AFCEE celebrates two decades of meeting needs of AF

  • Published
  • By Air Force Center for Engineering and the Environment
  • AFCEE
LACKLAND AIR FORCE BASE, Texas --  
AFCEE's Growth Through Milestones
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  • July 23, 1991 - AFCEE is constituted and activated as a forward operation agency of the U.S. Air Force. J.B. Cole becomes AFCEE's first director. He held the position until his retirement in December 1993.
     
  • July 1991 - AFCEE employees originally called borrowed office space located near the edge of a runway home. The space hadn't been used since World War II. Soon a series of trailers would be added to house staff. The area was lovingly referred to as "the trailer park."
     
  • November 1991 - AFCEE is formally inaugurated on Nov. 3rd at a ceremony in Brooks AFB's historic Hangar 9
     
  • 1992 - The first Air Force Pollution Prevention Workshop was help with an attendance of 150. For the next 12 years, its attendance grew to 4,000 attendees, making it the largest environmental conference in the Department of Defense.
     
  • March 1992 - AFCEE's first in-house social event is held; a St. Patrick's Day potluck luncheon spearheaded by Nancy Carper.
     
  • October 1992 - AFCEE's PRO-ACT, the Air Force's full service environmental information clearing house and research service stands up.
     
  • November 1992 - AFCEE's first Command Community Planners Workshop is held.
     
  • November 1993 - Air Force noise abatement programs are transferred to AFCEE. The center would host the first multi-agency Noise Camp Conference four months later.
     
  • December 1993 - Col. Tom Gorges becomes the new AFCEE director when J.B. Cole retires. He would be the only military director in the organization's history and held the position until May 1995.
     
  • 1994 - AFCEE undergoes reorganization. A major change is the transition of the pollution prevention and environmental planning divisions of the environmental services directorate into two separate directorates.
     
  • July 1994 - A ground breaking ceremony is held for the new AFCEE headquarters building, Bldg. 532.
     
  • May 1995 - Anthony Zugay and Col. Michael McPherson act as AFCEE interim directors until March 1996.
     
  • August 1995 - The two-story, $9 million, 73,000 square foot AFCEE building is complete and a formal ribbon cutting is held. At the time, AFCEE was made up of about 360 civilian employees and 50 military members.
     
  • 1995 - AFCEE receives numerous design awards and the Clean Texas Star Award. Each year following the AFCEE organization and its staff members have been selected to myriad awards at the state and national levels.
     
  • 1995 - AFCEE supports the cleanup at many BRAC closure bases including Pease AFB, N.H.; Bergstrom AFB, Texas; and Loring AFB, Maine. At Bergstrom, a new international airport was built there less than 5 years later.
     
  • 1995 - AFCEE continued working with Native American groups to ensure the nation's cultural and historical resources are protected.
     
  • September 1995 - By the end of fiscal 1995, AFCEE had supported 46 natural attenuation sites at 28 bases.
     
  • 1995 - AFCEE publishes the first edition of the AF Enlisted Dormitory Guide and participates in a tri-service working group to develop a 1+1 enlisted dormitory standard. Less than a year later, the new AF Enlisted Dormitory Guide would be published incorporating the 1+1 standards still in use today.
     
  • March 1996 - Gary Erickson becomes AFCEE's director. He held the position until his retirement in July 2003.
     
  • April 1997 - AFCEE undergoes organizational streamlining. Construction management and the design group merge into one organization called the design and construction directorate; the pollution prevention directorate becomes the environmental quality directorate and the planning division is moved to the environmental conservation and planning directorate.
     
  • 1997 - AFCEE assumed major command and environmental restoration duties at the Massachusetts Military Reservation and the former Carswell AFB, Texas. Both significantly impacted AFCEEs resources and impacted its reputation.
     
  • 1997 - The Air Force Civil Engineer designates AFCEE the Housing Privatization Center of Excellence.
     
  • 1998 - AFCEE and its partners in the Texas P2 partnership are recognized as winners of the White House Closing the Circle Award.
     
  • 1999 - AFCEE was the program coordinator for the Loring AFB, Maine, wetland restoration project, considered the largest of its kind in the northeast.
     
  • 1999 - AFCEE manages the Air Force Environmental Compliance Assessment and Management Program, or ECAMP, which assists bases in gauge their compliance status using internal and external evaluations.
     
  • 1999 - AFCEE develops the family housing master plan providing a corporate housing investment strategy that integrates and prioritizes traditional construction, operation and maintenance funding with private sector financing. The result was a single road map. AFCEE is also designated by Air Staff as the Housing Program Center of Excellence tasked with the development and maintenance of the Air Force Family Housing Master Plan.
     
  • 2000 - The AFCEE Range Support Unit was activated and began playing a major role in issues concerning active and inactive ranges.
     
  • 2000 - AFCEE partners with Homestead Air Reserve Base, Fla., and Air Force Reserve Command to incorporate sustainable "green" features into the base fire station to receive the highest possible Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certified rating at the time.
     
