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USTRANSCOM’s new Fusion Center forming

  • Published
  • By Arlene King
  • U.S. Transportation Command
SCOTT AIR FORCE BASE, Ill. --  In the summer of 2010, U.S. Transportation Command Fusion Center personnel will join the U.S. Army's Military Surface Deployment and Distribution Command and other staff as they move into the new USTRANSCOM facility.

The 210,000-square-foot, three-story building will house approximately 1,600 joint force personnel on three distinctly different floors and will be linked by an enclosed connector to the existing headquarters building, making it the largest headquarters facility at Scott AFB.

According to Steven W. Coyle, director of BRAC and Engineering, in addition to providing a command headquarters for SDDC, the building will house the Joint Distribution Process Analysis Center composed of the SDDC Transportation Engineering Agency and staff from USTRANSCOM and Air Mobility Command.

Maj. Todd McCoy, Operations and Plans special projects officer said , "We expect to start moving by the Aug. 1, 2010, project milestone move-in date. The plan is to test communications equipment and systems prior to the move so that the transition is seamless," he said. "People will be phased in based on fused planning mission requirements."

According to Major McCoy, the Fusion Center floor will provide space for 336 personnel. Good use of the space will facilitate more fused planning opportunities and success by bringing together previous geographically separated tasks into a space determined by functionality to support the mission.

Based on a functional concept of improved operations, the Fusion Center helps realize up to $100 million in the BRAC savings of up to $1.2 billion according to Mr. Coyle. The $130 million facility also includes an addition for the Joint Intelligence Operations Center funded by the Defense Intelligence Agency.

"Our main goal is to consolidate, transform and to do more with less (money) to meet the mission, but the facility design is very flexible and smart in function and use," said Mr. Coyle.

Fusion Center leaders are capitalizing on that design flexibility and smart functional use to plan the move to the new facility.

The open-floor plan maximizes opportunities to accommodate mission changes and maintain highly secure operational requirements, said Coyle. Most work spaces are designed for collaborative conversation and there will be multiple conference rooms fitted with sophisticated and modern technologically-advanced systems, said Coyle.

In addition to the construction, the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson, AFB, Ohio, is researching workspace design and ecology to gain further synergies. The workspace ecology efforts will help maximize Fusion Center efforts by leveraging attributes of the workplace environment to improve awareness, increase interaction, and enhance collaboration among Fusion Center members said Alex Nelson, AFRL associate research psychologist.

"Supporting these three social components is crucial to optimizing collaborative knowledge work environments like the Fusion Center and AFRL has developed and implemented a workspace ecology assessment tool to baseline, track, and optimize future workspace design changes," Mr. Nelson said.