Since its establishment in 1943, Fleet Readiness Center East (FRCE) has grown and adapted to meet ever-changing national defense needs. Today, teams of expert artisans, engineers and logisticians support state-of-the-art maintenance, repair and overhaul of the military’s most advanced aircraft platforms, often in buildings that date back to the depot’s World War II beginnings.
Keeping FRCE’s spaces as current as the work that’s being done in them requires a talented team of carpenters, electricians and other skilled craftspeople – and that’s where the depot’s Facilities Modernization Shop comes in. Organized in 2014 as a means to make small building repairs or modifications that would be too expensive or time consuming to contract out to an external company, over the years its scope has grown as the team has proved its value.
The team started small, with 11 people doing small repairs like painting walls or changing light fixtures or ceiling tiles. Now, the 30-person shop is made up of carpenters, painters, electricians, pipefitters, and riggers – weight handlers who move heavy equipment and other items – and is capable of tackling much larger projects.
“The Facilities Modernization team helps us do more than improve the work environment at FRC East,” said FRCE Commanding Officer Capt. James M. Belmont. “The improvements they make to our infrastructure certainly help boost employee morale, but it’s more than that. Improved morale helps improve productivity and that, in turn, helps the team provide more effective, efficient service to our nation’s warfighters.”
Buddy Davis, FRCE Facilities and Infrastructure Management Department Head, said the greatest advantage the modification team provides to FRCE is that they are ready to work when a project needs to be done on a short deadline, without the time and expense involved in contracting that work out.
“For cost reasons and also to be able to support our customers, we decided that we need an in-house team of government employees doing this work,” Davis said. “Using the mod team allows us to support the mission much more efficiently. It also saves the command a lot of money to be able to complete these tasks with in-house resources.”
The team has evolved from its humble beginnings of making do with equipment borrowed from aircraft production lines and component shops, said Mike Cundiff, General Facilities Branch head. Modernizing aircraft, not infrastructure, was the depot’s focus.
“We were getting into a new line of work for FRC East,” he explained. “We had plenty of capable people to do the projects, and we just needed the right tools for the job.”
Now, with sufficient resources available, the team is able to tackle more complex projects with ease.
“When we first started, we wouldn’t think to touch some of the jobs that we do now on a routine basis,” said Will Bradley, Modernization Shop supervisor. “Just look at some of the heavy equipment moves that we used to do with forklifts and muscle. Now we have hydraulic rollers that we can put a machine on and drive it around with a joystick.”
With experience, the shop also has developed a more efficient system to order building supplies that has cut costs and delays in acquiring materials, while also providing an accurate representation of a project’s true cost.
“One of the things that has definitely been a turning point is creating a storage system that’s set on automatic reorder based on high-low limits,” said Bradley. “Now we can stock building materials ahead of time and then charge them out on the job as we go.”
The modernization team recently took on a project that put its skills, teamwork and technical improvements to the test. FRCE’s main conference room was sorely in need of a makeover, with dark paneled walls and outdated technology. In November, the team was asked to create a bright new conference room, with stadium seating, state-of-the-art technology and a new bigger conference table – and it had to be completed in less than three months, to be ready for a conference of Navy leaders that FRCE was due to host.
Team members said this project required an all-hands-on-deck mentality to plan and construct the renovated conference room. Some of these plans ran into roadblocks, such as when fire inspectors told them they could not use combustibles, such as wood, in the construction, and they had to find an alternative solution.
“When we built the platforms, we had to use metal studs because we couldn’t use timbers to build the platforms,” Cundiff recalled. “We had to do the research, and we found metal outside decking, which looks just like wood but is actually metal tubes. For the floor, we used fire retardant plywood.”
Bradley said the process of coming up with creative solutions to get the project done is one of his favorite aspects of his job.
“I love the challenge of figuring out a way around obstacles to complete the project,” Bradley said. “I think that’s one of the things we do very well, because every job has an element that we haven’t dealt with before. Every job is always brand new, and you have to plan, reevaluate your capabilities, and bring the team together to create a finished product that makes the customer happy.”
The team managed to complete the conference room project within the three-month deadline. The bright white walls and spacious stadium seating are in stark contrast to the dark, outdated room they have replaced. The carpenters created special design elements for the room, such as a polished inlaid conference table, laser cut wall art and a custom podium.
Belmont said he is proud of the talented, dedicated craftspeople who created the showcase conference room.
“FRC East’s newly renovated conference room is a credit to the talent and creativity of the craftspeople who made it happen,” Belmont said. “It’s clear that they took pride in their workmanship, and the result is a brighter, more inviting space that is a pleasure to work in. They were handed a challenging project on a tight deadline and they knocked it out of the park.”
FRCE is North Carolina’s largest maintenance, repair, overhaul and technical services provider, with more than 4,000 civilian, military and contract workers. Its annual revenue exceeds $1 billion. The depot provides service to the fleet while functioning as an integral part of the greater U.S. Navy; Naval Air Systems Command; and Commander, Fleet Readiness Centers.