diff --git a/runscripts/container/build-runtime.sh b/runscripts/container/build-runtime.sh
index 7da3c9649..608055c8b 100755
--- a/runscripts/container/build-runtime.sh
+++ b/runscripts/container/build-runtime.sh
@@ -36,8 +36,13 @@ if [ "$RUN_LOCAL" = true ]; then
     echo "=== Locally building WCM runtime Docker Image: ${RUNTIME_IMAGE} ==="
     docker build -f runscripts/container/runtime/Dockerfile -t "${WCM_RUNTIME}" .
 else
-    PROJECT="$(gcloud config get-value core/project)"
-    REGION=$(gcloud config get compute/region)
+    PROJECT=$(curl -H "Metadata-Flavor: Google" \
+      "http://metadata.google.internal/computeMetadata/v1/project/project-id" |
+      cut '-d/' -f4)
+    REGION=$(curl -H "Metadata-Flavor: Google" \
+      "http://metadata.google.internal/computeMetadata/v1/instance/zone" |
+      awk -F'/' '{print $NF}' | 
+      sed 's/-[a-z]$//')
     TAG="${REGION}-docker.pkg.dev/${PROJECT}/vecoli/${RUNTIME_IMAGE}"
     echo "=== Cloud-building WCM runtime Docker Image: ${TAG} ==="
     echo $TAG
diff --git a/runscripts/container/build-wcm.sh b/runscripts/container/build-wcm.sh
index 961aba9e3..48da9133a 100755
--- a/runscripts/container/build-wcm.sh
+++ b/runscripts/container/build-wcm.sh
@@ -50,8 +50,10 @@ if [ "$RUN_LOCAL" = true ]; then
 else
     echo "=== Cloud-building WCM code Docker Image ${WCM_IMAGE} on ${RUNTIME_IMAGE} ==="
     echo "=== git hash ${GIT_HASH}, git branch ${GIT_BRANCH} ==="
-    PROJECT_ID=$(gcloud config get project)
-    REGION=$(gcloud config get compute/region)
+    REGION=$(curl -H "Metadata-Flavor: Google" \
+      "http://metadata.google.internal/computeMetadata/v1/instance/zone" |
+      awk -F'/' '{print $NF}' | 
+      sed 's/-[a-z]$//')
     # This needs a config file to identify the project files to upload and the
     # Dockerfile to run.
     gcloud builds submit --timeout=15m --config runscripts/container/cloud_build.json \