Tyndall Air Force Base -- Members of the Air Force Civil Engineer Center asset visibility team, or AVT, were recently awarded the 2016 Federal Energy and Water Management Program Award for asset management contributions to the Air Force energy program.
The AFCEC AVT actively manages the Air Force-wide implementation of the sustainment management systems, or SMS, a suite of web-based software applications developed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and resourced by all the services for Department of Defense use. Their work will help leadership, facility engineers, technicians and activity management plan, or AMP, managers decide when, where and how to best maintain infrastructure while conserving energy.
As the Air Force lead for SMS, the asset visibility team SMS program managers are teaming with USACE Civil Engineer Research Laboratory to develop a new DOD enterprise-wide integrated SMS capability that will improve visibility of the condition of all Air Force built infrastructure.
The AVT provides program management, training and reach-back to installations for the various SMS: BUILDER, PAVER, ROOFER, RAILER, FUELER and UTILITIES, used to store condition assessment information and analyze infrastructure data as directed by the Office of the Secretary of Defense. These systems provide predictive analysis to best utilize sustainment funds.
By validating and allocating funds for sustainment, the AVT assists bases with funding implementation. This capability earned AVT the FEMP award and their outputs are award-winning to bases in substantial savings and validation for large projects.
By the end of fiscal 2015, the AVT had completed built infrastructure assessments and level two energy audits at 22 Air Force installations and achieved an actual operational savings of $26.2 million and 102 million British thermal units across the Air Force enterprise.
From June 2013 through February 2016, the AVT, working with base civil engineers, have collectively identified and validated $16 million in investments that could yield the Air Force more than $60 million in potential operational energy savings across 24 of the 25 bases visited by the AVT.
“Our intent is to assist the bases across the enterprise in achieving success with an understanding and practice of asset management principles through teaching and showing base civil engineer personnel the why and how,” said Col. Timothy Dodge, director of the AFCEC Operations Directorate.
There are three additional areas of benefit to bases provided by the AVT: “Reach and Teach,” “Just Do It,” or JDI, and “Spearfishing.”
“Reach and Teach” is provided to train base engineers and technicians personnel on how to properly assess real property equipment at the base, identify energy savings opportunities and capture the assessment accurately in the SMS.
JDI delivers funding to energy projects through a funding initiative. This cuts through bureaucracy to directly fund bases to pay for AVT-validated energy and water conservation projects that are small but provide high-payback, typically with a savings-to-investment ratio of greater than five.
“Spearfishing” was a term coined by the team to quickly exploit and validate installation fence-to-fence, harvestable opportunities for either JDI funding or integrated priority list wedges that meet the SIR.
The AVT is staffed with experienced civil, electrical, mechanical and structural engineers, most with professional registration, and has over 900 years of combined professional joint service engineering experience. In the past, the AVT scheduled base visits based on the potential for energy savings.
“Our team constantly seeks performance improvements and has capitalized on the many lessons learned from the bases visited transforming the way the Air Force CE enterprise collects built infrastructure data and performs energy audits,” said Michael Clawson, asset visibility division chief at AFCEC. “This is just one way AFCEC is augmenting base engineers with valuable asset management expertise.”
AFCEC established the AVT in October 2012 to fulfill the concept of operations originally envisioned by Air Force senior leadership for promulgating asset management principles across the CE enterprise.
The AVT installation assessment teams are created through a matrixed arrangement between three branches in the AFCEC Asset Visibility Division: the facilities branch-COAF, utilities branch-COAU and the transportation networks and airfield pavement branch-COAT. The Airfield Pavement Evaluation, or APE, Team-COAP operates in collaboration with the AVT.
All four branches support centralized investment planning and data fidelity-accountability through AMP management in coordination with all AFCEC directorates’ sub-AMP and AMP managers.
The AVT strives to evolve their base visit methods. Current goals include continuing to teach asset management principles with an added task of hands-on validation of projects on the integrated priority list giving the base instant feedback. This new life cycle cost approach achieves the full intent of asset management.
To learn more about the Asset Visibility Team, contact the AFCEC Reach Back Center at afcec.rbc@us.af.mil or 850-283-6995.