Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command

Not to be confused with SOSUS Shore facilities, which are also called Naval Facility (NAVFAC).

Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command (NAVFAC)
Founded	1966 (1966)
Allegiance	United States of America
Branch	United States Navy
Type	SYSCOM
Garrison/HQ	Washington Navy Yard, Washington D.C., U.S.
Website	www.navfac.navy.mil
Commanders
Chief of Civil Engineers	RADM Dean VanderLey, CEC, USN
Executive Director	Jennifer LaTorre
Deputy Commander	RADM Troy M. McClelland, CEC, USN
Force Master Chief	Lawrence W. Sharpe, USN

The Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command (NAVFAC) is the United States Navy's engineering systems command, providing the Navy and United States Marine Corps with facilities and expeditionary expertise. NAVFAC is headquartered at the Washington Navy Yard and is under the command of the Chief of Civil Engineers RADM Dean VanderLey

The Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command is the oldest of the Navy's system commands, having been established as the Bureau of Yards and Docks in August 1842. Its officers comprise the Navy Civil Engineer Corps, which was formed in March 1867. During the 1966 reorganization of the Department of the Navy, the Bureau of Yards and Docks became the Naval Facilities Engineering Command. In October 2020, the name changed to the current Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command.

Organization

The Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command delivers facilities engineering and acquisition for the Navy and Marine Corps through six business lines.

Business Lines

As of July 2022, NAVFAC consisted of the following nine businesslines per its website

• Asset Management: Manages the full real estate function for the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps, including acquisitions, disposals, easements and leases, as well as overseeing global and regional shore strategic planning.
• Design and Construction: Delivers facilities project development, design, and construction, as well as expertise in medical facilities and waterfront and ocean facilities.
• Environmental: Provides environmental management and technical support necessary for Navy and Marine Corps compliance with federal, state, local and host nation regulations.
• Expeditionary: Provides support for a broad community, which includes the Navy Expeditionary Combat Command, Naval Beach Groups, Naval Special Warfare, Navy Expeditionary Medical Support and similar expeditionary forces ashore.
• Public Works: Supports installation infrastructure, which includes facility management, utilities and energy management, base support vehicles and equipment, facility support contracts management, and facility services.
• Office of Small Business Programs
• Safety -Mishap Prevention and Hazard Abatement
• Real Estate: acquisition, management, and disposal of real estate interests required by the Navy and Marine Corps
• New Business Line Landing Page

The contingency engineering section which as of 2020 provided contingency contracting, exercise and crisis planning, natural disaster support, remote construction, and technical reach-back support, was no longer listed as of July 2022.

Component Commands

As of 2015, NAVFAC consisted of 13 component commands; nine are Facilities Engineering Commands that report to either NAVFAC Atlantic or NAVFAC Pacific.

Officers of NAVFAC Atlantic in 2016

NAVFAC Atlantic in Norfolk, VA

• NAVFAC Europe Africa Central (EURAFCENT) in Naples, Italy
• NAVFAC Mid-Atlantic (ML) in Norfolk, VA
• NAVFAC Southeast (SE) in Jacksonville, FL
• NAVFAC Washington (WASH) in Washington, D.C.

A 2017 meeting of the NAVFAC Pacific Board of Directors at Fort Shafter, Honolulu, Hawaii

NAVFAC Pacific in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii

• NAVFAC Far East (FE) in Yokosuka, Japan
• NAVFAC Hawaii (HI) in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii
• NAVFAC Marianas (MAR) in Piti, Guam
• NAVFAC Northwest (NW) in Silverdale, WA
• NAVFAC Southwest (SW) in San Diego, CA

There are also two specialty commands, Navy Crane Center (NCC) at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth, Virginia and Naval Facilities Engineering and Expeditionary Warfare Center (EXWC) at Naval Base Ventura County in Port Hueneme, California.

History

Logo of the Bureau of Yards and Docks

Bureau of Yards and Docks

On August 31, 1842, the Bureau of Navy Yards and Docks (BuDocks) was established, the forerunner to the Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command.

In early days of BuDocks, the command originally had responsibility only for the design, construction, and maintenance of Navy yards and a few other shore stations. In 1842 there were seven Navy yards arrayed along the eastern seaboard of the United States. Captain Lewis Warrington, a line officer, and six civilian employees, were assigned to administer public works at these yards.

During the second half of the 19th century, the Bureau of Yards and Docks guided the temporary expansion of the shore establishment that was necessary to fight the American Civil War. It also oversaw the development of permanent Navy yards on the Pacific Coast at Mare Island, California, and Puget Sound, Washington.

