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                         August 20, 2002

TIM implementation approaches

By Irene Brown
Editor

The time for the implementation of the Transition Installation Management System is rapidly approaching.

The first leg of the program begins this October with the shifting of ownership of all Army installations to a field activity of the Assistant Chief of Staff for Installation Management, called the Installation Management Activity. The U.S. Military Academy falls under the IMA’s northeast region, based at Fort Monroe, Va.

Army leadership briefed national government labor leaders on the Transformation Information Management plan June 14 in Washington, D.C. During that briefing officials said that while the process goes into effect October 1, there will be a year transition on personnel moves.

"This is a good thing," said West Point garrison commander Col. Ann Horner. "The year-long transition will allow for more measured implementation and provide time to address the many unanswered questions in the details of how TIM will affect operations across the Army."

Horner said both IMA and Northeast region leaders will be visiting USMA next month.

IMA officials said that an IMA General Order was approved and signed August 15 by the Secretary of the Army. This order officially establishes the Installation Management Agency as a field operating agency of the ACSIM and the agency responsible for implementing the Transformation of Installation Management.

A Council of Counselors convened Monday to review the initial operating instructions, confer with the authors and work out necessary revisions, officials explained. Revised versions will be presented to the leadership of the IMA for approval and subsequently released to the regions.

An IMA Guidance Memo on support agreements will be released within the next two weeks, officials added. Its purpose is to ensure a smooth transition of support agreements at Army Installations.

"Garrison commanders have been instructed to ensure that support agreements are not cancelled on Oct. 1 when the IMA is activated," they explained.

The plan for TIM implementation foresees installation support to mission areas coordinated in part through a board of directors, with the senior mission commander having senior-rater responsibilities over the garrison commander.

Progress of Transformation of Installation Management implementation is tracked by weekly updates, according to Donna Bernard, a spokesperson for the TIM implementation. Those updates can be accessed through the TIM Web site at www.hqda.army.mil/acsimweb/CIMhomepage.shtml.

Phil Sakowitz, the TIM Task Force director, and Diane Devens, director of the Northeast region, said the relationship that is expected to develop between each of the installations, and the mission units that they support, is far different than traditional landlord-tenant relationships.

"That word, tenant, denotes that you pay for service in kind from the garrison," said Devens. "That whole tenant-landlord relationship, in my opinion, will go away because those ‘tenants’ will not pay for services. They will get a standard level of service that is the garrison’s mission to provide and is supported by BASOPS funding."

At first, some formal agreements between an organization and the garrison command may be required for services that exceed the standard level of services, according to Devens.

For example, suppose the Army sets a standard of 90-minute periods for breakfast, lunch and dinner in dining halls. An organization like West Point may require a different amount of time to feed cadets and soldiers here and an agreement may be required initially to support the exception. But Devens said the process should get easier.

"Eventually [the need for agreements] should be greatly minimized," she said. "A garrison’s reason for existence is to a base of support for all missions that are on installations. The installations should become flexible enough to respond to any requirement."

While the senior commander on an installation is not responsible for running it, he or she will be the senior rater for the garrison commander on services provided.

The four TIM regions in the United States are the Northeast, headquartered at Fort Monroe; the Southeast at Fort McPherson, Ga.; Northwest at Rock Island, Ill.; and the Southwest at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio.

The three overseas regions are the Pacific Region at Fort Shafter, Hawaii, for Army installations there, Alaska and Japan; and in Europe and Korea.

The Installation Management Agency Headquarters has initiated classification of new positions that will lead to the recruitment and placement of personnel. Ms. Denise Facey has joined the IMA Human Resources Team to assist the classification effort. The HR Team submitted more than 40 requests for personnel action Monday and began classifying regional positions. As job announcements are opened, IMA officials said, they will be available in all regular channels and also listed in the weekly update.

McSeveney said regions would run to about 125 personnel and the IMA perhaps 225. Presently an organization and operations (O&O) Plans Validation Team looked at plans drawn up by each Army proponent activity in April to ensure all agreements and key decisions are being incorporated.

Of the four regions in the continental United States, two are at MACOM headquarters that have substantially more workers involved in installation management than will be needed by the region. One is the Southeast Region, to be headquartered at Fort McPherson, Ga., where Forces Command is likewise headquartered. The other is the Northeast Region, to be run from Fort Monroe, Va., home of Training and Doctrine Command.

The western regions have few local workers to call on. Rock Island, Ill., the future headquarters of the Northwest Region, has about 20 employees, now with Army Materiel Command at the arsenal there, who could form a local core for the new region. There are even fewer in Fort Sam Houston, Texas, as a local nucleus for the Southwest Region, McSeveney said.

The Pacific Region, comprising Alaska and Hawaii, will be based at Fort Shafter, Honolulu, Hawaii, and the regions for Europe and Korea are based respectively in Heidelberg, Germany, and Yongsan, Korea.

The idea of "capitalizing in place" will allow the structure to take effect quickly, without the turmoil that would be caused by physical transfers and reductions in force. It was used, for example, in restructuring the Defense Finance and Accounting System.

"They are allowing two years for the changes to work out through normal attrition and voluntary personnel moves," McSeveney said. "After that there could be a reduction in force."

The earliest a RIF would begin would be January 2004, and all of the protections that go with that, from retreat and bumping rights to priority placement would apply. The process would spin out to the end of the fiscal year, presumably with separation incentives offered.

Editor’s note: Information from Tom Mani, a public affairs specialist with MDW is also represented in this article.