76The Military Engineer l May-June l 2010 framework, the effort included exten- sive interactions with key installation personnel, as well as with a variety of different tenant commands, to orient the stakeholders to the concept of sus- tainable management and to gain con- sensus on the objectives. The ?rst task was to develop the following working de?nition of sustainability for an instal- lation: The capacity for continuous op- erations in the long term coupled with the resilience for maintaining opera- tions in the case of short-term shocks and disturbances. The second task was the develop- ment of the overarching conceptual MSF, which contains the categories of the issues of concern. The following speci?c steps were taken in ?lling out this framework. These same steps may be applied when adapting the frame- work to other installations: • Discover the key issues within each MSF category. These issues are those that installation personnel must monitor and manage on a daily basis to ensure the installation functions as intended, complies with exist- ing regulations and serves as a good neighbor with the surrounding com- munity. • From these issues, identify proposed sustainability metrics that re?ect the status and trend for the issue in each MSF category. • Validate the metrics in follow-on dia- logue with users and stakeholders. This includes limiting the metrics set to a manageable number of measur- able metrics and enabling initial as- sessments of data availability and quality. • Identify available data sources and make additional adjustments to the metrics set. (Data acquisition always results in some adjustment of the metrics themselves.) • Develop a sustainability reporting template that installation personnel can use as a dashboard to monitor metrics over time and to visualize the status and trends of the sustainabil- ity metrics individually, as a group in each MSF category, or combined as a comprehensive installation sustain- ability index. This will allow for the quick identi?cation of critical areas. Mission Sustainability Framework The resulting MSF was based roughly on the triple bottom line approach typi- cally used for sustainability assessments and consists of a set of six metric catego- ries: mission; installation management; operations and maintenance; environ- ment; quality of life; and neighbors and stakeholders. Each MSF category con- tains a set of conceptual sustainability metrics that provide measures for that category and that collectively provide a sustainability index for the entire instal- lation. The MSF provides a broad frame- work for installations to develop metrics that monitor all aspects of installation sustainability—most importantly mis- sion. It also considers on-base quality of life and community sustainability issues, which have been shown to be key to an installations long-term sustainability. Sustainability Metrics. Some metrics will be based on top-down reporting re- quirements that are intended to be ap- plied across all facilities, such as presi- dential executive orders, the Energy Policy Act of 2005 and the Energy Inde- pendence and Security Act of 2007. Con- versely, bottom-up metrics are more likely to be installation-speci?c and ac- count for unique mission requirements and community interactions experi- enced at a single facility. The concep- tual metrics developed for this effort in- corporated both types of metrics to be broadly transferrable, yet customizable for individual installations and their unique mission requirements. Harmonization with Existing Data. Installations already collect, monitor and report a variety of data through existing reporting systems. This ef- fort attempted to develop metrics that harmonize with, or make appropriate reference to metrics within existing sys- tems wherever appropriate. To avoid additional or duplicative data collection and reporting burdens, existing metrics were incorporated directly. Reporting Template. To facilitate ease of indexing and comparison across metrics and MSF categories, each met- ric was scaled to a range of 0 to 100. The de?nition of these scales and the associated status criteria is critical to accurately portraying the metric. The conceptual MSF reporting template developed for this effort is intended, as noted, to provide a dashboard for mon- itoring the status and trends for each metric, each category of metrics and in- stallation sustainability as a whole. Next Steps The result of this effort is a framework with conceptual metrics that can be ap- plied to any installation. The next steps needed to take this framework from the conceptual state to an actual sustain- ability reporting tool are to select repre- sentative installations and come to con- sensus on issues within MSF categories for each installation. Once the issues are agreed to, relevant metrics are selected from the existing list of conceptual met- rics while supplementing with metrics that are unique to that installation, and then identifying data sources to popu- late those metrics. Additional objectives for adaptation should include: • exploring ef?cient data collection sys- tems that dont burden the system; • capturing existing data sources and potentially unburden the system; • establishing baselines and goals for each metric; and • implementing the reporting tool. Conclusion The bene?ts of a sustainability re- porting system are that it can assist with priority setting and compare seemingly disparate needs. It fosters a systems approach to installation management by assessing issues of importance in context and in relation to other issues, not in isolation. This approach, in turn, promotes and supports full lifecycle as- sessment. Finally, it can provide a dash- board of sustainability status and trend for an installation is that is easy to un- derstand and allows for the identi?ca- tion of critical areas on which to focus resources ef?ciently and effectively. Samuel P. Figuli, CSDP, is Project Manager, SERDP/ESTCP Support Of?ce, and John Rupnik, M.SAME, is Senior Vice President, HydroGeoLogic Inc. They can be reached at 703-696-8551 or samuel.?guli.ctr@osd.mil, and 703-478-5186 or jrupnik@hgl.com, re- spectively. Capt. Brad Smith, USN (Ret.) can be reached at 814-395-3939 or bpsmith50@gmail.com.
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