The wait is over. For 17 months, the GSA has been studying third-party green building certification systems, as required every five years by the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA). In the first such evaluation, back in 2007, the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) was selected as […]

View Larger Map Barrow, Alaska proudly names itself “The Farthest North American City” so it’s no surprise that it would also be home to the northernmost federal lease.  If you’ve ever visited Alaska you know that…

OK, so the Postal Service isn’t expanding – quite the opposite.  But, with all of the recent discussion of the decline of the U.S. Postal Service, we were intrigued by the attached, very cool, graphic illustrating…

Yesterday (Monday, July 2, 2012), the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) announced plans to open regional offices in or around Dallas, Denver, and Silicon Valley, Calif. These offices are in addition to the agency’s already…

Today we celebrate the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the birth of the United States of America. We thought it’s also worth recognizing another important birthday on this July 4th – that of Calvin Coolidge who was born July 4, 1872 and later went on to become the 30th president of our nation. Coolidge’s […]

In written testimony on March 7th before the House, Dr. Dorothy Robyn, Deputy Under Secretary of Defense, Installations and Environment, confirmed that DoD has embarked upon a formal initiative to review the Department’s anti-terrorism/force protection (ATFP) standards.  These standards prescribe minimum requirements on DoD-occupied buildings that she said add as much as 9% to the […]

“BRAC” is the abbreviation for Base Realignment and Closure.  Though, to be technically correct, it is formally used by DoD as the acronym for Base Closure and Realignment.  Either way, BRAC is the process by which the military closes bases and realigns its forces around the globe. Up until the 1970s, the decision to close […]

“With COVID–19, basically, each home has become an enterprise.” So says Mark Pringle, senior vice president in charge of corporate real estate and global facilities at Dell Technologies and one of three outside authorities called on to speak to members of the US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works on July 29, 2020. The […]

We’ve often said on this blog that you need only look at GSA’s budget as the bellwether for leasing demand. In recent years we’ve noted that budget reductions imposed by Congress have put GSA in a position where its owned inventory suffered and demand for leased space was buttressed. Despite the agency’s stated goal of […]

Thanks to extensive media coverage, both positive and negative, and to countless spy novels and movies, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is the best-known intelligence unit within the U.S. government, virtually synonymous with intelligence generally. In…

Last week, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) released the first comprehensive overview of telework practices throughout the federal government since the enactment of the Telework Enhancement Act of 2010. Titled “2012 Status of Telework in the Federal Government: Report to the Congress,” the July 6 document provides a baseline for evaluating federal telework programs. […]

Rep. John Mica wants to move the FTC into available office space at Constitution Center (pictured above) House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman John Mica’s (R-Fla.) plan to transfer the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) headquarters building to the National Gallery of Art (NGA) suffered a blow this week, when GSA Acting Administrator Dan Tangherlini sent […]

With over 1,000 leased facilities, often in single-tenant buildings, the Social Security Administration (SSA) is a staple of many federal investor portfolios. Like other federal agencies, however, SSA has been dutifully implementing the “Reduce the Footprint”…

In mid-June of this year, the US Supreme Court issued a rare unanimous decision directed at the Department of Veterans Affairs—but that may affect all federal agencies in time as they engage with private contractors for goods and services. In the case of Kingdomware Technologies, Inc., v. United States, a Maryland supplier sued in the […]