The Army tests whether sustainable building materials have lasting value

The Army will find out whether so-called sustainable building materials will hold up to the wear and tear of military construction. It’s using such materials to build new barracks for the first multi-domain task force at Joint Base Lewis-McChord near Tacoma, Washington. Paul Farnan, the principal deputy assistant secretary of the Army for Installations, Energy and Environment, joined the Federal Drive with Tom Temin to discuss more about this project.

Interview transcript: 

Tom Temin: First of all, let’s talk about what it is you’re building in size and scope of the project, and then we’ll get into what it is you’re trying to do with it.

Paul Farnan: Sure. So it’s a new barracks at Joint Base. Lewis McChord, I think it’ll have about 168 beds. I think is what we’re talking about. It’s a three-story building for our soldiers.

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Tom Temin: All right. And modern barracks are not like one big room with 168 people sleeping in bunks. These are almost like mini apartment type of situation.

Paul Farnan: Very much like many apartments. In fact, the new standard that the Army goes by, that Secretary Wormuth has approved, each soldier will have his or her own bedroom. And normally, the configuration will be a shared suite. You’ll have either two or four bedrooms with an adjoining living space as well as a kitchen and either one or two bathrooms, depending on the number of soldiers. So very much is like an apartment.

Tom Temin: And is this replacing an existing facility, or is this some expansionary need?

Paul Farnan: This is a new build for the increasing need for as soldiers move into JBLM.

Tom Temin: OK, and let’s talk about the idea here of sustainable building materials. What does that actually mean?

Paul Farnan: Sure. So Congress had put this into the NDAA in 2022, requiring each service to do so. One of the requirements was at least one of the services had to do a barracks project. And since neither the Navy or the Air Force had any barracks projects teed up, the Army decided we basically skinny down our list to make it just the barracks. There were only a couple choices we had, and the JBLM barracks made the most sense after working through all the issues with the whole team here. But basically, it’s really looking at how we build the building. We want to be sustainable. We want it to be resilient. We want to be able to stand up to the changing conditions, the changing climate. We also want to look at how we build it. We want it to be energy efficient. We’re looking at both our fiscal impact as well as our environmental impact, but at the same time, all along, making sure we have the very highest quality of life for the soldiers that are going to be living in this. So what we’re looking at is how do we make the building the most efficient, the most energy efficient, to save energy. Can we incorporate renewable power again to save energy? Really looking at an integrated design of this building, we’re not going to do life cycle cost analysis on individual components. We need to do it as the building as a whole and see how this is going to cost out throughout the years. One of the other requirements in the law was to look at the primary construction material. And so what the Corps has done, Corps has actually been very proactive and forward-leaning as they’re doing this, and they’ve been able to reduce the carbon content of our building materials by 30% as they’re going through the design. I need to make sure I point this out: the quality of life for the soldiers remains the No. 1 priority. So no matter what we’re doing with the sustainability resilience, it’s still going to be a high-quality building for our soldiers to live in. And the cost, the cost is actually came in at 30% below the original estimate. So we’re showing that we can build sustainably, we can include resilience, and it’s not going to break the bank. We’re still going to be fiscally responsible with the taxpayers’ dollars.

Tom Temin: And you are assured, or you have assurance, that even though it’s 30% below cost and low carbon, that it will stand up for more than five years?

Paul Farnan: This barrack should still stand for four to five or six decades. The intended use is going to be well into the end of the century. So yes.

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Tom Temin: And this idea of low carbon materials, I mean, steel studs are low carbon relative to wood, that kind of thing.

Paul Farnan: So what they’ve done is they’re using for the steel part. They’re increasing the recycled steel content, which reduces the carbon. And then for the cement portion, they’ve actually been able to change the concrete mixture to reduce again by 30% the carbon made from the cement because what most people don’t know, concrete and cement is a major driver of carbon emissions around the planet.

Tom Temin: All right, we’re speaking with Paul Farnon, principal deputy assistant Army secretary for Installations, Energy and Environment, and talk about the heating, ventilating, air conditioning, because that represents real ongoing cost. Once the building is sitting there, you don’t have to maintain the concrete anymore. But

Paul Farnan: Right.

Tom Temin: It has to be a moving building.

