Atlay Brown, an administrative assistant on the Southwestern Division regional integration team, has worked in Headquarters for 32 years, but she visited her first U.S. Army Corps of Engineers construction site on Nov. 7.

Brown was among more than 50 military programs directorate employees who participated in a military programs staff ride to Fort Belvoir, Va., to view the progress on two Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) projects – the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and the Fort Belvoir Community Hospital (FBCH).

"It was awesome…kind of mind-blowing," Brown said. "I read about the projects and I type up the information, but you don’t know what it means until you get out there and see it for yourself."

North Atlantic Division (NAD) is accomplishing the BRAC work at Fort Belvoir. The NGA project is managed by Baltimore District, and the FBCH is managed by Norfolk District. The Belvoir Integration Office (BIO), the NAD team on the ground that coordinates and integrates control functions across the programs, hosted the military programs staff ride.

"What a unique opportunity," said Jim Turkel, the chief of the BIO, as he welcomed the group. "I haven’t heard of a Headquarters trip like this before. We’ve got great staffs at all the projects and I know we’re making USACE proud. I also know our efforts are being replicated by USACE elements across the nation as we push to complete all the BRAC projects by the Sept. 15, 2011 statutory deadline."

After a briefing that included the BIO’s roles and responsibilities and an overview of the two projects, the team donned safety glasses, safety vests, and hardhats and headed to the NGA construction site on the Engineer Proving Ground.

With structural steel rising seven floors behind him, Buddy Billington, the senior construction manager for the NGA project, explained that the final project would be nine floors high. "There are two buildings, and each one is about the size of an aircraft carrier," he said. "When we’re finished, this is going to be the second largest government facility in the National Capitol Area. Only the Pentagon is larger."

Billington said the NGA project offers several "firsts" for the USACE team. For example, this is the first time the Corps is installing a chill beam system for cooling a facility. "There will be equipment in the ceiling that circulates cold water, and cool air will drift down for cooling," he said as he explained the system in layman’s terms.

The NGA project is averaging $1 million per day in construction placement. Billington expects placement to reach $40 million per month when construction peaks in fiscal 2010.

Moving to the main post of Fort Belvoir, the team saw the "guts" of the 1.27 million square foot hospital complex. It will have 120 in-patient beds, primary and specialty care clinics, and 3,500 parking spaces.

"It is really going to be huge," Brown said from her vantage point overlooking the site. "I didn’t think it would be so large."

Construction began on the project in Nov. 2007. Phil Federle, the FBCH program manager, said there are 400-500 construction workers each day; peak construction will see 2,500 workers per day.

Both the NGA and FBCH projects are using an integrated design bid build (IDBB) fast-track procurement strategy. Using an IDBB contracting method allowed the teams to hire the construction agents before the project designs were complete, thereby gaining construction advice while still designing. With the fast track, construction began before the design was complete.

"There is risk involved in designing and building at the same time," Federle said. "But if we weren’t doing this, the greater risk would be not finishing in time." He noted that construction would not have begun until next summer.

Dennis Pritchett, a program manager with the NAD regional integration team in Headquarters, coordinated the staff ride. He believes that the field teams will reap dividends from the time they invested explaining their work to the Headquarters staff.

"People who work here in the Headquarters are far removed from the work that goes on in the field," Pritchett said. "It was good that they got an opportunity to see the rubber meeting the road, to see the nuts and the bolts, the concrete and the bricks, and understand a little better how we get from point A to point B."

And it is clear, at least to Brown, that the staff ride did provide that understanding.

"I’m a veteran myself," she said. "I spent 23 years in the Reserves and National Guard. But until I actually got out there and saw for myself all the work that goes into this, I never really realized the significance of what we do to support the Soldiers and their families."