takes infrastructure to support it. That is where it gets
into my business.
Much of the infrastructure that is going in or we’re
paying attention to is in Guam and the Commonwealth
of Northern Mariana Islands, but not all. We have a
lot of work going on in Japan, some work in Korea,
Singapore, Australia, Philippines and Hawaii, to name
some of the key locations.
In response to Pacific Command’s demands, and
Pacific Fleet and Marine Forces Pacific demands,
we’ve also increased our effort working humanitarian
assistance projects, like schools and medical clinics
and these sorts of things, in other nations around the
South China Sea and Southeast Asia; exercise-related
construction projects that support combined exercises
between U.S. forces, our allies and partners, as we work
to improve our interoperability; and disaster response
projects, either actually responding to a disaster or
setting the conditions in preparation to respond. We
are doing quite a bit of work in the Pacific to do that.
A point I’d like to make to your readers, though, is
even though we’re focusing a lot on the Pacific, work
in the rest of the world remains and is unrelenting. We
see a lot of work in Europe, a lot of work in Africa and
in the Middle East, so we have to manage that as well.
NAVFAC’s two echelon three engineering commands
[NAVFAC Atlantic in Norfolk, Va., and NAVFAC
Pacific in Pearl Harbor] manage the work globally and
they are crucial parts of our structure to make that happen. I charge them with knowing all their supporting
commanders, making sure all that work gets executed
and the mission gets accomplished, and doing it in
accordance with expectations of compliance. That’s
a chore and I’m spending some time making sure
command and control for each of those flag officer-led
units is appropriate to carry out that mission most
effectively and efficiently.
How is construction going in Guam? What is
the progress there?
MUILENBURG: The entire program is an $8.7 billion
construction program to build new laydown and training facilities for the Marine Corps. We’ve completed
seven major construction projects to date, primarily at
Anderson Air Force Base and Naval Base Guam. We have
six additional major projects that are in construction
right now, also primarily at Anderson Air Force Base.
But there are over 100 more major construction projects
anticipated in our plan to get this job done. We are really
at the beginning of our construction program still.
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