In 1898, the Spanish–American War precipitated a great increase in the Bureau's activities. Its civilian workforce grew from seven to 22 people and the Civil Engineer Corps—which had been established in 1867—was expanded from 10 to 21 commissioned officers, five of whom reported for duty at Bureau Headquarters. The treaty at the war's end led to the construction of naval stations in Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines. In the next few years the Navy yards at Boston, Norfolk, and Philadelphia were modernized and a new yard was built at Charleston, South Carolina.

During the early years of the 20th century, the United States Congress expanded the Bureau's responsibilities by consolidating Navy public works under its control. The most important law was passed in 1911, when Congress placed the design and construction of all naval shore stations under BuDocks control. Previously the bureau that operated each type of shore facility had performed its own design and construction; for example, the Bureau of Ordnance built naval magazines and the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery built naval hospitals.

The experience gained by the Bureau during its first 75 years laid the foundation for its large growth during World War I. Between July 1916 and the armistice in November 1918, the Bureau expended $347 million for public works. That was more money than the Navy had spent on shore stations in the previous 116 years. The construction program included 35 naval training stations, in addition to submarine bases at New London, Connecticut; Pearl Harbor, Hawaii; and Coco Solo, Panama; as well as naval air stations at locations throughout the eastern United States, and in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Italy, Tunisia and France.

Between WWI and WWII

The period between the world wars was generally a time of retrenchment and stagnation for Navy Public Works. By 1921, more than 375 ships had been decommissioned and the shore establishment shrank accordingly. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, Congress appropriated some money for a naval construction program, which made improvements in shore facilities while providing much-needed jobs for unemployed civilians. When the Second World War broke out in Europe in 1939, the Civil Engineer Corps (CEC) had fewer than 200 officers on active duty and the shore establishment was woefully unprepared for a major conflict.

After the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the Navy's military construction program amounted to global proportions, expanding far beyond the continental United States and its prewar possessions to Europe, North Africa, Asia and the far corners of the Pacific. To provide supervisors for this huge wartime effort, more than 10,000 Reserve CEC officers were recruited from civilian life between 1940 and 1945.

The establishment of bases in war zones, where workers were subject to enemy attack, made the use of civilian construction men impractical at many overseas locations. Therefore, in 1942 Rear Admiral Ben Moreell, Chief of the Bureau of Yards and Docks, implemented a proposal mapped out by the Bureau's War Plans Section during the 1930s where experienced construction workers were recruited into the Navy to build overseas bases. Thus, the Naval Construction Force – popularly known as the Seabees – was born. The new Seabees received brief military training before shipping overseas to build advance bases in war zones. Led by Reserve CEC officers, the 325,000 men recruited for the Seabees during World War II built bases on six continents and at locations all over the Pacific. Without the Seabees, the Navy's huge advance-base construction program would not have been possible.

WWII boom

World War II presented the Bureau of Yards and Docks with the greatest challenge in its history. The value of the naval shore establishment in 1939 was estimated at less than half a billion dollars; by 1945 the shore establishment was worth at least $6.5 billion. All of this new construction was carried out under the Bureau's cognizance.

At the end of the war, the Bureau faced a new problem—maintaining a much larger shore establishment with reduced funding. The onset of the Cold War in the late 1940s led to some much-needed increases in the Bureau's budget. Then, in 1950 the Korean War, which required more men and materials than World War I, presented the Bureau with new challenges. With the help of the Seabees, it met the emergency. CEC officers and Seabees built bases throughout the Pacific to support United Nations troops. In Korea the Seabees placed landing causeways for the invasion forces and built air bases and camps.

Vietnam

In the mid-1960s the Vietnam War started. Although it was modest in size compared to World War II, it nonetheless created a demand for a substantial amount of military construction. In 1963 the Bureau of Yards and Docks was formally designated as the contract construction agent for Southeast Asia and became responsible for nearly all U.S. construction there, including facilities built for the United States Army, the United States Air Force, and other federal government agencies. Nearly 1.8 billion dollars’ worth of construction went into Vietnam under the Military Construction Program commonly known as MILCON.

