Earlier this year, Maytag successfully bid on and was awarded two separate contracts for the maintenance and management of fuel facilities for the Navy and the Army. The contracts were bid under a joint venture with Tetra Tech.  These contracts expand on three other contracts Maytag already has with the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), the largest of the Department of Defenses’ logistics combat support agencies.

This takes the number of fuel facilities on which the JV conducts fuels maintenance to 160 military installations, and the contracts greatly expand Maytag’s maintenance capability, said David Nelson, President and COO for Maytag.

“We’ve always been an O&M [Operations & Maintenance] contractor but historically most of our background has been on the operations side, with maintenance being a growing area of expertise over the past ten years,” Nelson said. With these new contracts, however, “this is full-on maintenance and it's pretty substantial in terms of expanding our capability in major repairs,” he said.

The facilities range from the very small variety, similar in size to a gas station with a couple of pumps, to the very large fuel facilities – like Point Loma in San Diego - where major port operations are underway, offloading ships and barges. The locations of the facilities are as far south as Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and as far north as Thule Air Base, north of the Arctic Circle.

Within the wide range of facilities, there are three categories of maintenance: recurring maintenance, minor repairs, and major repairs. The JV is responsible for all of the recurring maintenance repairs as well as minor & major repairs, however some of the major repairs are outsourced to companies specializing in a specific task, he said.

The award of these contracts means that there has been an uptick in the demand for hiring fuels distribution system mechanics (FDSMs), a specialized field, and Nelson says that they’ve been very successful in getting talented FDSMs in place to support the new operations.