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 […]
This level of security is no longer required for DoD leased facilities. Every once in a while a topic comes along that I really want to write about but can’t seem to get to it. This time that topic is the Department of Defense (DoD) security standards. A big event occurred back on December 7th, […]
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…
Lately, there has been increasing buzz over “412 Authority” a little known legal right granted to GSA as part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2005, which is more formally referred to as Section 412 of P.L. No. 108-447, 118 Stat. 2809, 3259 (2004). The entire Section is just 127 words, yet it could potentially reform the […]
Last Monday (May 21, 2012), GSA awarded IBM with a contract, worth up to $11.5 million, to develop and install advanced smart building technology systems in 50 of the federal government’s highest energy-consuming buildings. Part of…
In September, the GAO issued the latest in a long series of reports concluding that GSA’s leasing strategy is flawed. This report, entitled “Greater Transparency and Strategic Focus Needed for High-Value Leases”, studied the 218 largest leases in…
