DOL complex to increase capability

02.03.2005
by KW Hillis, The Cannoneer

Outside the Directorate of Logistics administration building, two huge buildings — one for track vehicles, the other for painting — are taking shape.

They dwarf the peeling, wooden World War II-era buildings housing DOL maintenance shops including component, wheel and track repair and battery storage.

The three-phase, $36 million construction project, underway since January 2004, is designed to reduce the number of buildings in the complex from 20 to seven.

The finished complex, expected to be complete by late fall 2006, will give DOL space, capabilities and flexibility to handle its complex mission of maintenance, said John Westbrook, DOL Maintenance Division chief.

Despite the old facilities and he added confusion of the first two phases of construction, DOL has met its mission requirements.

“We have not sent anything, to date, out of here that was not FMC (fully mission capable), every piece,” Westbrook said.

DOL maintenance responsibilities go beyond supporting Training Command and as backup support for III Corps Artillery.

“We’re a power-projection platform. We have the responsibility to mobilize and deploy all National Guard and Reserve units that go through here, especially within our region,” he said.

“When units mobilize and deploy, the requirement is for us to bring it up to FMC (fully mission capable), Westbrook said.

For demobilized units coming through Fort Sill, “We are required to inspect to 10-20 standard, which is above and beyond FMC. It is almost like brand new.”

Redesigned complex

“We’re going to have two buildings, one for wheel and one for track. Plus we’re going to have a new paint booth, a wash rack almost like a downtown car wash to be able to do anything, up to big personnel carrier trucks with the trailers ... the 80- foot trucks ... Plus an inspection building,” he said.

The facilities need an upgrade.

“The biggest problem we have now is the lack of facilities ... plus, the ones we do have, are substandard,” Westbrook said. “They are WWII vintage stuff. They were great for back in those days, but now they just don’t house the type of equipment that comes here because it is so big.”

Some of the military equipment and vehicles are so big that they cannot enter the existing buildings and have to be repaired outside, he said. The new facilities will have 20- to 25- foot high doors.

“We planned the size of all the buildings, the number of bays, the capabilities ... all planned on contingency purposes ... we (will)have the capability to expand and take on any mission they want us to,” Westbrook said.

Two of the buildings in the existing 20-building complex, the supply building and DOL
main building, will survive the entire project.

The number of bays will increase from 17 to 43, square footage will increase from 58,829 to 121,483 and lift capacity will change from four 10-ton cranes to eight 7¢-ton cranes, allowing more lift configurations.

Flexibility

“We’re going to have two buildings alike, one for track, one for wheel ... both will be able to have the same capabilities,” Westbrook said. “We will have the capability to take half of the track shop if needed, and we could make it wheels for a short period of time. Right now we don’t have that capability.”

DOL’s paint bays are the only ones of their kind on Fort Sill.

Two rows of freshly painted vehicles — some entirely green, some green and tan camouflage and others all tan for the desert — are parked outside the existing two paint buildings, which are not much bigger than some of the individual vehicles.

“All you can get in is one vehicle at a time,” Westbrook said. “We’re running two shifts right now to try to keep up with the paint flow. They are staying way ahead ... and doing a great job, but if they were in the new paint building and they were running
two shifts, we would be done in no time.”

When the paint building is completed by this fall, up to four large vehicles at a time or six to eight HMMWVs (high-mobility multipurpose wheeled vehicle) can be painted in its two bays, he said.

The component building, part of phase 3, will be the last building completed.

The existing component building, full of tables with pieces and parts of engines and equipment in various stages of being rebuilt, is clean, though the worn acoustical tiles in the compression room and the peeling paint shows the building’s age.

“I didn’t realize how much DOL did for us on this installation,” said James Rees, Allied Trades and Combat Vehicle foreman, who is in charge of all component maintenance and repair. Rees, who retired from active duty last year, said he now sees DOL’s big picture, which he didn’t see when he was in the military.

“It’s not your little piece of the pie you are worried about — we’re doing the big picture. It goes way beyond Fort Sill,” he said.

The new components building will definitely help with DOL’s mission, Rees said.

“We understand the essentiality of getting to the units’ (equipment) as fast as we can and getting them on with their mission,” he said.

Construction underway

ECI Construction, responsible for phases 1 and 2 of the project is working on both phases where possible and, despite lost time because of bad weather, they “are still doing all right,” said Burl Ragland, Corps of Engineers project manager.

Phase 1 consists of constructing the track building; re-roofing the supply building, which lost part of its roof in a tornado; a redo of the battery shop in the same building and renovation of another bay. Phase 2 consists of constructing the paint building and a wheel building.

The third and final phase — constructing the components, vehicle wash and inspection buildings and demolishing existing buildings — was awarded to McMaster Construction Incorporated, Oklahoma City, Dec. 15, 2004.

“Phase 3 has not been given the go ahead yet ... (the two contractors) will have to work out a schedule to work together,” Ragland said.

Complications

Both the paint and the wheel buildings are being built on open land, but completing the rest of the project gets more complicated because the other new buildings will be built on land currently occupied by mission-essential shops.

“They really can’t start (the wheel building) until we get the track building done because we’re going to have to move people from the existing buildings into a temporary location so they can have a place to work,” Westbrook said.

Moving people and equipment out of the old buildings so the mission can continue uninterrupted should occur by May, Ragland said.

Completion

Phases 1 and 2 should be completed by the fall. When all three phases are completed “we’ll have every aspect of DOL under this one umbrella. It will be a one-stop shop,” Westbrook said, looking at a drawing of the complex.

Vehicles will enter at the inspection station, and from there they will be sent where they will be repaired or repair started — for rebuild, wheel or track maintenance or for painting.

The completed complex will increase the capabilities of DOL Maintenance now and in the future.

“It also allows us better capability to support Training Command ... (and) to take on III Corps if we had to, but it allows us to better support them in backup-DS (direct support) maintenance,” Westbrook said. “Even if we are not deploying people out of here to go to war, there are training missions that are going on all the time.

“There is always going to be a requirement,” he said.