Improving Reliability of Utility Infrastructures for Resiliency

NCMS Project #: 142116

Problem: Our nation’s aging infrastructure is increasingly vulnerable today.  Many threats currently exist to our infrastructure, including extreme weather events, cyber-attacks, shortfalls in maintenance and sustainability budgets, and direct physical attacks.  An organization that is tasked with maintaining an infrastructure element must have the proper tools to deter, prevent and also recover from any attack.  Tools and processes that can help with this are critical to sustain the system and ensure normal operations are restored quickly to minimize disruptions.

Benefit: Lessons learned can be applied by other organizations in both the government and commercial sectors to better ensure resiliency and appropriate levels of maintenance and sustainment of infrastructure elements in utility systems serving government, municipalities, manufacturing plants, commercial and residential consumers.

Solution/Approach: The overarching objective of this effort is to strengthen an organization’s ability to more efficiently protect, maintain and sustain its infrastructure and utilities, through improved tools and processes.  The specific objective of this initiative is to use the U.S. Army DCS G-9 Installations as a surrogate to demonstrate a decision tool to help stakeholders analyze and determine the most appropriate way to employ dedicated subject matter expertise in utilities privatization contracting.

Impact on Warfighter:

  • Provide management and oversight of service providers 
  • Improve performance and process efficiencies 
  • Reduce risks and unplanned or unnecessary costs 
  • Further investments in safety, reliability and resiliency requirements 
  • Framework to evaluate the pros and cons of the different utility service contract models
  • Increase insight into potential cyber security vulnerabilities 

DOD Participation:

  • U.S. Army, Deputy Chief of Staff (DCS) G-9 Installations 
  • Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) 
  • Army Materiel Command (observer) 
  • Assistant Secretary of the Army, Installations, Energy and Environment (ASA, IE&E) (observer)  

Industry Participation:

  • Guidehouse LLP
  • NCMS

Benefit Area(s):

  • Cost savings
  • Maintenance avoidance and reliability
  • Obsolescence management and continued maintenance capability
  • Positive environmental impact
  • Safety
  • Maintenance management improvement
  • Improved readiness
  • Reliability improvement

Focus Area:

  • CBM+/Predictive maintenance

Final Report