On behalf of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Middle East District provides quality, responsive engineering, construction and related services to customers in the Middle East, Central Asia and other areas. The district designs and constructs facilities for U.S. forces, supervises a wide array of service contracts for various military customers, assists other U.S. government and foreign agencies, and supports USACE operations in Afghanistan.
The district, along with its higher headquarters the Transatlantic Division, is headquartered in Winchester, Virginia. Its workforce of approximately 500, military and civilian, includes members working in construction field offices in the Middle East and Central Asia and in an administrative contracting office in Kosovo.
Work for U.S. Forces in the U.S. Central Command Area of Operations
USACE provides services for U.S. military forces during peacetime, contingency and wartime operations. The work supports U.S. Central Command, the major unified command with operational control of U.S. security interests in the 20 countries of the Middle East, the Arabian Gulf and Central Asia. Facilities are provided at certain installations in the region in accordance with established government-to-government agreements; assistance provided meets specific customer needs – from planning and design through construction completion.
U.S. military construction projects meet operational and living requirements of deployed forces and include housing and administrative buildings; parking aprons, runways and taxiways; hospitals and clinics; and workshops and maintenance areas. Customers include the U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy, and Special Operations Command. In addition to construction contracts, the district also manages job order contracts that provide minor construction, repair and facilities support at installations used by the U.S. Army and the Air Force. The district also awarded many military construction contracts for projects in Afghanistan, working with the forward deployed USACE districts and U.S. Army and Air Force customers, to construct barracks, clinics, dining facilities, fuel storage, aprons, control towers, and runways. The volume of projects in Afghanistan is waning as the U.S. military mission there has matured and the United States prepared for troop withdrawals in 2014.
Management of Service Contracts
The Middle East District manages contracts providing a wide range of services to both U.S. and foreign customers. These services meet life support, operations and maintenance, and logistics needs, or provide other essential services that support customers in meeting their mission requirements. Many of these contracts are managed collaboratively with the USACE districts in Afghanistan.
Examples of these services include:
· Nationwide service contracts support the construction mission in Afghanistan. These contracts include security and transportation services allowing USACE personnel to travel to construction sites to perform construction oversight, personal services that provide the expertise of Afghan citizens to assist USACE; and operations and maintenance services at Afghan National Security Forces facilities, as well as training the Afghans to assume the facility maintenance mission.
· A logistics services contract administered on behalf of U.S. Army Europe supports U.S. Soldiers assigned to peacekeeping operations in Kosovo. The contract can be used to support contingency operations, military readiness exercises and deployments throughout the 51 countries that comprise the USAREUR area of operations.
International and Interagency Programs
The Middle East District has several missions that fall under USACE’s international and interagency program. The district supports U.S. and foreign government agencies through the Defense Department’s security assistance program, aimed at promoting regional stability. Foreign Military Sales is a component of security assistance that transfers defense equipment, services and training to allied nations, including engineering services.
Through FMS programs, USACE has worked with Egyptian defense forces for more than 30 years to upgrade facilities to support military aircraft, naval vessels, and related systems purchased from the United States. The work includes renovation and construction of facilities at air, land and navy bases. The district also has awarded contracts for the Iraq Ministry of Defense for administrative offices, barracks, utilities, and Iraq Air Force facilities. In FMS programs for the Jordanian Ministry of Defense, the district worked to construct the King Abdullah II Special Operations Training Center. The district is working with other Middle East customers discussing other potential programs.
Other programs include:
- Constructing force protection facilities in Iraq to support the Department of State and the Office of Security Cooperation-Iraq.
- Constructing military training facilities in Jordan.
- Assisting with humanitarian assistance projects in the region, such as clinics and schools, with work funded by the Defense Department. This program provides aid and assistance to support populations in need.
- Supporting U.S. Central Command's counternarcotics program in Central Asia. Projects include border control facilities that build the capacity of Central Asian states to secure their borders and prevent illicit drug trafficking.
Support for Operation Enduring Freedom
The USACE district in Afghanistan is focused on construction projects that improve the lives of citizens and help establish the conditions for stability and security. The Middle East District supports these efforts with project management, technical and contracting services for specific projects. In addition to the military construction and service contracts previously mentioned, the Middle East District employs various contracting tools to award contracts that support the Afghan National Security Forces program and efforts to improve infrastructure affecting the lives of Afghan people such as water and electricity, as requested by the Afghanistan districts.
In addition to project management, contracting and deployment processing, the Middle East District continues to provide a range of business services to the Afghanistan district – to include legal, finance, information technology, logistics, and EEO.