Center Will Keep Airports In The Loop

May 1, 2004 12:00 PM

The United States has hundreds of airports, thousands of trucks, and thousands of miles of rail and pipeline to safeguard, not to mention the nation's ports. Any piece of this system can become vulnerable at any point. The mission of the Transportation Security Coordination Center (TSCC) — operated by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) — is to gather intelligence and recommend action to mitigate security risks or problems.

By integrating intelligence and operations, the TSCC is able to coordinate countermeasures to prevent and respond to terrorist threats across all U.S. modes of transportation. To do this, the organization requires situational awareness and the ability to respond quickly. The TSA employs thousands of screeners and federal air marshals at 429 commercial airports — and the TSCC listens to all of them. Screeners, air marshals and federal security directors pass information on to TSCC analysts and watch officers, who analyze the data and report their findings to senior leadership.

The information-gathering process is not limited to just government employees. Air, truck and rail companies each have formed information sharing and analysis centers (ISACs) where they share intelligence and security information. (However, they are not required or expected to share their business-proprietary information.) Similar to the TSCC, ISACs representatives will soon take up residence at the TSCC facility. Direct interaction with industry representatives shortens the intelligence chain and makes it possible to respond rapidly to new threats.

Along the way, massive amounts of information are collected, processed and analyzed with the best technology available. TSCC technologies feature robust connectivity via fiber optics, geospatial information systems and a common operational architecture enabling all systems to work together. “The decisions we make have to be made quickly,” said Curt Powell, director of TSCC. “Because of this, we have to rely on the speed of information technology. There is no time to spare.”

But the TSCC was designed with the knowledge that sometimes technology does fail. Power systems have redundancies — even back-up generators have back-up generators. “The infrastructure can get overloaded during crisis situations. We can't afford to be out of the loop,” Powell explains.

The construction project

On the TSCC watch floor, large pods — arrangements of tables curved like horseshoes bisected with two more rows of facing tables — fan out across a huge room. The tables are arrayed with monitors receiving various types of information. Some civilians and uniformed personnel from various Homeland security agencies are seated at the monitors, watching them intently. Others talk to one another quietly. At the front of the room, several large screens display more information. And in the lobby, a memorial composed of a twisted beam from the World Trade Center and broken masonry from the Pentagon stands as a reminder of the TSCC's mission.

But in the early spring of 2003 none of this existed. The building, located in Herndon, Va., was an empty shell with no facilities, utilities or security. And Powell was given three months and less than $20 million to build arguably the nation's most critical command, control and communications facility.

With hard work and experience, Powell executed the program management canons of communication, planning, scheduling and stakeholder buy-in. The TSCC was Powell's third major build-out project in his career — and he knew what to expect. Powell called on the services of Robbins-Gioia, a program management firm headquartered in Alexandria, Va. “Let's face it — there is no way I could have done this by myself,” Powell said. “The mix of the team was tailored to do this project. TSA and R-G were indistinguishable. There was a total integration of the team.” Team members from Robbins-Gioia included Don Curtis, operations manager; two financial analysts; two master schedulers; and a civil engineer.

The project was built by Davis Construction, designed by architecture firm The M Group and managed by Akridge, a construction management company.

Powell turned to the Naval Space Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR), a government agency specializing in systems integration. SPAWAR has a comprehensive background in command, control, communications, computer intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, and providing a tremendous depth of knowledge in designing the TSCC technology. SPAWAR was the systems integrator for all of the classified connectivity and briefing and display systems. SPAWAR designed, integrated and installed the complete IT infrastructure, all classified hardware and infrastructure and the briefing and display systems.

Powell emphasized communication. “We had meetings, meetings, meetings, and more meetings,” he said. The program management team had daily stand-up meetings. Building a master integrated schedule also fostered good project communication. Everyone's schedule — from the IT systems integrator to the carpet layers — was rolled up into the master schedule, so the program management team could have visibility over the entire project at the same time. “A few people resisted at first,” Powell admitted, “but they soon saw the value of it in a compressed time — frame project.”

But perhaps the biggest key to success was the commitment from all involved. “We appealed to peoples' patriotism,” Powell said. “And we appealed to their pride. We said, ‘People think we can't do this. But the Pentagon was built in 14 months — I know we can do this!’ Everyone got on board.”

The local Fairfax County government jumped in by quickly turning around building permits.

The weak economy turned out to be an advantage for TSA. Because of the downturn in construction, contractors were eager to get the work. At times there were as many as 300 tradesmen working on different components of the building at once. Building and finishing took place in a rolling wave. The carpet was laid from one end of the building to the other; right behind the carpet layers the movers were positioning furniture; and right behind them the IT people were installing computer systems.

After 97 days of working six days a week, 12 to 18 hours a day, the build-out was completed within its $18.3 million budget.

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© 2008 Penton Media Inc.

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