The History of the Pentagon Renovation Program Development

In 1992, the Pentagon was designated a National Historic Landmark and had never undergone a major renovation. After more than 60 years of operation and use, modernizing was essential in order to meet current health, fire and life-safety codes, and to provide reliable electrical, air-conditioning and ventilating services. The passage of time and the cumulative effect of decades of deferred maintenance had left this historic structure in an advanced state of deterioration. The extent of the decay, against a background of steadily increasing operations and maintenance costs, precluded anything less than a total, slab-to-slab renovation.

The Pentagon Renovation & Construction Program Office’s (PENREN’s) activities began in 1993 with the building of the Pentagon Heating and Refrigeration Plant. It is an historic effort to modernize six-and-a-half million square feet within the 65-year-old structure. The original completion date for the renovation of Wedges 1-5 was 2014. However, the events of September 11, 2001 made apparent a more immediate need to complete the building’s life-safety and security enhancements. Congress provided additional funds to accelerate the Pentagon renovation; as a result, PENREN will complete the renovations in October 2011, 36 months ahead of the original schedule.

PENREN faces complications in completely overhauling the Pentagon, which includes the presence of asbestos and other hazardous materials, as well as the need to complete the renovations in an operating facility housing more than 20,000 people who cannot afford interruptions in their daily operations. The Pentagon’s technology infrastructure was also in need of modernization, a task that rivals the construction effort in size and complexity. This effort is being conducted concurrently with the brick-and-mortar renovation under a separate contract.

The Pentagon Renovation and Construction Program Office has continued to provide optimum customer service and remains committed to completing projects on cost and on schedule. The Program’s successes with sustainable construction and delivering a quality product will provide safe, modern, efficient, and flexible renovated spaces for the Department of Defense.

At the start of the Renovation Program, control of the design process over the life of the project required the development of design guidelines and criteria. This control was necessary because of the size and duration of the project, the multi-acquisition approach, and design activities occurring throughout the project as each increment was renovated. As discussed in the Acquisition section, in the Process Improvements chapter of this report, the Renovation Program has moved to a design-build acquisition approach and the renovation of Wedges 2 through 5 is currently undergoing the source selection process as a single contract.

Early in the Program’s history, a Management Support Architect-Engineer, prepared design guidelines and criteria; prepared the Reservation Master Plan, which addresses environmental issues; prepared the Pentagon Building Master Plan; developed prototypical designs for architectural standards, heating, ventilating and air conditioning systems, plumbing systems, fire protective systems, electrical systems, and security systems; and continues to develop programming and swing space requirements, schedules and cost estimates, and is providing technical and management support and Computer-Aided Design Documents for record drawings, shop drawings, and shop drawing reviews. Broad-scale design criteria, which are equivalent to a concept stage, will ensure that each individual increment will be compatible with the rest of the work. The goal is to achieve a completed project that has uniform and compatible materials and systems that are economic to maintain.

In the mid-1990’s the importance of information management and telecommunications (IM&T) within the Pentagon was recognized and the United States Army was tasked with establishing a project office for Information Management and Telecommunications, renovation related tasks. The Pentagon IM&T project office was established in 1991.

The IM&T objective is to provide cost-effective IM&T services/capabilities that will best serve the needs of the Pentagon tenants and DoD Senior Leadership by leveraging technology advancements and designing/developing integrated systems, well into the 21st Century.