The U.S. Army Engineering and Support Center, Huntsville provides vital maintenance and repair services to the Department of Defense and other government agencies to sustain a worldwide robust fueling capability in support of the Army, Navy and Air Force service components.
Purpose
In 1980, the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) approached Huntsville Center to acquire contracts for the creation of Operations and Maintenance (O&M) manuals for their Defense Energy Support Center Fuel Support Point (now the Defense Fuel Support Point - DFSP) coastal fuel sites. Due to the success of this effort, DLA requested Huntsville Center develop a recurring maintenance and service order program. The Fuels Program’s purpose is to provide recurring maintenance to maintain the capital investment and repairs (service orders) with emergency response to sustain the operational readiness of petroleum facilities.
Program and Project Management
Huntsville Center’s Fuels Program, within the Installation Support and Programs Management Directorate, has the expertise and ability to assist multi-service installations and customers in maintaining and repairing fueling equipment at the installation level. The program is managed by separate project management teams for each military service. The preventive and periodic maintenance is executed in a decentralized manner with each DOD installation providing a site representative, who is responsible for validating the scope of work and subsequent verification of work completion. Huntsville Center provides additional quality assurance via the use of U.S. Army Corps of Engineers district field offices and periodic QA visits as added checks and balances.
Program Scope
The Fuels Program provides maintenance, inspections, repairs and emergency response actions for DLA capitalized petroleum facilities, other DOD activities and other federal activities on military installations worldwide, in compliance with federal, state, and local code, criteria and regulations.
The program includes 431 sites across the world providing preventive and corrective maintenance for DLA-Energy and the Service Components. The program reached full operational capability in October 2017 with the last remaining Air Force award.
This program also maintains the Marine Loading Arms (MLAs) at 19 sites worldwide for all military services through DLA-Energy. MLAs are critical in issuing and receiving fuel and directly support the U.S. Navy Fleet and allies around the globe.
In FY 22, the program obligated in excess of $260 million. The program provided over 1,800 critical and timely preventive maintenance visits to maintain the capital investment and completed over 4,750 corrective maintenance (service orders) visits with a placement value of $118 million to maintain equipment operational readiness.
To assist the military services and DLA-E in returning DLA capitalized sites back to operation following a natural disaster, a fuels response team was initiated. This team stood up for the first time to assist fuel sites post Hurricane Irma. The Fuels Incident Response Team (FIRST) consisted of a 5-person fuel assessment team from Omaha and a 2-person team from HNC comprised of a Service Order
Administrator (SOA) with a $175,000 warrant and a safety engineer to provide on-the-ground service order approvals to increase response time and shorten repair times.
Contracts
The DLA-Energy Acquisition Plan began by using a SATOC contractor to provide recurring maintenance and minor repair support to the installations. As the program quickly grew, it was evident that competition needed to be introduced to provide the best value to the government. As such, Huntsville Center determined a Basic Ordering Agreement (BOA) would better fulfill the requirements. In FY18 the program began transitioning from the BOAs to executing awards using the GSA MAS 561210FAC Facilities Maintenance and Management Schedule with all awards scheduled to be made under this vehicle by August 2022.
Best Practices
• Preventive Maintenance sustains the Capital Investment
• Corrective Maintenance sustains Equipment Operational Readiness
• Fuels program offers fueling equipment/facilities increased operational readiness of fuel systems
• Dedicated one-stop service to maintaining fuel equipment and facilities at sites worldwide.
• Comprehensive and flexible Preventive Maintenance Program based on customer needs (Quarterly, Semi-Annual or Annual)
• Increased reliability of facilities, systems, and components
• Fuels program executes 24-hour worldwide emergency support for fuel equipment/facilities
• The program uses a flexible service order process, allowing a fast response for minor repairs that could otherwise be difficult to scope and fund. It also allows the local government representative to initiate a request based on an immediate need.
• Fuels program effectively increases the useful life of facilities and equipment resulting in optimizing the life cycle of the fuel system and components, thereby increasing the duration between re-capitalized investments.
• Fuels program maintains a close working relationship with DLAEnergy, Naval Warfare Information Center (NIWC), the Service Control Points (Army Petroleum Center, Navy Petroleum Office and Air Force Petroleum Agency), as well as with the Europe District Fuels Program and the Omaha District, Fueling Systems Mandatory Center for Expertise (POL-MCX). This coordination is critical to solving issues for the end user as well as professional discussions/solutions.
Download the Fuels Recurring Maintenance and Minor Repair Program fact sheet HERE.
(updated August 2023)