Meanwhile, in May 1966, as a result of a Navy Department reorganization, the Bureau of Yards and Docks was renamed Naval Facilities Engineering Command (NAVFAC), one of six systems commands under the Chief of Naval Material. This reorganization eliminated the traditional bilinear organization under which the Chief of Naval Operations and the chiefs of the various bureaus reported separately to the Secretary of the Navy. The result was a unilinear organization, under which the systems commands reported to the Chief of Naval Material, who in turn reported to the CNO. In the mid-1980s the Naval Material Command was disestablished; and NAVFAC began reporting directly to the Chief of Naval Operations.

U.S. forces withdrew from Vietnam in 1973 and the end of American participation in the war brought demobilization and funding cuts to the Navy. In 1970, in anticipation of postwar reductions, NAVFAC consolidated its 13 engineering field divisions into six. The concentration of technical expertise into fewer and larger divisions led to a stronger and more efficient field organization. Within NAVFAC, in the 1970s emphasis was placed on improvements in personnel facilities to support the new all-volunteer Navy, environmental protection, and energy conservation.

Peacetime

The tight military budgets of the 1970s did not last long, however, for in 1980 the United States began one of the largest peacetime military buildups in its history. For fiscal year 1981, President Jimmy Carter requested an increase in the Department of Defense budget of more than 5 percent real growth. After Ronald Reagan took office the next January, the DOD budget grew even faster.

In 1981 Secretary of the Navy John Lehman embarked upon a major program of shipbuilding to increase the fleet from 540 ships to 600 ships by the middle of the decade. This expansion meant that the Navy needed more shore facilities to support the new ships, which in turn led to more construction work for NAVFAC. Between fiscal years 1982 and 1985, Congress appropriated more than $5 billion for Navy MILCON projects.

Post–Cold War

At the end of the 1980s, the collapse of the Soviet Union brought an abrupt end to the Cold War and the Navy no longer needed as many ships, planes and bases to support them. From NAVFAC's perspective, one of the most important results was the Base Realignment and Closure Program (BRAC). Between 1988 and 1995, Congress authorized four rounds of selections for base closures and numerous installations were slated for disestablishment. Until the fall of 2004, NAVFAC managed the BRAC Program for the Navy and Marine Corps. By the end of fiscal year 2004, the Command had helped the Navy dispose of 72 unneeded bases and had an inventory of 19 closed installations remaining to be excessed.

In October 2003 an important change occurred in the administration of the naval shore establishment with a new command known as Commander Naval Installations Command, (CNIC) was established. The CNIC would provide uniform program, policy and funding management for all Navy shore installations.

In 2004, NAVFAC embarked upon a realignment of its organizational structure and its business lines. It made a major move towards improving and standardizing its business processes to help NAVFAC better support the Navy and Marine Corps and other federal clients. The most significant aspect of NAVFAC's transformation was the consolidation of NAVFAC field activities – including engineering field divisions, engineering field activities, officer in charge of construction organizations, public works centers and departments – into regional facilities engineering commands, or FECs. The FECs provide the Navy, Marine Corps, and other clients with a single center for all NAVFAC public works, engineering, and acquisition support to ensure a uniform, enterprise approach to accomplishing its mission.

On 14 October 2020, the Director, Navy Staff approved renaming NAVFAC to Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command, adding Systems to accurately reflect its authority and mission.

Closures and relocations

A side effect of this realignment was the decommissioning of several NAVFAC components and displacement of hundreds of employees. Notable among the closures was Engineering Field Activity Northeast in Lester, Pennsylvania. The Navy Crane Center, which was also located in Lester, was relocated to Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth, Virginia. Southern Division in Charleston, South Carolina was decommissioned on September 30, 2007 and the command was realigned in Jacksonville, Florida, to become NAVFAC Southeast. NAVFAC Midwest in North Chicago, Illinois was disestablished on September 30, 2014 and its missions were absorbed by NAVFAC Mid-Atlantic, NAVFAC Southeast and NAVFAC Northwest.

Administrative Records

NAVFAC archives the administrative records pertaining to the environmental restoration of its naval facilties. As of 2022, these were grouped into 5 US regions, namely Northwest, Hawaii, Southwest, Midatlantic and Southeast.

