Finally. A sliver of good news has surfaced after decades of gloom and doom about the deferred maintenance crisis plaguing many institutional and commercial facilities, from K-12 public schools to military facilities to government office buildings.
An inspector general report recently credited the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) with addressing recommendations made in a 2021 report warning of safety risks and the potential for rising costs of deferred maintenance in federal buildings it owns or leases, according to FedWeek.
In the 2021 report, the inspector general criticized the Public Buildings Service (PBS) estimates of the cost of deferred maintenance — finding they varied from well below to well above outside cost estimates — and its strategy for reducing that backlog, which grew to $1.93 billion 2019 from $1.23 billion five years earlier.
The GSA agreed with recommendations in that report to improve cost estimates, although it only partly agreed with a recommendation to place greater emphasis on immediate liabilities by prioritizing projects to reduce them.
In its follow-up report, the IG said that in reviewing steps taken, it “determined that PBS has taken appropriate corrective actions to address the recommendations. We determined that no further action is necessary.”
Dan Hounsell is senior editor for the facilities market. He has more than 30 years of experience writing about facilities maintenance, engineering and management.
