BUILDER SMS Implementation at Two National Cemeteries in Arlington, Virginia

Tetra Tech conducted a validation check and performed condition assessments on 114 assets, including monuments, memorials, facilities, and roadways at Arlington National Cemetery (ANC) and 21 assets at U.S. Soldiers’ and Airmen’s Home National Cemetery.

Tetra Tech assisted ANC with identifying, planning, and prioritizing real property assets at the only two national cemeteries they maintain. After the assets were identified, our team performed physical inventory and condition assessments by applying the BUILDER Sustainment Management System (SMS).

ANC memorials and monuments require off-normal component entry into standard BUILDER SMS with attention given to the expected service life curves that feed BUILDER algorithms. Due to the historical nature and cultural significance of ANC’s facilities, monuments, and memorials, Tetra Tech developed a specialized cost book to incorporate historical costs and life cycles of unique construction materials.

We worked with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Engineer Research and Development Center’s Construction Engineering Research Laboratory to implement those updates for ANC’s BUILDER instance. Our team created business rules to identify three facility categories:

  • Standard facilities whose systems and components require no modification to the default BUILDER program
  • 148 memorial tree plaques, each located adjacent to a tree at ANC
  • Memorial and monument facilities that will remain essentially intact for several hundred years and be multigenerational reminders of significant people and events in U.S. national history

In total, Tetra Tech performed condition assessments on 235 real property assets. The unique collection of ANC assets required expert knowledge of historic materials, construction techniques, and costs to accurately customize and capture the data in BUILDER. Using the BUILDER SMS, ANC expanded their ability to capture their unique assets with ongoing assessments and allocate resources for future refurbishments to protect them.