Paul Farnan: I don’t want to get too technical, because full disclosure, I am not an engineer, so I don’t want to get into the Corps of Engineers business. They know exactly what they’re doing. But by building this way, by increasing the efficiency, by increasing the insulation of the walls, the envelope of the building, by using passive designs the way we site the building to account for the solar radiation in the colder climates, have the windows facing south to get the sun. How we do all that, that should reduce the energy demand of our building, and then, the HVAC system doesn’t have to work as hard. The more energy efficient the building is, the better the HVAC system will perform. So it all ties together. And that goes back to the point I made earlier, making sure we do a whole building, an integrated life cycle cost analysis, not just looking at what’s the best HVAC component, but what’s the best HVAC component for the design of this system.

Tom Temin: And does this also extend to say the plumbing fixtures too because water is a big issue there, and you don’t want to put in mulching toilets necessarily in a barrack? So there’s got to be some water.

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Paul Farnan: Again, it’s quality of life is the priority, and we’re going to make sure that we equip these buildings for what our soldiers need and to be able to live comfortably.

Tom Temin: And by the way, you’ve mentioned the Corps, the Army Corps of Engineers, is actually the construction agent, correct?

Paul Farnan: They have been driving this train. And when I was out there for the groundbreaking a couple weeks ago, actually sat down with Colonel (Kathryn) Sanborn, the commander of the Seattle District of the Corps of Engineers, and she kind of talked me through what the process has been. My hat’s off to the Seattle District. They’re very progressive organization, really forward-leaning and looking at new ideas, how we can build better, more innovative and keep coming in under budget.

Tom Temin: And are you documenting what’s going on? And will you take metric measurements after the building is completed because the army will have ongoing installation requirements for barracks and all sorts of facilities? Is this going to be something you’re going to try to have a lessons-learned retaining?

Paul Farnan: Absolutely. We’ve had many conversations with the Corps of Engineers because you’re exactly right. We don’t want to do just one and forget about this. We want the lessons that we learned from this to be able to apply to buildings across the army. Ours resilient building policy says this is how we should be building all facilities on all army installations. We’ve never really built like this before. So it’s important to get these projects under our belt, understand how it’s done and what the both the short term and the long term effects are. So the Corps, both Corps leadership here in D.C. as well as the Seattle District. They are absolutely going to be documenting everything. They’re going to be sharing the lessons learned throughout the Corps of Engineers. Again, we’re not going to wait five years after the building’s been occupied for a few years to see this is happening now. So as we build it, as we do the design process, what works, what doesn’t work, and start disseminating those lessons right away because we can’t afford to wait for 10 years to start incorporating these lessons.

Tom Temin: And, by the way, is Joint Base Lewis McCord one of those facilities where the Army is trying out self-sustaining electrical generation? I know that’s been a project in a few places.

Paul Farnan: So we are looking at self-contained generation everywhere. And the reason for that is because that’s what’s going to give us energy resilience. Our bases need to be able to operate if the grid goes down, whether from a natural disaster like a major hurricane or cyberattack from an adversary that takes the grid down for weeks or months. The only truly resilient form of energy is self-contained generation. So we are working with local utilities across the country at every one of our bases, how we can increase the generation on our bases to provide that resiliency to enable our warfighting mission.

Tom Temin: And there’s really probably no one single way to do that I imagine. The particular climate of the area you’re in because otherwise you could just buy a bunch of expensive generators and stick them on but that may or may not be a very viable solution fiscally.

Paul Farnan: You’re absolutely correct. And in fact, if you look at how the commercial sector is doing this and how the public utilities are doing this, there’s no one thing. In Southwest, they’re putting a lot of solar. In the Midwest, they’re putting a lot of wind. They’re doing geothermal where that’s appropriate. We’re doing the exact same thing because we can’t just buy a bunch of expensive generators because all of those run on diesel fuel. That diesel fuel has to come from somewhere. And yeah, we might have a 7- or 14-day supply of diesel fuel on our base, but if there’s a cyber attack on that grid, and it goes down for a few months, what happens to our power on day 15 when we’re in on diesel fuel because if the grid’s not energizing the base in the community, there’s no one pumping diesel fuel to deliver it to us. So again, it has to be fully self-contained. If it comes from outside the wire, it’s vulnerable to interruption. And so based on the geography we are looking at, what is the most appropriate form of generation. In Washington State at JBLM, it might be one thing. It’s not going to be the same thing as Fort Huachuca in Arizona, and it’s not going to same thing with Fort Drum in upstate New York.

Tom Temin: And what’s the timeline for the construction of that barracks, by the way, to bring it back around?

Paul Farnan: The contract has been awarded. It was awarded this spring. Looks like about September of 2026 is when we expect occupancy.

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