With the November election approaching, the topic of federal workforce reduction looms ever larger. The Republicans unveiled their Platform last Tuesday night (August 28th) and in it asserted their desire to reduce the federal payroll by 10%, to be implemented through attrition. The effort is not new, numerous Republican-sponsored bills were proposed in both the […]
Georgetown West Heating Plant (Photo: Ted Nigrelli) House Republicans once again have gone “on location” to highlight another underutilized/vacant/surplus federal property in an attempt to convince GSA to dispose of it. In yet another “Sitting on Our Assets” hearing, the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure’s Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings and Emergency Management […]
The federal government spends too much money, and it doesn’t keep tabs on what it’s spending money on. That’s the constant complaint, especially from critics in an election cycle—but it’s also a refrain that’s coming from the federal budgetary watchdog, the Government Accountability Office, with respect to the huge portfolio of properties that the government leases. […]
After a cliffhanger Senate vote on July 31, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) has its first permanent director in 7 years. B. Todd Jones, acting director since 2011, now officially heads a…
Danny Werfel, Controller of the Office of Management and Budget The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) announced today that the Obama administration is on track to meet or exceed two major real estate–related goals. In June 2010, President Obama directed agencies to eliminate billions of dollars in real estate costs by consolidating or selling […]
January 31 brought another announcement of a long-awaited federal relocation. Since 1993, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has been headquartered at Franklin Court, on 14th Street in Northwest, D.C., but come December, the independent agency…
At its monthly meeting last week, Thursday, February 2, the National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC) unanimously approved a final master plan for the proposed $300 million Intelligence Community Campus-Bethesda, a federal facility to be located on…
Hensel Phelps was recently awarded the $192 million contract to build a new data center for the U.S. Social Security Administration (SSA) in Urbana, Maryland. The data center will be constructed on a 65 acre site SSA purchased last Fall. The 400,000 square foot National Service Center will perform the primary data operations of […]
Which federal agency began moving into its current headquarters building on November 22, 1963—the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated? The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)—the national aviation authority of the United States—has the power to regulate and oversee all aspects of civil aviation. Its predecessor, the Federal Aviation Agency, was created by the Federal […]
Where would you go to see The Spirit of St. Louis, the monoplane that, in 1927, bore Charles Lindbergh on the first nonstop flight from New York to Paris? How about Tony Hawk’s skateboard, which carried him to dozens of victories, to say nothing of a substantial fortune? The skull of a harbor seal sent […]
In honor of Native American Day (a state holiday that will be observed in California and Tennessee tomorrow, September 28, and in South Dakota on October 8), we’re focusing this week on two federal agencies that serve Native Americans: the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), which is the oldest bureau in the U.S. Department of […]
Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building (photo: Bryant D., Foursquare) The Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building is a seven-story, 617,600-square-foot structure in Fort Snelling, Minnesota, near the Minneapolis–St. Paul International Airport. Designed by Cerny Associates in the austere modernist style popular in the 1960s and completed in 1969, until last summer it housed some 1,100 federal […]
The Department of Defense (DoD) published its “DoD Minimum Antiterrorism Standards for Buildings” as part of its “Unified Facilities Criteria” in October 2003. Throughout the Defense community these are often referred to as the Anti-Terrorism / Force Protection (ATFP) standards. The key feature of the ATFP standards is that they include 22 specific building and […]
A report released last Wednesday (June 20, 2012) by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) determined that the federal government lacks reliable data about some of its real estate assets, including information about the conditions of those properties, how they are being used, and how the current federal property inventory compares to what the government […]
