Camp Lemonnier

Camp Lemonnier, Djibouti, is a U.S. Navy installation and the primary base of operations for U.S. Africa Command in the Horn of Africa. The country’s largest base, it is home to more than 5,000 U.S. and coalition forces military personnel, civilians and military contractors. The base provides anti-piracy operations, as it lies north of Somalia and south of the Suez Canal, a crucial shipping trade route connecting the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. Additionally, Camp Lemonnier is a strategic base for both fighting global terrorism and supporting a large humanitarian mission for African nations. To transition the facilities from an expeditionary to an enduring base, officials have planned more than $1.2 billion in improvements over the next 25 years.

The Navy looked to Stanley Consultants to use geospatial asset management techniques to address issues with locating, identifying, inventorying, mapping and modeling the camp’s utility infrastructure to effectively implement its master plan expansion. Existing infrastructure drawings and data have been known to be inaccurate and incomplete, leading to accidents, unexpected major construction modifications and delays and even system failures that disrupt an organization’s mission. Accurate utility records support master planning and construction management efforts, which enables military planners to avoid accidents, cost overruns and construction delays.

A 12-member Stanley Consultants team worked onsite for two separate, six-month deployments to identify and record information on 3,400 assets. The process included sub-surface utility location verification, data collection, field surveys using custom forms, building a geodatabase and simultaneously developing utility mapping to provide as-built records of the base utilities and structures. The team also completed and updated the Internet Navy Facility Assets Data Store real property records for each asset.

The Geographic Information System database catalogs more than 50,000 pieces of data and assigns those to the individual system components. Stanley Consultants identified the types of components on the base and programmed pulldown menus for every option, size, manufacturer and mounting. These menus integrated data with unique asset numbers and descriptions, while also preventing accidental reuse of the numbers.

The team also discovered communication lines that led to a manhole off base where a host nation aircraft hangar was to be built. The lines were secured safely to prevent potential outages or security breaches.

For electrical, the team used field data to create up-to-date electrical one-line diagrams. It conducted short-circuit calculations and protective device coordination analysis. These diagrams and studies were required due to significant improvements and growth that had occurred to the base infrastructure over the past several years. The studies led to electrical outage repairs that could have been prevented with proper circuit protection. Recommended modifications were implemented under a follow-up contract to prevent similar future outage repairs.

Because of this work, the installation had a complete understanding of their utility systems to help with operations, maintenance and future planning.