ARLINGTON, Va. — Lt. Gen. Robert Wilson, the Army’s assistant chief of staff for installation management was named as inaugural commander of the new Installation Management Command on Tuesday during an activation ceremony at the Pentagon.
As commander of the reorganized unit, Wilson is what the Army calls “dual-hatted,” which means he has two different sets of responsibilities.
Wilson is the boss of the new Installation Management Command and in charge of all base support services.
But he’s also the Army’s assistant chief of staff for installation management, responsible for providing garrison support for any of the Army’s mission activities, like preparing to send units to their Iraq rotations.
When wearing that second “hat,” Wilson reports directly to the Army’s chief of staff, Gen. Peter Schoomaker, according to Army officials.
Meanwhile, Brig. Gen. John A. Macdonald, the former Installation Management Agency director, is now deputy commander of the new Installation Management Command.
Under the consolidation plan, all of the organizations that provided the Army’s global base support services — the Installation Management Agency, the Community and Family Support Center and the Army Environmental Center — are collapsing into a single command, currently headquartered in Virginia and Maryland.
The headquarters will relocate in 2010 to Fort Sam Houston, Texas, to meet the requirements of the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure, or BRAC, commission, Army officials said Tuesday.
The BRAC also requires that the command consolidate the four Installation Management Agency Regions that now exist within the continental United States into two regions, officials said.
So the Army plans to establish a Western Region in November at Fort Sam Houston, with full consolidation taking place over the next few years, and an Eastern Region at Fort Eustis, Va., in 2010, officials said.
