Recently three instructors from AFIT's Civil Engineer and Services School traveled to Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas, to provide educational support for Army Directorate of Public Works (DPW) members. Faculty from the school partnered with Air Education and Training Command’s (AETC) engineering staff to organize and execute a seminar providing an Air Force Civil Engineering (CE) overview to twenty-one DPW management and senior technical personnel. This course is the beginning of a projected series of instruction to provide applicable Air Force training to all levels of DPW personnel supporting the transition to Joint Base San Antonio. Other organizations, including the Fire Department currently in the Directorate of Emergency Services, will receive this training as they prepare to realign into the standard Air Force CE organization.

The transition of Fort Sam Houston’s DPW function to an Air Force Civil Engineering Division came as a result of the creation of Joint Base San Antonio. The 2005 Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) realignment process led to the creation of Joint Bases and the 502^nd Air Base Wing to serve Joint Base San Antonio. Lackland Air Force Base, Randolph Air Force Base, and Fort Sam Houston will each have their own Mission Support Group to provide installation support. The current timeline to realign Joint Base San Antonio establishes initial operational capability in early 2010 and full operational capability (FOC) on 1 October 2010.

Fort Sam Houston currently hosts the US Army Medical Command, Brooke Army Medical Center, US Army North, and US Army South to name a few of the many supported organizations. After FOC, the Air Force will become the lead agency to provide installation support to approximately 80,000 military members and civilian employees in San Antonio. The resulting construction at Fort Sam Houston will add 14 million square feet of real property at a cost of 2.5 billion dollars which the newly created Civil Engineer Division on Fort Sam Houston will maintain as Air Force assets.

A large change facing Army DPW personnel is conversion to Air Force civilian employees doing business as an Air Force Civil Engineer Division. According to Lt. Col. Andre Dempsey, AETC’s Civil Engineer representative, the purpose of this training is to start the process of familiarization and transition to Air Force CE organization and business practices for the Army DPW. In the end, both CE and DPW personnel provide the much of the same installation real property support; however, the lexicon and institutional process are significantly different.