What should organizations do with aging facilities? The post-pandemic era is presenting a growing number of building owners and managers with a difficult decision: Is it best to continue maintaining underused or unused facilities, or is the smart decision to sell or demolish the facility?
While many organizations face this question, few if any face it on the scale of the federal government, which is saddled with hundreds of buildings in the crosshairs.
The Biden administration recently said federal agencies are getting rid of office space they no longer need and will shed millions of square feet in the coming years, since many federal employees are on a hybrid schedule of in-office and work-from-home days, according to the Federal News Network.
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB), in a sweeping report, said telework-eligible federal employees are working in their offices about 60 percent of the time. That hybrid schedule allows agencies to reevaluate their office space needs and shed excess leased and government-owned real estate.
OMB requested the 24 largest federal agencies provide an update on efforts to reduce their office space portfolio. In 2023, federal building utilization rates in the Washington, D.C., metro area remained about 30percent lower than pre-pandemic rates, by some estimates.
Agencies are proposing different timelines for real estate disposal and vary on how much office space they’re willing to give up. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, as an extreme example, plans to eliminate up to 60 percent of its total office space footprint by 2038. The U.S. Department of Energy, meanwhile, outlined plans to offload more office building space than any other agency. The department told OMB it plans to dispose of 3 million square feet of building space through 2027.
Dan Hounsell is senior editor for the facilities market. He has more than 30 years of experience writing about facilities maintenance, engineering and management.