  • 2001 - Representatives from the Chinese People's Liberation Army visit AFCEE to see how the U.S. military runs its environmental programs. This would be the first of numerous international visitors including Russia, Norway, Germany and Italy.
     
  • 2002 - Thanks to help from AFCEE's Western Regional Environmental Office in San Francisco, Luke AFB, Ariz., becomes the first Air Force base to be dropped from the National Priorities List.
     
  • Winter 2003 - AFCEE begins to lend its expertise to the rebuilding of Iraq because of its contracting capability Worldwide Environmental Restoration and Construction, or WERC, contracts and professional workforce.
     
  • April 2003 - AFCEE helps the Federal Emergency Management Agency with materials recovery following the break -up of the space shuttle Columbia during re-entry Feb. 1 following a 16-day scientific space mission.
     
  • July 2003 - Gary Erickson retires after 30 years of government service; the last seven as AFCEE director. Paul Parker becomes the new director.
     
  • December 2003 - Then Air Force Civil Engineer Maj. Gen. L. Dean Fox announces the most extensive reorganization of AFCEE since its establishment in 1991. The reorganization did away with the old "product" directorates and replaced them with organizations that made it easier for customers to "know exactly who to come to," said General Fox.
     
  • February 2004 - The first AFCEE employees land in Iraq to help with rebuilding efforts.
     
  • 2004 - The pollution prevention workshop, then named the Joint Services Environmental Management Conference, was combined with the annual Environmental and Energy Conference.
     
  • Summer 2004 - The Air Force-Environmental Information Management System, or AF-EMIS, is replaced with EESOH-MIS, the Enterprise Environmental Safety and Occupational Health-Management Information System. The systems track hazardous materials and waste.
     
  • Summer 2005 - An AFCEE project erected the first Air Force wind farm at F.E. Warren AFB, Wyo. The two turbines were built to comply with Executive Order 12902 which mandated the use of "renewable energy technologies." The two turbines were expected to save the Air Force more than $3 in energy costs over 20 years.
     
  • November 2005 - AFCEE holds its first asset management course for family housing managers.
     
  • Winter 2005 - At Keesler AFB, Miss., AFCEE plays a crucial role in the area's recovery following the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina, a category 5 hurricane that hit the gulf coast in August 2005. The center helps complete repairs on 600 units, demolish 800 units and finish design work for 1,076 new homes.
     
  • January 2006 - For the first time, the Air Force has a draft inventory of remediation systems and long-term monitoring programs that exists throughout the service.
     
  • September 2006 - The first joint Air Force-Army housing privatization project closes at two New Jersey military installations; McGuire AFB and Fort Dix.
     
  • Fall 2006 - AFCEE transforms again when the Air Force centralizes efforts. The centralization means 130 people are added to the AFCEE team as work that used to be accomplish at major commands is shifted to the center.
     
  • October 2006 - Ellsworth AFB, S.D., becomes the first Air Force-owned installation to accept membership into the Environmental Protection Agency's Performance Track program.
     
  • 2007 - AFCEE and the Army and Air Force Exchange Service joins forces to design and build new facilities across the Air Force with a goal of continuing to improve the quality of life for military families.
     
  • Spring 2007 - AFCEE gets a new name; AFCEE. The organization went from being the Air Force Center for Environmental Excellence to the Air Force Center for Engineering and the Environment.
     
  • Summer 2007 - AFCEE partners with the Army Corps of Engineers to install outfall canal pumps at two locations in New Orleans. The pumps will transfer water from flooded areas into Lake Pontchartrain to help prevent New Orleans from future flooding during hurricane season.
     
  • July 2007 - The Air Force gets "greener" when The Air Force Civil Engineer Maj. Gen. Del Eulberg updates and expands the service's sustainability policy with a memorandum requiring that all military construction projects in fiscal 2009 and beyond be capable of achieving a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification of at least silver.
     
  • Fall 2007 - Peterson AFB, Colo., gets the first green roof in the continental United States literally when 2,400 trays of seven species of native sedum plants are placed on the roof of Bldg. 845.
     
  • November 2007 - Paul Parker leaves AFCEE to become the deputy Air Force Civil Engineer in Washington D.C. Dennis Firman is named the new director.
     
  • Fall 2008 - The first meeting of future residents of Bldg. 171 takes place. The meeting established a facility board to serve as a forum to address tenant issues and set management policy.
     
  • October 2008 - A tri-service workshop is held in Dallas to develop the framework for the way the Department of Defense runs its sustainability program now and in the future.
     
  • Summer 2009 - Work is set to begin on the new Afghanistan Ministry of Defense building in Kabul. The project is a collaboration between AFCEE, the Afghanistan ministry of defense and the Afghan National Army.
     
  • September 2010 - The first Air Force housing privatization projects mark their 10-year anniversary.
     
  • October 2010 - Dennis Firman retires from civil service and as AFCEE's director, a position he held three years. Terry Edwards is named the organization's sixth director.
     
  • 2011 - The new fitness center at Tyndall AFB, Fla., receives LEED Platinum certification. Because of many "green" and sustainable features, it's the first building in the Air Force to receive the highest LEED certification.