Respect, Collaboration and JOC

In the recent July/August edition of The Military Engineer I had the opportunity to write an article on project delivery method, Job Order Contracting. The article is titled Respect, Collaboration and JOC.

At the core of this article is the ability to share on the benefits of JOC that help military facilities achieve their goals, including funding local economies, supporting sustainable projects and working with less.

Podcast: Creating Sustainable Bridges at Fort Eustis

Learn more about recycled structural composite and how Centennial built the first train bridges using this material at Fort Eustis.

The Green Bridge to Somewhere

The interest is amazing. Two train bridges made from 100% recycled milk jugs, detergent jugs and tires. They are the first of their kind in the world. It started with the interest by our client at Fort Eustis in the Commonwealth of Virginia wanting to do something green and meaningful. It was accomplished thanks to the ability of Job Order Contracting to allow collaboration and innovation between owners and contractors and the fact that the base has had a long term successful JOC program in place and a team at Centennial aligned with their goals.

Recently ENR ran a story on the bridges at Ft. Eustis. It was exciting to see this project come together and take shape. It is a positive testament to job order contracting, sustainability and creativity.

Yesterday, at media day for the bridges, spokespeople from Centennial, Axion, who manufactures the material and Ft. Eustis described the project and its benefit to the environment to local TV and print media. They noted that the material is just as durable as traditional materials, has the same life expectancy, without the maintanence worries. It also keeps these materials out of landfills.

Phil Reed, Fort Eustis Directorate of Public Works Engineering Division chief, said "Centennial, our go to team, allowed us to use a design-build fast-track process to get into the hands of the new technology and came up with this for a better alternative for the long term and allowed us to complete the process in half the time that we would have using conventional construction."

There is a strong tie in public funded construction and job order contracting for sustainably. We wrote a white paper, Shades Of Green on this topic and it sets the ground work for why JOC and sustainability go hand in hand in a public facilities environment.

RSC materials being delivered to the construction location.

Train bridge was built to sustain a 130-ton load.

Members of Centennial's Ft. Eustis team pose for picture on completed bridge.

Federal Facilities' Green Efforts Require Collaboration

On February 22nd-24th, I attended a Military Construction Summit in Vienna, VA and there were a wide range of topics covered. This well-attended summit was focused on US Military Construction efforts for all branches of the Department of Defense. One session was headed up by Melissa Gallagher-Rogers Director, Government Sector of the US Green Building Council and she went over a pretty standard LEED and USGBC presentation. The questions by the audience were focused around the standard “how do you justify costs to do green?” or “what are the costs to get a building LEED certified”? As she was talking I realized that this idea of collaboration between owner, designer, constructor, end user, subcontractors, etc. to come up with the most green and sustainable solution will not really work with a restrictive and divided contracting method like design-bid-build.

So I raised my hand and asked Melissa, “Based on the fact that sustainable building approaches – both for new and existing buildings – require tons of communications, collaboration, sharing and flexibility, what is the USGBC preferred method of contracting on federal and public funded facilities?” After a few minutes of back and forth clarification questions the response was “we have not really looked at that point, and I can’t answer it.” So I raised the fact that construction contracting methods of design-build on new buildings and Job Order Contracting on existing buildings really favors the tenets, approaches and processes of LEED.

I challenged the group to understand that for the end product to be the best, greenest, and most sustainable solution there needs to be open, two-way collaboration. Make sure your contracting method allows for this. To apply pre-World War II contracting methods to 21st Century demands might not make sense. In the end, green efforts require relationships that are structured as open, win-win-win focused.