HUNTSVILLE CENTER Engineering solutions for USACE’s toughest challenges and the evolution of an adaptive organization BY CATHERINE CARROLL , U.S. Army Engineering and Suppor t Center, Huntsville
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recently had a conversation with Albert “Chip” Marin III, who has been the programs director for the U.S. Army Engineering and Support Center, Huntsville, for two-and-a-half years, and asked him what seemed like a simple question: “What does Huntsville Center do?” The answer turns out to be rather complex and constantly evolving. Ask 20 people what Huntsville Center does and you may get 20 different answers. Huntsville Center is more often than not defined comparatively by what it doesn’t do. Because what it does is – everything else. The center is often defining its mission as it goes, innovating in order to get the job done when the job has never been done before. Simply put, Huntsville Center “Revolutionizes.” What does Huntsville Center do? Albert “Chip” Marin III: Huntsville Center is the backup for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ 43 districts and centers. The districts and centers all do new construction, and they do civil works. We do neither. We are the folks who come in behind what all the other districts do to sustain and maintain existing facility, utility, and infrastructure. So, if it’s already out there, already built, it now needs to be maintained. It will need to be upgraded. It will need to be repaired or renovated. Often, needs change and a facility needs to be repurposed or the codes have changed, like the national electric code or cybersecurity compliance, and the facility needs to be updated. Most of what we do is cutting-edge technology. And we are creating solutions for challenges that may not have existed before. That’s what we do. If I’m in a district, I’ve got one project that’s going to take five years, and maybe in a career I have four or five projects and that’s all I see. If I’m doing civil works projects, I might work on the same project for an entire 20- or 30-year career. That’s how long those projects take.
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If you work in the Huntsville Center, you’re going to have 25 to 30 projects as a project manager, and they all last 18 months to two years at the most, and then you’re on to the next years’ worth of 25 to 30 new projects. So, it’s challenging. It’s something different each and every day. You don’t know what crisis is going to come in the door at any given moment. You have to be prepared and you can’t be afraid of change because change will occur each and every day, so you have to be flexible. You have to be knowledgeable of what we are doing and why we are doing it. Without the work we do, the warfighter could not do the work that they have to do. Without the work we do, there would be thousands and thousands of Americans affected by storms or floods that would not get help. A good example is Puerto Rico. A complete power loss on the island. People were without power for up to a year. And Huntsville Center was the only organization with existing contracts to respond quickly. We had contractors on the ground on day 10 starting to repair that power grid. So, it’s challenging, but it’s something new each and every day. It’s cutting-edge technology. That’s what makes Huntsville Center so great. And we couldn’t do any of that without our people. We have great people from all walks of life. Huntsville Center has a very diverse culture. We have engineers, technicians, lawyers, resource managers, and project and program managers. We have folks trained in installation support, public affairs, and internal review. It’s this whole grouping of diverse people and talents that come together and help solve these challenges. We can’t just solve a challenge technically. You have to figure out how you’re going to acquire the services that will actually solve that issue. We can come up with the technical solution, but someone has to implement it, and you have to have a contract that has to be legally sound. You need to consider the money, the resource management piece. So, it’s these project delivery teams that are absolutely
