Aging or underused institutional and commercial buildings present owners and facility managers with a difficult dilemma: Continue paying to maintain and renovate problematic buildings or to sell or demolish them to avoid the ongoing costs and minimize the organization’s footprint. The COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on the number of workers returning to their workplaces has made this decision even more challenging. The federal government is facing perhaps the largest such problem among all facilities markets.
The Biden administration recently pledged to ramp up its efforts to unload underused federal buildings as agency employees spend less time in their offices, according to Government Executive. The current underuse of federal buildings is concerning, says the federal government’s top real estate official, who adds that the administration is working to optimize the portfolio. The Government Accountability Office last year found a majority of agencies maintained headquarters buildings that were filled to just 25 percent of their capacities or less.
The General Services Administration (GSA), which manages federal real estate, is working with agencies to provide new solutions such as coworking spaces, private-public partnerships and utilization reviews, says Elliot Doomes, public buildings service commissioner.
The government has shed 8 million square feet of real estate over the last four years, but that represents a small fraction of the hundreds of millions of square feet GSA manages. The agency has missed out on 120 missed consolidation opportunities in recent years due to underfunding, Doomes says.
Dan Hounsell is senior editor for the facilities market. He has more than 30 years of experience writing about facilities maintenance, engineering and management.
