As the federal government downsizes its workforce and real estate portfolio, its top priority is gaining an understanding of its inventory and being able to consistently classify and compare facilities, according to vendors and service providers serving the federal government.
“Being able to compare facilities and then compare those that are more essential to your mission allows customers to really focus on what’s important to them,” said Michael Nichols, executive vice president of enterprise products and solutions at R&K Solutions. The firm provides real estate services to government clients, including the U.S. General Services Administration and the Office of the Secretary of Defense among federal agencies.
Even though the federal government is downsizing its workforce, getting those who remain back to the office is another priority, Chris Barns, vice president of real property consulting services at R&K Solutions, told Facilities Dive. “It’s kind of counterintuitive,” he said. “You’ve got people that are coming back from working at home, trying to find a space to work in, and you’re also trying to limit the office space that you have in general.”
Tackling that challenge comes down to identifying the inventory agencies have, what condition they are in and what they need to focus on to get their facilities up to the standard they want it to be, Barns said.
“On our federal side, it's kind of a little bit easier for us to do that,” he said. “We have mandates. We have executive orders. We have all of the requirements that are pushed down from the [Department of Defense], from [General Services Administration] that really dictate what needs to occur.”
Nina Farrell, recently appointed executive director within the government and education division of JLL Work Dynamics, says that all recommendations the firm puts forward need to be based on solid financial and mission objectives of federal clients.
“Many of our clients today are asking where the low hanging fruit is to start getting more efficient in their portfolios,” Farrell said in an interview. “Some of that’s out of necessity and some of that is out of interest in modernizing and meeting the end users of today, who are shifting demographics as well.”
For example, when a Gen Z person comes into the office space, “What they want to get out of it is very different from the Baby Boomer generation,” Farrel said. “So we are trying to take some of those shifts, and what we’ve always known is good business sense, and we are using technology pretty heavily in our portfolio analysis to help apply real time scenarios so our government clients can more efficiently use their space.”
A lot of decisions come down to data outside of occupancy rates, like how space is being used, Nichols said. For example, what type of space it is and how you are paying to get it cleaned. “It’s relevant to the classification of the space, how it’s going to be used, or how I may change its use,” he said.
Maintenance is another critical component. “If I have an HVAC system that’s exceeded its expected useful life, or I have a roof that’s past its replacement date … I can consolidate that with my facility condition assessment data,” Barns said. “That gives you more capability to paint a picture on why we need to focus funding on this facility rather than this [other] facility.”
To obtain the information each agency needs to make decisions, the federal government continues to provide FedRAMP authorization for vendors that provide real estate space and utilization data, like FM:Systems and Eptura. The FedRAMP authorization standardizes risk assessments so federal agencies can adopt technology quickly, according to GSA.
