The Ginn Group has over 25 years of experience in supporting the U.S. Department of Defense, particularly in the area of facilities management and support.
It’s a big job to provide facilities services at an installation like Fort Knox, Kentucky which encompasses 109,000 acres in three Kentucky counties and has a daytime population of over 26,000 Soldiers, civilian employees, and Family members. Our facilities maintenance services at Fort Knox support over 2000 buildings and structures, 251 miles of roadway, and 15.7 miles of rail across an area of 109,000 acres. To be effective we must always embrace the latest technologies to meet this challenge.
Earlier this year I wrote about how we see ‘smart technologies’ impacting major all sectors of our economy including Smart Cities using an Internet of Things (IoT) network of sensors and machines throughout a city’s infrastructure and services to develop, deploy, and promote sustainable development practices to address growing urbanization challenges.
Our military bases are ‘mini-cities’ that exist within a community but must also be able to operate self-sufficiently during times of crisis. Smart technologies can’t stop at the installation fence, they must be adopted within the boundary and work both in concert with the larger community but also independently when required – a subtle nuance in the design and deployment.
The Smart Base, sometimes called “Installation of the Future”, is the next wave in facilities support for the US DoD. This represents the fusion of our traditional facilities support services and our new INGITEQ engineering and technology division to apply the latest technologies in an integrated fashion across the installation. The illustration below outlines our concept for the Smart Base at a typical installation.
This approach promises to reduce support costs while improving the overall efficiency of the primary base functions, allowing the military personnel to focus on their mission. The core Smart Base technologies will also enable expanded services for:
- Manufacturing 4.0 processes interconnected with contractor’s systems to support improved maintenance, repair, and overhaul of military systems on base.
- Smart Logistics allowing tracking and tracing through the logistics chain from the vendor’s supply chain into the military supply network to the warfighter.
- Smart Healthcare with sharing of data across a network of providers, both civilian and military, combined with telehealth to give our armed forces and dependents access to the best caregivers regardless of location.
The Ginn Group and our INGITEQ division are ready to make Smart Base a reality with our experts across facilities management, logistics, engineering, and information technology to develop a set of solutions that balance technology and cost to best support Smart Base pilot projects and implementations.
