FAIRFIELD-TRAVIS AFB MIRR CASE STUDY

The Solano County/Fairfield, CA community is working with Travis Air Force Base (AFB) to mutually study the community infrastructure that impacts the missions of the base and design projects to support not just the mission, but reach toward full mission assurance while also enhancing the resilience of the community.

“Resilience” is an important watch word for both the military and local governments. Cyber threats, direct kinetic attacks, accidents, floods, wildfires, storms, earthquakes, and aging infrastructure systems all threaten the ability of a military installation to accomplish its mission and a local government to protect the health, safety, and welfare of its citizens. Jointly addressing these threats is a key element in the Office of Local Defense Community Cooperation’s (OLDCC) Installation Resilience program.

The City of Fairfield retained SONRI and our teaming partner, Meurer Municipal Consulting, LLC (Meurer) to develop a partnership with Solano County and Travis Community Consortium (TCC) to seek an OLDCC Military Installation Resilience Review (MIRR) study grant. We successfully wrote and submitted the second largest MIRR grant in OLDCC history and in 2022 the City of Fairfield received one of the largest MIRR grants OLDCC has ever given. 

The project studied all the infrastructure in the Solano County Region and began design on critical upgrades or replacements for infrastructure that supports the airlift and aerial refueling missions for the Air Force, as well as the long-range nuclear command and control communications capabilities of the Navy, a key Travis AFB tenant. This project is contributing directly to the ability of Travis AFB to meet the Department of Defense directive to achieve 14-day mission assurance in the face of resilience threats and is setting the community on track to achieve their own 14-day resilience capability.

The SONRI-Meurer Team helped manage the grant and execute the study project. As the Project Coordinator of the Travis Regional Resiliency Report, the SONRI-Meurer Team:

• Wrote the Request for Proposals and supported the City of Fairfield, Solano County, and TCC in selecting a Study Contractor.
• Developed and copyrighted a one-of-a-kind MIRR Grant Partner Cost Tracking and Reporting Tool to support grant budget and activity monitoring.
• Supported City of Fairfield staff in all aspects of grant management and reporting.
• Provided quality assurance/quality control oversight of the Study Contractor to ensure their final product is actionable and fundable.
• Provided mission subject matter expert input into the study process and the Travis Regional Resiliency Report to ensure that projects selected for analysis and design support military mission resilience and assurance.

Results

• The project identified over 30 potential projects, and focused in on five critical projects that will provide the most impact on mission assurance and community resilience.
• A Tabletop Exercise, which was recognized by OLDCC as a new national model for promoting transparency, communication, and collaboration between multiple local government entities and military installations, produced outstanding results, and created new avenues for collaboration and partnership, not just between the base and community, but also between the 30 organizations who participated in the event and its follow on.
• The Study Contractor team provided initial conceptual design support to the four local jurisdictions responsible for developing the five top priority projects.
• The community is now pursuing a follow-on OLDCC grant to focus specifically on energy infrastructure. This project will not only address specific infrastructure vulnerabilities identified in the previous study, but go beyond these issues to identify and begin design on a variety of energy supply, generation, and distribution solutions to provide redundant energy sources, critical mission and services support, and more reliable energy supplies.

While other communities have conducted successful MIRR studies, this was the first OLDCC-funded project that also initiated project design. This will give the City of Fairfield and the Solano County Region a leg up for other federal funding, including OLDCC’s Defense Community Infrastructure Program (DCIP) grants program. In addition, this project is promoting an ever-increasing degree of communication and cooperation between Travis AFB and the defense communities who host it. The SONRI-Meurer Team are proud to play a key role in this project!