupational series, spanning 31 Army career programs global-wide, will benefit from reenergized mentoring programs, increased career broadening opportunities, and new industry-based training and certification programs. This human capital program is directly linked and supported by our Soldier and Family program initiatives.
Soldier For Life (SFL) is a transformational program with the theme, "Once a Soldier, Always A Soldier -- A Soldier for life." We designed it to enhance the lifecycle of our Soldiers and their Families. Its phases span from recruitment through retirement: Soldiers Start Strong, Serve Strong, Reintegrate Strong, and Remain Strong. SFL provides a multifaceted all-encompassing way of life program that offers educational and employment opportunities to Soldiers and their Families and engages and energizes our retirees who want to continue to contribute to the next generation of Soldiers. It also provides compassionate and long term support to surviving Families of Fallen Soldiers through Survivor Outreach Services. OACSIM and IMCOM integrates and synchronizes these efforts for maximum benefit. Every Soldier's family is part of the greater Army Family, and always will be so. SFL was created to enable Army, government and community efforts to facilitate successful reintegration of Soldiers, veterans and their families in order to keep them Army Strong and instill their values, ethos and leadership in our communities.
COMMUNITY
The Army is committed to our partner communities surrounding our installations in a variety of ways. Partnerships are innovative and vital tools for shaping future mutual successes. Given the current and expected fiscal environment of constrained resources, OACSIM and IMCOM are using partnerships in new and creative ways to improve services, reduce cost and mitigate risk.
Significant partnerships enriching our Soldiers include Soldier For Life National Transition Summits hosted by garrisons worldwide. Partnering with us in this effort are the Office of the Secretary of Defense Transition-to-Veterans Program Office; Department of Army G1 Soldier For Life; U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation; Hiring Our Heroes; the Departments of Labor and Veterans Affairs; and a wide variety of local organizations partnering with garrisons.
The Soldier Life Cycle model facilitated more than 800 Soldiers at ten IMCOM installations over the past year participating in the Career Skills Program to gain employment skills training, apprenticeships and internships. This innovative approach demonstrated enthusiastic and strong partnerships with companies like Microsoft, General Motors, Raytheon, and the United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Pipefitting Industry. Such partnerships enhance interaction with our local, regional and national businesses, resulting in many of the participating Soldiers gaining direct employment or certifications that increase their employability. Programs and partnerships like these reduced the amount of unemployment benefits paid to former Soldiers from fiscal 2013 to fiscal 2014 by $108 million.
OACSIM and IMCOM partnerships efficiently manage and save our limited resources, but we are also using partnerships from a human capital perspective. A new innovative partnership designed to enable installation management professionals to continually refine the effectiveness and efficiency of installation customer service is a pilot program with the International City/County Manager's Association (ICMA). The one-week engagement between ICMA members, host communities and garrison commanders provides peer-to-peer support as well as opportunities for professional development and training. Garrison command teams aware of city management strategies and solutions will be able to identify and develop public and private partnerships to facilitate the sharing of services in a way that benefits the entire community.
Partnering with other entities to leverage their capacity results in proven and beneficial savings for the Army. Mature examples include public-private partnerships for housing (Residential Communities Initiative) and lodging (Privatization Army Lodging) that benefit our Soldiers, their Families and other members of our military communities around the world. Similarly, utilities privatization (UP) proved successful in leveraging industry expertise and financing to affordably upgrade utilities for safe, efficient, and sustainable service for active component and Army Reserve installations.
The newest public-public partnership tool is the Intergovernmental Support Agreement (IGSA). The great advantage of IGSAs are the mutually beneficial results. Garrisons can provide local communities with specialized police, fire and medical training opportunities, as well, as youth programs and shared athletic field operations. Local governments benefit by receiving revenue for providing the same services to local installations that they are already providing to their local communities. The Presidio of Monterey (POM) and the City of Monterey, California developed the Army's first public-to-public partnership in 2002. Through this partnership the City of Monterey provides a broad range of municipal services to Soldiers and their families living and working on the POM. The Army is saving $1.5 million per year through this partnership which has become the benchmark standard for all Army Installation partnership initiatives which have followed.
OACSIM and IMCOM partnerships are also global. In concert with the Army Operating Concept, we are poised worldwide, ensuring installations are our readiness platforms. This is clearly evidenced in Europe through our support to the European Reassurance Initiative and U.S. Army Europe (USAREUR) Strong Europe campaign. We provide services to support additional bi-lateral and multi-lateral exercises and training, improve infrastructure to receive reinforcements and support onward movement, enhance prepositioning of U.S. equipment in Europe, and support programs, activities and assistance to build the capacity of European Allies and partner nations.
As the Nation looks toward the Pacific, OACSIM and IMCOM are also investing resources in support. The U.S. and Republic of Korea governments agreed to consolidate U.S. Forces Korea into two enduring hubs, the largest of which will be Camp Humphreys. The Army will improve readiness and efficiencies while further enhancing its partnership with local communities. Camp Humphreys is home to the Army's most active airfield in the Pacific and the center of the largest construction and transformation project in the U.S. Department of Defense's history, spending $10.7 billion to construct new facilities and infrastructure.
CONCLUSION
As members of the Army team, OACSIM and IMCOM are at the forefront of enabling Army readiness by delivering installation services as well as sustaining facilities and infrastructure in support of Soldiers, Families, and Civilians. We are linked through our mission, our Army Families, and our communities. OACSIM and IMCOM continue to balance support for the premier, all-volunteer Army through responsible stewardship, program assessment, promotion of self-reliance, and, ultimately, mission command. Strategic decisions and sustainable partnerships will enable policy and resources to keep Soldiers, Family members, retirees, and Army Civilians resilient and strong. Working within the Army Operating Concept, OACSIM and IMCOM ensure our power projection and readiness platforms, our installations, keep our Army ready to win in a complex world.
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