Wilmington District Commander Steven Baker, members of the district’s Fort Bragg U.S. Army Special Operations Command Resident Engineer Office, and officials with the 3rd Special Forces Group, Feb. 24, broke ground on a new battalion operations facility.
According to Project Manager Janelle Mavis, the state-of-the-art Yarborough Compound, named for the father of Special Forces, Lt. Gen. William P. Yarborough, will include modified buildings tailored to the unique missions of Special Forces including communications systems that will allow instant global communications and team rooms.
“They have facilities scattered throughout Fort Bragg, and what this centralized facility will do is consolidate their troops into one place which will increase their training efficiency and create better communications within their command and to the units that they support,” Mavis said.
In addition to meeting the specific needs of Special Forces, the buildings will meet strict energy efficient guidelines. Solar panels will reduce energy consumption, and specially designed windows will keep the building cooler in summer and warmer in winter.
“The buildings must have solar or pre-heated hot water, so we’re using solar energy for that,” said Military Construction Project Manager Mark Dilandro. “We’re modifying windows and lighting. Hot water boilers, for example, have to be at least 96 percent efficient, and the energy savings standard is at about 30 percent.”
Dilandro said that because of the wide range of missions the Wilmington District is constructing some buildings as basic as possible.
“They want durability, and they want things that are very compatible to their changing training schedules, so some of the structures are durable, but appear to be very plain. Other structures are very technical with a work space that might be manned by two Soldiers 24 hours a day. You have to have workspace that is totally adaptable to a fast-paced mission, so there’s a lot of electronics and a lot of capabilities that cater to them such as power, resources, technology, fiber optics, high speed internet capability, etcetera.”
Fort Bragg, which is home to not only Special Operations Forces, but the 82nd Airborne, has a reputation for having a high operations tempo which trickles down just about everywhere on the massive installation. Dilandro, a retired Army officer who attended various schools at Fort Bragg during his career, said the operations tempo is also felt on construction sites. However, the “ops” tempo is even a bit higher within special operations.
“It’s different from normal military construction and normal work patterns, he said. “Our construction has to work with their schedule. Some days you can’t work on a project because of the ops tempo, and then other days you can go in and work on nights and weekends.”
Mavis, also a U.S. Army veteran, said she likes the link between the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Army to support the war fighter.
“I do think that supporting the troops, as a whole, makes a big difference in how they get their jobs done. We’re dedicated to doing that.”
Mavis said construction is expected to be completed by August of 2015.