Commanders

No.	Start	End	Rank In Office	Chief Of Civil Engineers	Command
1	1842	1846	CAPT	Lewis Warrington	Bureau of Yards and Docks
2	1846	1849	CAPT	Joseph Smith	Bureau of Yards and Docks
3	1869	1871	CAPT	Daniel Ammen	Bureau of Yards and Docks
4	1871	1874	CDRE	Christopher R. P. Rodgers	Bureau of Yards and Docks
5	1874	1878	CDRE	John C. Howell	Bureau of Yards and Docks
6	1878	1881	CDRE	Richard L. Law	Bureau of Yards and Docks
7	1881	1885	CDRE	Edward T. Nichols	Bureau of Yards and Docks
8	1885	1889	CDRE	David B. Harmony	Bureau of Yards and Docks
9	1889	1890	CDRE	George D. White	Bureau of Yards and Docks
10	1890	1894	CDRE	Norman H. Farquhar	Bureau of Yards and Docks
11	1894	1898	CDRE	Edmund O. Matthew	Bureau of Yards and Docks
12	April 1898	January 1907	RADM	Mordecai T. Endicott	Bureau of Yards and Docks
13	January 1907	March 1907	RADM	Harry H. Rousseau	Bureau of Yards and Docks
14	March 1907	January 1912	RADM	Richard C. Hollyday	Bureau of Yards and Docks
15	January 1912	January 1916	RADM	Homer R. Stanford	Bureau of Yards and Docks
16	January 1916	November 1917	RADM	Frederic R. Harris	Bureau of Yards and Docks
17	January 1918	December 1921	RADM	Charles W. Parks	Bureau of Yards and Docks
18	December 1921	December 1929	RADM	Luther E. Gregory	Bureau of Yards and Docks
19	December 1929	December 1933	RADM	Archibald L. Parsons	Bureau of Yards and Docks
20	December 1933	November 1937	RADM	Norman M. Smith	Bureau of Yards and Docks
21	December 1937	December 1945	RADM	Ben Moreell	Bureau of Yards and Docks
22	December 1945	December 1949	RADM	John J. Manning	Bureau of Yards and Docks
23	December 1949	November 1953	RADM	Joseph F. Jelly	Bureau of Yards and Docks
24	November 1953	September 1955	RADM	John R. Perry	Bureau of Yards and Docks
25	November 1955	November 1957	RADM	Robert H. Meade	Bureau of Yards and Docks
26	December 1957	February 1962	RADM	Eugene J. Peltier	Bureau of Yards and Docks
27	February 1962	October 1965	RADM	Peter Corradi	Bureau of Yards and Docks
28	November 1965	August 1969	RADM	Alexander C. Husband	Naval Facilities Engineering Command
29	August 1969	May 1973	RADM	Walter M. Enger	Naval Facilities Engineering Command
30	May 1973	May 1977	RADM	Albert R. Marschall	Naval Facilities Engineering Command
31	May 1977	January 1981	RADM	Donald G. Iselin	Naval Facilities Engineering Command
32	January 1981	August 1984	RADM	William M. Zobel	Naval Facilities Engineering Command
33	August 1984	August 1987	RADM	John Paul Jones Jr.	Naval Facilities Engineering Command
34	August 1987	October 1989	RADM	Benjamin F. Montoya	Naval Facilities Engineering Command
35	October 1989	September 1992	RADM	David E. Bottorff	Naval Facilities Engineering Command
36	18 September 1992	14 September 1995	RADM	Jack E. Buffington	Naval Facilities Engineering Command
37	15 September 1995	24 September 1998	RADM	David J. Nash	Naval Facilities Engineering Command
38	25 September 1998	19 October 2000	RADM	Louis M. Smith	Naval Facilities Engineering Command
39	20 October 2000	23 October 2003	RADM	Michael R. Johnson	Naval Facilities Engineering Command
40	24 October 2003	26 October 2006	RADM	Michael K. Loose	Naval Facilities Engineering Command
41	27 October 2006	20 May 2010	RADM	Wayne "Greg" Shear	Naval Facilities Engineering Command
42	21 May 2010	25 October 2012	RADM	Christopher J. Mossey	Naval Facilities Engineering Command
43	26 October 2012	3 November 2015	RADM	Katherine L. Gregory	Naval Facilities Engineering Command
44	4 November 2015	18 October 2018	RADM	Bret J. Muilenberg	Naval Facilities Engineering Command
45	19 October 2018	11 August 2022	RADM	John W. Korka	Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command
46	12 August 2022	Present	RADM	Dean VanderLey	Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command

See also

U.S. Armed Forces systems commands

• Army Materiel Command
• Marine Corps Systems Command
• United States Navy systems commands
  • Naval Sea Systems Command
  • Naval Air Systems Command
  • Naval Information Warfare Systems Command
  • Naval Supply Systems Command
• Air Force Materiel Command
• Space Systems Command

External links

• NAVFAC official website