METAIRIE, La. — The 2023 United States defense budget is just $800 billion. Of that, about $3 billion will be spent on architecture and engineering services. Notably, the Metairie office of a national firm has helped land $250 million in contracts in that category
The Metairie outpost of Pond & Company — a Georgia-based engineering, architecture, planning and construction consulting firm — recently announced it has helped secure contracts worth roughly $250 million from several branches of the U.S. military and Department of Defense.
The contracts, which will extend for several years, include $42 million to provide military planning, programming and design services for the Pacific Air Forces Theater; $49 million for resiliency planning for the U.S. Army; and $160 million from the Department of Defense to provide master planning services at DoD facilities worldwide. In some cases, Pond has partnered with other firms to complete the work.
“When the military needs to know how many buildings or runways they need to meet their mission in the future, we help them figure out the answer,” said Sam Briuglio, Pond senior vice president. “We have a whole group of people who are subject matter experts in the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines. We’ve worked with other agencies as well. Very often, though, we’re not planning for tanks and fighter jets. A lot of times, it’s family housing and barracks and child development centers.”
Based in Atlanta, Pond is a consulting firm that has provided engineering, architecture, planning, and construction management solutions to public and private clients since 1965. Briuglio joined the operation in 2012, when he opened the Metairie office that has grown from three employees to more than 60. He expects the local staff size to grow about 25% per year for the next several years. The team is rapidly outgrowing its space at 110 Veterans Boulevard, near the parish line.
Considering there are approximately 1,000 military facilities in the U.S. and roughly another 800 worldwide (exact numbers are hard to pin down), there’s always work to be done.
“Our purview is roads, infrastructure and facilities,” said Briuglio. “So it could be planning training buildings or administrative buildings or hangers for planes. [We help determine] how their roads are laid out, what their fence lines are like and the security that goes into that — the utilities that they need, how much electrical they need to support the mission.”
One facet of the job is helping create the paperwork that helps the military justify the project to Congress, which ultimately holds the purse strings.
“If you do park planning or something like that, it’s based on vision,” said Briuglio. “‘We want a nice park. And it would be great if there was a dog park there, and it would be great if there were extra ball fields.’ It’s all based on wants, but the military’s missions are funded based on what their actual need is, so we help them to define that and justify it. And then we put together a plan for it. And we do the programming documentation. And that goes to Congress, which says, ‘We can audit this. It looks awesome. Army, you got your new building.’”
Briuglio, who travels to a base in Japan next week, is proud that Pond was selected to work on the Air Force’s priorities in the Pacific.
“It’s a real honor that our company was chosen by Pacific Air Force command to do all of their planning and all of their design work over the next three years,” he said. “I couldn’t feel more lucky that they have a mission and that they’re coming to these civilians and saying, ‘We need your help.’ Everybody’s locking arms with a common goal.”
