REDSTONE ARSENAL, Ala. -- The man with the plans at Army Materiel Command headquarters lays out the possibilities for facilities throughout the enterprise from coast to coast.

Architect Stephen Evans is the program manager for the installation master planning of 23 Organic Industrial Base facilities and 53 Logistics Readiness Centers. His program has been recognized two of the past three years for excellence by the American Planning Association.

Evans' efforts to plan for resources, growth and recapitalization of two sites, McAlester Army Ammunition Plant, Oklahoma, and the Joint Systems Manufacturing Center in Lima, Ohio, earned recognition for excellence in 2018. In 2016, AMC won the top award for Outstanding Federal Planning Program across all federal elements nationwide, but the work doesn't stop there.

"The planning mission is to take a holistic approach to redesigning our aging industrial production and service areas and bring them into the 21st century," Evans said. "The way to do that is look at all the components, whether they are infrastructure or a part of the facility, and then map out how a long-term recapitalization and replacement looks."

The arsenals, depots and ammunition plants that make up the Army's Organic Industrial Base face the challenge of aging infrastructure. While the average age of AMC's facilities is 75, Watervliet Arsenal, New York - and many of its buildings - are more than 200 years old.

"It's past time to begin recapitalizing these buildings and think out what the future looks like," Evans said. "If we're not increasingly proactive with our mission-flexible installation planning, we will not be able to keep pace with the rapid modernization of our war fighting vehicles and equipment."

Evans' role is to look at the arsenals, depots, ammunition plants and logistics readiness centers and create stakeholder driven plans for their future development in five-year increments out to 50 years.

Evans said that look goes beyond just facilities to consider the whole picture to help the installations gain efficiencies by improving proximity alignment, and creating more mission flexible locations.

"Rather than driving pieces of equipment around for a mile, it's looking at where we can place future buildings, roads and rails to improve efficient production," he said.

As aging facilities and installations across the Department of Defense are forced to out serve their expected usable life, master planning has been given renewed importance from secretary of defense for understanding the scope of replacement or recapitalization of buildings across the DOD, Evans said.

"We are trying to map out the future for these facilities, because they are critical for readiness," he said. "Particularly our LRCs recently, as they have a direct link to our Soldiers, their readiness, life, health and safety. As Gen. Dwight Eisenhower famously stated, 'Plans are nothing; planning is everything!'"