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Special Projects Branch hits 10-year milestone.

OMAHA, NE, UNITED STATES; U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Omaha District .

In many organizations, there are some tasks and projects that just don’t seem to fit into an easily defined category. This was also the case for the Corps of Engineers Omaha District in 2009. The District had projects that needed to be completed, but didn’t quite fit the mold of the programs they were assigned to.

The solution to that issue to the stand up the Special Projects Branch. It was a new concept when the first eight-person team was assembled to take on these outliers, which totaled more than $140 million that first year. Since then, the branch has grown to 52 people and nearly $600 million worth of work annually.

The Special Projects Branch assembles project delivery teams to support the nation through homeland security/defense, disaster and infrastructure work within the Omaha District's Area of Responsibility and beyond.

The Special Projects Branch consists of three sections to manage Interagency & International Support/ Rapid Response (IIS); Facilities, Sustainment, Restoration, and Modernization (FSRM); and Fuels.

Customers include Department of Defense and other federal agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Energy, Department of the Interior, Defense Logistics Agency, Department of Veterans Affairs and others.

Special Projects teams support the Omaha District mission using internal and external resources, including discretionary and/or flexible cost reimbursement contract mechanisms to provide national and international, time-sensitive and non-time-sensitive project support.

Greg Herring, Special Projects Branch Chief, has been with the branch since it was created. He said Special Projects was initially put together to focus on some of the “smaller” projects the District was handling.

“We had a couple of organizations around the Corps of Engineers that were bringing in reimbursable workloads, what we call projects from non-captive customers. They don’t have to come to the Corps of Engineers to get their work done, they just need an engineering service center to get things done. We were bringing in workload from a lot of different areas in the district,” he said. “The Special Projects Branch was created to pick up that type of workload that wasn’t part of other branches’ key business lines; it put the work from all of these agencies in one spot. There was this workload that didn’t have a PM [Project Management] home. They were coming into these other branches and they were managing it.”

Ted Streckfuss, Deputy District Engineer for the Omaha District, said the Special Projects team has taken on the challenge of consolidating those “smaller” projects, but also growing it into a successful branch of the District.

"It has been nearly a decade since Omaha District embarked on a journey dedicated to the vision of workload management and enhanced customer satisfaction. At that time, many within the District had been scratching their head and discussing the challenges related to end-of-year execution, and the availability of staff to accomplish the tasks we had committed to,” he said. “After extensive review, it was determined that the ‘work for others’ aspect of the District's execution need was a significant component of our overarching mission to support the nation.

“We felt that establishing a branch-level organization charged with the responsibility to seamlessly execute our mission to the high standard that Omaha District is known for would be the lynch pin leading us to a more robust, efficient and effective team,” Streckfuss added.

Streckfuss said that team is now meeting and exceeding its original goals.

More Here:

https://www.dvidshub.net/news/358417/special-projects-branch-hits-10-year-milestone