Waiting for BRAC? It's Already Here

By George Berkheimer, STAFF WRITER

The time remaining until the Congressionally-mandated target of September 2011 for completion of the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) process is short and growing shorter. Installation officials, regional government bodies and construction crews are busier than ever with preparations.
Administrators and business entities have anxiously anticipated the dawn of BRAC, but in reality there is no discernible milestone which will herald an official new order.
In fact, in many respects BRAC is already here, and humming right along.
It's true that the official arrival of the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), the Defense Media Activity (DMA) and the collocation of 10 defense and military adjudication activities on Fort Meade will offer the most tangible proof of what has been set in motion, but many other equally important indicators have already occurred or are ongoing.
According to Kent Menser, Howard County BRAC director, BRAC-related growth at Fort Meade is already occurring and will be a phased operation, mimicking the growth the local region has been experiencing during the past decade.
"There are no peaks and no valleys," Menser told participants at an informational meeting at Howard High School focusing on BRAC jobs last month. "From my perspective, the environment is not changing. BRAC provides expanded opportunities, but the processes basically remain the same. We're not really going to notice the growth."

The Infrastructure Blip
To prepare for the changes, local jurisdictions are currently putting every available dollar of state and federal funding toward the most critical infrastructure projects. "We need to concentrate on improving six intersections ... and trying to widen Route 175 from Route 295 to Rockenbach Road," said Anne Arundel County BRAC Officer Bob Leib.
"We knew three years ago that there wasn't enough time for making all the improvements, even if we would have had all the funding we needed," Menser said. "Nothing has changed in that respect, and there's very little around these days to support infrastructure development."
So the new strategy is on demand management, he said. BRAC planners are now looking at ways they can encourage telecommuting, increase the occupancy rate of vehicles that enter or leave Fort Meade and stagger employees' working hours to broaden the peak commuting periods.
On that note, Anne Arundel County recently spent $390,000 in federal stimulus money on two new medium duty buses that will be assigned to a loop route operated by the Corridor Transportation Corp. between the Odenton MARC Station and the post.
"We have been asking for 16 buses over the last four years," Leib said, "but progress, no matter how small, is still progress."

Here Come the Jobs
Much of the BRAC fanfare has highlighted the impact that BRAC in general and DISA in particular will have on local employment figures. According to Billie Keeler, DISA's chief civilian personnel officer, his agency's hiring process has been underway in Maryland since 2005.
"DISA currently employs almost 800 Marylanders" who are currently commuting to their jobs in Northern Virginia, Keeler said. "We anticipate the number to significantly increase as we draw closer to the actual move."
The agency will be looking to fill about 100 positions through the DISA/Joint Task Force-Global Network Operations (JTF-GNO) Career Expo, which is scheduled on June 13 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory's Kossiakoff Center.
"These career expos are designed to stimulate interest in employment with DISA now and in the future, as our employees decide whether they will transfer to Fort Meade with us," Keeler said. "Our career opportunities will vary over time, according to agency needs, and normal and BRAC-related attrition. That's why we're encouraging anyone interested in employment with DISA to actively monitor and apply for our vacancies as they occur."
He noted that DISA/JTF-GNO vacancies will be posted to the USAjobs.com web site before, during and after the expo and will be of primary interest to computer security, electrical engineering and information technology specialists. The agency also has current vacancies in the areas of telecommunications, finance, contract specialists, program managers/analysts and human resources.

Posture and Opportunity
The signs that BRAC is here can be read in the actions of area employers who are active in the defense industry, said Leib.
Among these was an announcement in December that the MITRE Corp., a DISA contractor, has signed a lease with Corporate Office Properties Trust for 73,000 square feet in one of the newest Phase II buildings at the National Business Park, which is located across the Baltimore-Washington Parkway from the National Security Agency and Fort Meade.
"That's a very good indicator on the defense contractor side," Leib said, as is the decision last fall by Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC) to consolidate six offices in and around Columbia into one new building in Columbia.
Since, San Diego-based SAIC has recently signed a 170,000-square-foot lease in the Franklin Center building of Columbia Gateway Business Park.
Much of the preliminary positioning may have already occurred, but BRAC partnership opportunities still abound. That's the message proclaimed at a recent BRAC Outlook seminar by Robert Wallace, president and CEO of Baltimore-based BITHGROUP Technologies, an IT solutions enterprise that helps leverage worker knowledge and technology.
In Wallace's estimation, the greatest potential for partnerships exists in the planning, construction, human capital and technology implementation aspects of BRAC.
Agencies need help shutting down operations and moving to Maryland, while certain schools, hospitals and other public amenities will need to expand to accommodate growth.
"We're already beginning to see these opportunities emerge in meaningful ways," he said. On the other hand, "we're seeing that many of the people at Fort Monmouth, N.J., are not willing to relocate. That's an opportunity for businesses in the Maryland area to step up and fill that void."
Current systems at Fort Meade and Aberdeen Proving Ground are "not sufficient to support the increase in resources, people or the expansion of new missions of these agencies," Wallace added. "That's going to call for companies with multi-dimensional, multi-faceted technology solutions that can partner in areas of information technology, biometrics and electronics systems."

Building BRAC
Construction of the new DISA campus on Fort Meade is "on track," according to David Ruderman, a spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers, Baltimore District.
The foundations for the agency's five major structures have long been poured and construction of the buildings' steel frameworks is nearing completion. And, so far, crews have not missed a day of work due to weather or other unforeseen circumstances.
"We will shortly start to put up the exterior panels ... and then move inside to fit out the electronics and the mechanical and electrical systems," Ruderman said.
Construction is now officially underway on every project necessary to accommodate all three incoming agencies; groundbreaking ceremonies for both the DMA and adjudication facilities were held last month.
"BRAC is here," asserted Army Col. Daniel Thomas, commander of Fort Meade, adding that DISA plans to begin occupying some of its facilities as early as October 2010 and will complete its move no later than April 2011.
In the meantime, the agency has begun sending groups of employees to the installation to familiarize them with the locale and the support groups they will interact with.
"[DISA] already has a presence here," said Thomas. "That's a significant indicator of how far we've come."