Team making progress at TAC

Published April 24, 2009
By Brandice J. Armstrong
Tinker Public Affairs

TINKER AIR FORCE BASE, Okla., -- The Tinker Aerospace Complex is projected to be ready mid-summer for its first depot-maintenance shop tenants. By the end of fiscal 2009, five additional Oklahoma City Air Logistics Center shops are scheduled to move into the main facility.

Shops from the 76th Propulsion Maintenance Group, 76th Commodities Maintenance Group, 76th Maintenance Support Group and Defense Logistics Agency will call TAC "home."

The 545th Propulsion Maintenance Squadron's TF33 2 Level Maintenance/Quick Engine Change is the first of the shops scheduled to move in. Crews have been working at the 2.5-million square-foot main facility since October 2008. To date, approximately 75 percent of fiscal 2009 demolition work is complete and nearly 15 percent of construction work is done.

"We are moving forward with FY09 workloads and working on a compressed schedule," said John Page, TAC Program Management Office team member. "Usually the work is spread out over an 18-month period. We started in October and we're squishing everything into one year."

TAC was first brainstormed in February 2006, when the General Motors automobile assembly plant unexpectedly closed. In 2008, Oklahoma County purchased the facility from GM and in turn, established a low-cost, long-term lease to the Air Force.

TAC sits on 407 acres in southeast Oklahoma City. The property houses six industrial buildings and one office building, equating to nearly 4 million square-feet of usable space. The main facility, Bldg. 9001, which will house the first six shops, compares in size to Bldg. 3001.

To prepare for the new shops, 76th Maintenance Wing personnel are revamping the main facility. They have cleared away excess steel used in the automobile production process and overhead trusses, plus removed steel and filled in concrete trenches, where conveyer systems were set up.

TAC crews are now "building-up" shop spaces and updating the central air conditioning and compressed air units. The units will cool and heat TAC's main facility. Like other TAC projects, elements of updating the air and heat components have proved challenging, said Jeff Kindschuh, TAC PMO team member.

"Some of the facility equipment has been turned off as long as three years, after GM shut down operations," he said. "Anytime that you don't operate equipment for a period, it's like an automobile, you have more maintenance and repair issues."

Other challenges the TAC crew faced were finding and bringing in necessary equipment for demolition or construction work and dismantling out-dated equipment including old conveyer belts and assembly-line equipment.

Officials said in the next six months, the TAC crew will add and replace lights and bathrooms, paint floors, install elevators, upgrade fire alarm systems and access doors and build-up shops.

Col. Jeffrey Sick, 76th CMXG commander, who will have three shops in Bldg. 9001 this fiscal year, said the work is worth it.

He said between moving into the TAC and the new consolidated fuels facility, the commodities maintenance group will be more efficient.

"This will drastically reduce our energy costs, routing times, and each shop is undergoing a transformation whereby internal shop processes are leaned and non-value added steps are eliminated," the colonel said. "This is a big deal for the 76th CMXG, the center and the Air Force."

TAC progress