DOD Support Infrastructure Management

Why It's High Risk

The Department of Defense (DOD) has 507 permanent installations that comprise more than 300,000 buildings and 200,000 other structures with a replacement value of more than $800 billion. Since designating this area high-risk in 1997 (GAO/HR-97-7 Defense Infrastructure), GAO has reported on challenges DOD faces in reducing excess and obsolete infrastructure, maintaining (or sustaining) facilities, and achieving efficiencies in base support by eliminating duplication of support services. Because DOD has made progress in addressing issues related to sustaining facilities, we are narrowing the defense infrastructure high risk area. However, DOD has not fully met our criteria for removing the high risk designation for reducing excess facilities and attempting to achieve efficiencies in base support.

^ Back to topWhat We Found

GAO's recent work has confirmed two broad issue areas we noted in 1997 remain for DOD to address: reducing excess facilities and attempting to achieve efficiencies in base support.

First, maintaining only those facilities needed to meet mission requirements and avoiding sustaining those that do not helps to conserve resources and makes such resources available for other high priority uses. DOD has made some progress in reducing its excess infrastructure through implementation of the 2005 Base Closure and Realignment (BRAC) process, which is the department’s primary means of disposing of excess infrastructure. However:

• DOD still has significant amounts of excess infrastructure and senior DOD officials have stated that further reductions may be needed to ensure that DOD’s infrastructure is appropriately sized to carry out its missions in a cost effective manner.
• DOD has established annual targets for each of its service components of demolishing 222 million square feet of excess or surplus facilities between fiscal years 2011 and 2016. DOD’s scheduled targets call for demolition of about 44 million square feet between fiscal years 2011 and 2013. The department’s schedule shows that the majority—178 million square feet or about 80 percent of the total—is scheduled for demolition in fiscal years 2014 through 2016.
• Data provided by DOD shows that the department demolished only about 40 million square feet of excess and surplus facilities between fiscal years 2007 and 2010, or an average of about 10 million square feet per year.
• While DOD’s actions to establish targets for the further reduction of excess and surplus capacity are encouraging, the department has not made sufficient progress in reducing its excess and surplus facilities and is only in the early stages of future reductions.

Second, DOD has made some progress in implementing joint bases with common support standards but has not demonstrated progress in achieving greater economies and cost savings thought to be likely through elimination of duplicate base support functions where bases are adjacent to or in close proximity to one another. DOD has consolidated 26 individual bases into 12 joint bases to implement a BRAC recommendation and adopted a set of 267 common base support standards. However:

• Little, if any, cost savings from joint basing are likely, at least in the near term, because some of the common standards adopted would require a higher and more costly level of base support than the services have traditionally funded, and because certain administrative efficiencies have not been attained.
• DOD officials acknowledge that the joint basing initiative has not yet produced savings. However, they do expect to achieve savings as the bases gain experience with consolidation and the common standards and new operational efficiencies are identified and adopted over time.
• DOD has neither conducted a detailed analysis of the estimated installation support costs from the initial joint bases yet, nor developed a specific plan to achieve the efficiencies originally expected from the joint basing initiative.

^ Back to topWhat Needs to Be Done

For DOD to demonstrate sustained improvement in defense support infrastructure management, the department must:

• Continue to implement its schedule for disposing of the department’s excess and surplus facilities in the inventory to achieve the high rates of demolition needed to dispose of remaining unneeded facilities.
• Develop and implement a corrective action plan to achieve economies and efficiencies from base consolidation under the joint basing initiative. Specifically, DOD needs to ensure prudent use of resources by
  • (1) fully implementing its plan to conduct regular assessments of the common standards due to begin in February 2011 and make adjustments if warranted, to ensure that each standard reflects the level of service actually needed to meet base support requirements as economically as possible before further expanding use of these new common standards to the other approximately 500 bases; and
  • (2) periodically reviewing administrative costs as basing is implemented to achieve efficiencies.
    GAO-09-336
• Complete a detailed analysis of the estimated installation support costs from the initial joint bases and report the results of the analysis to the Congress in the department’s documents supporting the administration’s annual budget submission.
  GAO-09-336

^ Back to topKey Reports

Military Base Realignments and Closures

Military Base Realignments and Closures

Defense Infrastructure

Defense Infrastructure

More Reports