Institutional and commercial facilities of all types have had to reassess their operations since the 2020 pandemic as telework remains popular and many facilities remain unused or underused. One of the nation’s largest landlords — the General Services Administration — has taken action in response to this shift in workforce deployment.
The General Services Administration (GSA) recently announced that it has begun to reduce the federal government’s physical footprint by 1.5 million square feet by disposing of properties across eight states, according to Government Executive.
GSA, which handles much of the federal government’s space utilization and building maintenance functions, has been working to reduce agencies’ physical footprint in recent years, following the spike in telework use across government after the pandemic outbreak in 2020.
The offloading of the eight facilities, which could be transferred, exchanged or sold to a federal, state or local government organization or the private sector as part of the disposition process, would amount to an estimated $475 million in cost savings over the next decade.
Though agencies have since pulled back from the maximum telework posture amid the peak of the pandemic, most still operate under a hybrid work environment for the roughly one-half of the federal workforce whose work is portable enough to allow for the workplace flexibility.
Dan Hounsell is senior editor for the facilities market. He has more than 30 years of experience writing about facilities maintenance, engineering and management.
