The State of the ERDC

U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center, Public Affairs
Published Nov. 2, 2016
Dr. Jeff Holland presents the State of the ERDC for employees and leadership at the Information Technology Laboratory's Conference Center October 11.

Dr. Jeff Holland presents the State of the ERDC for employees and leadership at the Information Technology Laboratory's Conference Center October 11.

ERDC leaders listen intently as Dr. Holland delivers the State of the ERDC at the Information Technology Laboratory's Conference Center October 11.

ERDC leaders listen intently as Dr. Holland delivers the State of the ERDC at the Information Technology Laboratory's Conference Center October 11.

Engineer Research and Development Center Director Dr. Jeffery Holland took to YouTube Oct. 11 to discuss the State of the ERDC with team members across the organization. The discussion addressed four major areas of interest for employees: People, Processes, Facilities and Programs. 

More than 600 people took part in the event, either in person or by live stream on YouTube, with an opportunity to ask questions at the end of Holland’s talk.

During the presentation, Holland provided information regarding our people and discussed the need for new hires in order to accept more business.

“The healthiest labs have hired the most people and have more work because they have the people to conduct the work,” he said. “We cannot give work to a lab that is understaffed and, therefore, unable to conduct the work.”

Holland also praised the quality, passion, high intelligence and agility of ERDC’s people.

“We’re known not only for the work we do, but for the way we do it. We’re known for the passion we bring to that work,” Holland said. “We have great people. You are great people. We are stronger together than we are by ourselves.”

In a discussion about ERDC’s processes, Holland gave an overview of BESST goals. BESST is a set of processes to accomplish the vision, guiding principles, plans and integrated actions to prepare the ERDC for 2020 and beyond. BESST includes Business Sophistication, Employee Success, Superior Solutions, Strategic Communications, and Transition Stratagem. A major success story from BESST is the greatly increased efficiency with contracting in FY16, a job-delaying problem in the past.

A notable focus of BESST, Business Sophistication, is striving to accomplish the vision of multi-year, multi-lab, multi-million dollar reimbursable national projects that will better balance our business portfolio.

“Overhead for small projects is much the same as large projects,” Holland explained. “Take advantage of what we do well in teaming and bring that together to work large projects.” The Business Development Action Group is working to bring these large-scale projects to ERDC. Holland finished by reiterating the labs’ ability to build teams of multidisciplinary experts to take on projects as a competitive advantage ERDC has over many research facilities.  

He encouraged better communication internally and externally, citing recent improvements but stressed the need for continual improvement.

The presentation also highlighted the reality of aging facilities at ERDC, with the average age of facilities at 41 years.

“To be world-class, we must look and feel world-class,” Holland said. “The average age of the facilities in this organization is 41 years and the recapitalization rate, which is how long it would take to rebuild everything at the current rate we’re getting money, is 127 years.”

He then shared his plan for acquiring the funds to update facilities across ERDC in a more efficient time frame.

Holland emphasized the most important element directing ERDC’s future is the agility and passion of ERDC’s people. With a new acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Research and Technology, Dr. Tom Russell, changes to the types of research done will most likely take place. Holland explained that ERDC has been known for its applied research but will need to further develop skills in basic research because research and technology efforts are moving from war to longer-term science.

Another change is the Long-Range Research and Development Planning, which represents a realignment of Army research and technology. Holland encouraged ERDC to look at the future for the opportunities it can provide and take advantage of those changes.

“What keeps us ahead of [our competitors] is that we do our research. We stay ahead of what other people are capable of doing, we partner in-house to build multi-disciplinary teams, and we create alignments with strategic partners that allow us to put together teams to do multi-disciplinary work in a way that nobody else in the world does,” Holland said.

At the presentation’s conclusion, Holland took questions from employees across ERDC’s seven laboratories via text, email and the YouTube comment section.

“This was a great opportunity for ERDC team members to connect directly with Dr. Holland, hear his thoughts about where ERDC is heading and how we can engage in the process, and for him to hear from employees – in real time – about the issues that are important to them,” said Debbie Quimby, Corporate Communications Officer. “Two-way, open communication between leadership and our workforce is crucial to the health and success of ERDC.”

This first-ever live streaming town hall was a resounding success.

“We received a lot of positive feedback about the event and how we handled the Q&A portion,” said Devin Sham, Emerging Leaders Group project lead for the State of the ERDC. “Many people are looking forward to more events like this in the future.” 

An event of this magnitude takes teamwork. Eighteen employees from the ELG, CCO, ITL, ACE-IT, and DPW worked together to make the event a success.