Rear Adm. Dean VanderLey, commander of Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command and chief of civil engineers, has outlined his four strategic priorities to strengthen the service branch’s shore infrastructure systems amid an era of strategic competition.

Speaking at a Society of American Military Engineers Capital Week event, VanderLey said his top priorities center on four key areas: partnership and governance, planning, risk allocation and affordability.

“I think one of the most important things we can do as NAVFAC and the government to ultimately produce success in projects is to really be in lockstep with our industry partners,” VanderLey said.

He also noted the importance of planning, or “getting the scope of the requirements right in the beginning,” to meet critical mission objectives.

According to VanderLey, the success or failure of most projects depends on how well the planning requirements and scope development go at the start of the process.

For his third priority, VanderLey said his team is seeking to “reap the benefits” of risk allocation through strategies such as early contractor involvement, economic price adjustments and planning and design integrations.

Moreover, VanderLey is looking to strengthen collaboration with industry to address challenges related to the affordability of projects.

“We’re really looking for engagement with industry to help us get after that affordability challenge,” he said.

The Air Force Safety Center has unveiled a new strategic plan detailing six new goals over the next three years in alignment with the Department of the Air Force’s priorities.

The first three goals as stated in the DAF Safety Strategic Plan are fully integrating risk management into all training and operations, integrating risk management into agile combat operations and evolving support to the space enterprise, the Air Force Safety Center said Monday.

Strengthening nuclear surety, optimizing analytical ecosystems and data fabric and evolving and modernizing the safety workforce are the other three goals.

“As Safety leaders, it’s our job to ensure the Safety enterprise is trained, agile, and ready to integrate new Air Force operational concepts to deter, and if needed defeat, great power competitors,” said Maj. Gen. Sean Choquette, DAF chief of safety and commander of the Air Force Safety Center.

“Safety’s job is to prepare our forces with the resources and skills to make risk-informed decisions at home or in combat,” added Choquette.

Each goal comes with specific objectives. To achieve the goal of optimizing the analytical ecosystem, objectives include identifying and developing actionable data for use in future machine learning models; developing and integrating accurate ML models to automate data quality; and providing data visualizations to present projective analytical products to commanders at all levels.