Overview

Robins Air Force Base in Warner Robins, Georgia is home to 5 major commands and 3 wings, supporting 22,000 personnel. It is Georgia's largest single-site industrial complex and hosts the Air Logistics Complex (ALC), which employs a workforce of more than 7,200 personnel, and performs depot maintenance and modifications on all variants of the F-15, C-130, C-5, C-17, and Special Operations forces aircraft.

ALC's existing compressed air plants were 20–30 years old with significant leaks throughout the distribution system. Production outages caused adverse mission impacts, estimated between $2–4 million of lost productivity daily. Not only did the outages have significant negative impacts to the mission, but the quality and availability of the compressed air across the distribution system were impacted due to oil and water in the air stream.

Our Approach

Southland partnered with Georgia Power for the utility energy services contract (UESC) to provide project development and design, build, and maintenance services.

As the UESC partner, Southland performed a comprehensive survey of the 2 compressed air plants and the compressed air equipment in the 40 buildings served by the plants. A leak survey was performed for all buildings fed by the compressed air plant. The survey data was used with the compressor and air flow measurements to determine total plant leakage rates and measurement data was used to develop compressed air simulations. Southland's detailed feasibility study (DFS) and design focused on upgrading the compressed air plants and distribution systems, as well as the electrical power systems and control systems.

Since the ALC maintains 24/7 operations, all work was required to be completed while existing compressed air service remained 100% operational, which added significant complexity to the project.

Result

Southland self-performed the development, design, and construction of the new central compressed air plants.

The UESC supports the mission critical aircraft maintenance and repair facilities providing resilience, mission assurance, and significant operational flexibility. Implemented measures included an upgrade of the substation that serves the central compressed air plant and all new motor controls. A new SCADA system was integrated with the new electrical substation distribution gear and ongoing base-wide EMCS program, and is used for performance tracking and diagnostics, as well as measurement and verification.

Southland self-performed the development, design, and construction of the new central compressed air plants to achieve 48% energy reduction with 100% compressor redundancy (2N configuration), which increased compressed air system reliability and met ALC's goals.