NAVFAC Pacific Highlights Faster Project Delivery at SAME Pacific Industry Forum
HONOLULU — Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command (NAVFAC) Pacific leaders joined military, government, industry, and international partners at the 2026 Society of American Military Engineers (SAME) Pacific Industry Forum (PIF) on Sept. 16 to discuss how earlier collaboration, modernized acquisition methods, and integrated project delivery can accelerate infrastructure execution across the Pacific.
Rear Adm. Omarr Tobias, commander, NAVFAC Pacific and U.S. Pacific Fleet civil engineer, delivered the forum’s keynote address. He said the Department of the Navy (DoN) must move away from traditional, sequential construction processes that delay decision-making and limit its ability to deliver relevant capabilities within mission timelines.
“If we’re going to build at the tempo that the Pacific demands, we can’t keep doing business the old way, using the traditional defense construction playbook,” Tobias said. “We cannot rely on the old seven-to-10-year construction timeline anymore.”
Tobias said NAVFAC Pacific is pursuing an integrated, portfolio-based delivery model that makes decisions earlier, manages risk transparently and shares accountability for execution among government and industry partners. Rather than treating individual projects as separate transactions, he said the command must manage the region’s infrastructure requirements as a connected portfolio competing for the same workforce, materials, shipping capacity, design resources and contracting capacity.
“We are driving an aggressive transformation and an overhaul of how we do business so that we can better manage risk and build our nation’s infrastructure at the speed of relevance,” Tobias said. “Disciplined speed includes the ability to make sound decisions earlier, manage risk openly and deliver relevant capabilities before the requirement changes.”
Evan Mizue, engineering and design director for NAVFAC Pacific’s Planning, Design and Construction Directorate, participated in the forum’s acquisition innovation panel. Mizue said the discussion focused on innovative acquisition and the changes NAVFAC and industry will need to make as the DoN uses different approaches to contracting and project delivery.
“The panel I participated in discussed innovative acquisition,” Mizue said. “In the future, we will conduct a significant amount of contracting and acquisition differently than we have in the past. As we make that transition, industry engagement, receiving feedback, and ensuring alignment with our partners in the industrial base will be extremely important. We will not succeed unless we remain aligned with industry.”
Tobias said the command’s goal is to create a delivery ecosystem in which industry can influence requirements early, architects and engineers can address constructability and supply-chain realities during design, and project teams can make timely decisions throughout execution. He said tools such as other transaction authorities, consortiums, progressive design-build and accelerated design-build can help bring key decisions forward and keep projects moving.
“To our military and government leaders, we need to back up industry’s agility with our own,” Tobias said. “Empower your project managers and field engineers to make smart, timely calls on the ground and keep projects moving forward.”
The 2026 SAME PIF was held at the Hilton Hawaiian Village in Honolulu, Hawaii.
The mission of NAVFAC Pacific is to plan, design, build, and deliver resilient facilities infrastructure and to expertly deliver construction, engineering, and contracting services to our supported commanders.
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