Air Force Awards Major BRAC Construction Contract to ECC

(MoneyWatch)  As part of the last round of BRAC the U.S. Armed Forces moved to consolidate all medical training at Fort Sam Houston in Texas. The U.S. Air Force's Center for Engineering and the Environment gave a contract to ECC to build two of the new buildings required for this facility. The San Antonio Business Journal reports that the contract is worth over $100 million and the facility is to be complete in late 2010. The total construction bill at the Fort is upwards of $2 billion. While it may seem that building new facilities at these costs makes BRAC not cost effective the long term savings by closing or consolidating bases is supposed to make up for it. The last BRAC focused on moving troops from Europe and Asia back to the U.S. and combining test, development and training centers across services. For example helicopter developing and testing will be centered at Redstone Arsenal in Alabama for all three services and airborne weapons development at China Lake in California. BRAC's savings will not necessarily be apparent for five to ten years or even more in some cases, but this round has led to a large number of new construction projects.