AFCEC continues building on AFCAMP successes > Air Force > Article Display

It's been six years since the Air Force Civil Engineer Center established a new, transparent process for strategically racking and stacking facility sustainment, restoration and modernization requirements across the Air Force.

Each year, the AFCEC team evaluates aspects of the Air Force Comprehensive Asset Management Plan to see where it can refine products and business rules with a goal of continuing to build on the trust and transparency it's established with customers from installations to Air Force headquarters.

"The AFCAMP allows us to plan and prioritize FSRM projects in a five-year outlook, targeting installation critical mission needs and backlog of increasing sustainment requirements," said Capt. Stephen Rhodes, chief of AFCEC's centralized portfolio management section.

Rhodes has a unique perspective on the work AFCEC does, having recently arrived after serving as the 718th Civil Engineer Squadron's deputy engineering flight chief at Kadena Air Base, Okinawa. While in that position, he had oversight in the planning, project development and execution of Kadena AB's large construction portfolio.

"With the recent application of the comprehensive planning platform, a tool to aid the base's planning efforts, installations now have the capability to refine project scope and mitigate future cost growth risk for high-dollar, out-year requirements," Rhodes said, adding he fully trusted the AFCEC process while at Kadena AB.

"The fundamental baseline of asset management remains unchanged," Rhodes said. "The methodology continues to evolve as we battle a resource-constrained environment but AFCEC's transparency proved critical to ensuring installations are ready to implement changes and pursue best practices."

For the first integrated priority list in 2014, AFCEC took detailed information provided by installations and major commands and assigned scores to build the two-year, rank-ordered asset management list of FSRM needs based on risks to Airmen and missions, with consideration also given to cost-saving investments.

Before that, each major command received fair-share funding to execute their desired projects. That process lacked an enterprise view to track and sometimes failed to address Air Force needs based on asset management principles, according to AFCEC's website.

Giving the enterprise an established Air Force Comprehensive Asset Management Plan process they could count on was never enough for the civil engineer team in AFCEC's Planning and Integration Directorate, or CP.

"The AFCAMP process is repeatable, defendable and transparent" with business rules published every year that walk customers through the entire process, one step at a time, said Lt. Col. Erica Tortella, CP Program Investment Branch chief.

That process is highly sought after, she added.

"Last year, we briefed Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Defense delegates and Naval Operations for Fleet Readiness and Logistics," Tortella said. "This year, we helped the Defense Commissary Agency and the Department of Defense Parks and Recreation project management sections build their own AFCAMP-like process."

Most recently, following the release of a small spend authority for fiscal year 2021, CP's director, Col. Dean Hartman, wanted his team to develop a ready program to prepare the enterprise to receive additional funding that might come available. With that, the AFCAMP team paired with the Air Force Installation Contracting Center to come up with program details for an unfunded priority list that would include a set expiration date to prevent it rolling into the next fiscal year.

"We needed to have authority on the street in case we received additional funding," Tortella said. "Having the UPL available helps us prepare for omnibus reprogramming or non-execution by large projects at the end of the fiscal year."

With the release of the IPL and UPL earlier this year, Tortella and the AFCAMP team are midway through the FY22-26 process, gathering AFCAMP documents from installations in preparation for the "rack and stack" process in the coming months, targeting the lowest life-cycle cost to spend dollars where they will have the greatest impact.

Leaders and civil engineers at installations looking to find out more about the FSRM funding process can visit the AFCEC Sharepoint site using the search term "AFCAMP" for a variety of documents and webinars.