Sea Power - October 2016

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.