Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command


The Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command 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
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 business lines 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.
NAVFAC Atlantic in Norfolk, VA
File:NAVFAC Pacific Board of Directors Meeting.jpg|thumb|A 2017 meeting of the NAVFAC Pacific Board of Directors at Fort Shafter, Honolulu, Hawaii
NAVFAC Pacific in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii
There are also two specialty commands, Navy Crane Center at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth, Virginia and Naval Facilities Engineering and Expeditionary Warfare Center at Naval Base Ventura County in Port Hueneme, California.

History

Bureau of Yards and Docks

On August 31, 1842, the Bureau of Navy Yards and Docks 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 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, 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.