Center Operations Directorate

Joel B. Walker, Director, Center Operations Directorate

The Center Operations Directorate is responsible for ensuring the availability of facilities and services necessary for the operation of JSC. In fulfilling this role, the Directorate is responsible for providing and attending to the total requirements of the physical plant; managing the Construction of Facilities (CoF) Program; providing basic institutional services; and, to the extent appropriate, providing program support for each approved activity.

Mission

Our directorate is responsible for providing facilities, utilities, logistics, security, and environmental services necessary for the successful operation of JSC. Our goal is to make each JSC employee the most productive as possible.

Utility systems include water, gas, electric, steam, air conditioning, heat and many others. Not only do we provide services at the employee level, we are also responsible for the center-wide services as well. Take electricity for example. This means coordinating with our commercial electric provider, operating an internal substation, delivering clean power to building systems all the way down to individual outlets. Miles and miles of electrical cables, transformers, switches and breakers have to be cared for to make this possible.

Facility services includes everything from new construction of major buildings, to office modifications, to troubleshooting service outages, and maintaining and repairing all of the building equipment we have.

Logistics services include shipping and receiving, office supplies, hardware storage, flight hardware bonded storage, vehicle services, export control, bus services, delivery services and excess hardware storage and disposition. All of our property related services are also in logistics like conducting our inventories, tagging new equipment, and watching over our property in our contractors control.

Security services range from ensuring only properly badged folks enter JSC each morning to conducting investigations of missing property, operating our emergency dispatch center, watching for bad weather and issuing alerts, providing any classified services needed, and installing and maintaining all of our locks and keys.

Environmental services watches over all of the serious chemicals and products we have on site, cleans up asbestos and other hazardous spills, obtains permits and authorizations for all of our hazardous or polluting operations, and maintains our sustainability program.

Then there is the “other stuff”. Hurricanes, wild animals, threatening letters, new carpet, fire ants, sinking foundations, and reserved parking. It really is a broad range of services in this directorate. And that is one reason it’s so much fun. Every day is a new adventure with Mother Nature and Father Time. Hope we meet our goal of providing all of these services in a way that enhances your productivity while minimizing your time worrying about where that electricity really comes from.

Mailing Address:
NASA – Johnson Space Center
COD
Mailcode JA
2101 NASA Parkway
Houston, TX 77058