What is the FEST-M?
The 579th Engineer Detachment (Forward Engineer Support Team - Main) provides technical engineer planning and design, contract construction, environmental and geospatial engineering support and real estate acquisition and disposal. They also provide command and control of U.S. Army Corps of Engineer (USACE) operations and sub-field elements in theater in support of full-spectrum operations.

Background
This FEST-M is one of the largest of the six Field Force Engineering teams in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The team of 36 Soldiers and Civilians has design capabilities from various disciplines to include electrical, mechanical, civil, and environmental engineers; and logistical, contracting and resource management. In short, it can be described as a mini-district that can be augmented with structural, environmental and other engineering skills depending on the mission.

Equipped with reachback communication capabilities, known as TeleEngineering, the FEST-M is able to bring specialized data, research, and expertise from USACE research centers, engineers, and laboratories to deployed areas of operation.

This team is assigned to an engineer command or senior military command in the area of operation and provides command and control of all USACE teams assigned to the location.

Capabilities
The FEST-M is a flexible team capable of rapidly deploying into military contingencies and disaster relief operations. Support to these missions includes, but is not limited to:

  •  Providing infrastructure engineering planning and design to construct base camps and facilities
  •  Coordinating technical engineering reachback through Internet protocol router networks
  •  Managing deployed USACE elements and engineering communications equipment
  •  Supervising all contract construction for American military forces
  •  Organizing all requests for environmental baseline surveys
  •  Giving geospatial engineering support
  •  Contracting services and support