Managing Real Property Maintenance: Meeting the Challenge of Declining Budgets

摘要

The Army Materiel Command (AMC) is the primary agent for research anddevelopment, acquisition, supply, and maintenance of Army materiel. It fulfills its mission by managing a system of research laboratories, depots, arsenals, and ammunition plants employing approximately 114,000 people at 63 installations. Each year, AMC spends more than half a billion dollars on real property maintenance activity (RPMA), yet is maintenance backlog continues to grow. RPMA is funded from four separate sources: the Army Industrial Fund; Procurement, Army approximation; the Research, Development, Test, and Evacuation appropriation; the the Operations and Maintenance, Army appropriation. Managing AMC's RPMA program requires effective programming and budgeting while minimizing installation-level RPMA costs. Historically, decreasing Army budgets result in underfunded RPMA programs, and currently, AMC installations are experiencing budget reductions at the same time that new major maintenance requirements are being identified. To meet this challenge, AMC must enhance its RPMA management by improving the flow of information from installations to AMC Headquarters so that the information is more accurate and consistent. Having more credible information will make it easier to defend the RPMA program and budget requests before the various appropriation managers. Better information will also increase the effectiveness of overall RPMA resource allocations. (sdw)