Marble steps and columns crowned in the Corinthian order, yes. Great battleship-like masses of bare concrete, no. So demands an executive order issued from the White House on December 1, 2020, shorthanded as the “beautiful buildings…
Author: Government Solutions
Cutting Leasing Expenses in a Time of COVID
“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…
A GSA Audit Faults Its Public Buildings Service for Rampant Lease Extensions
The Public Buildings Service (PBS) is the largest public real estate organization in the United States, under whose aegis more than 1.2 million federal employees are provided with workspaces. The agency, a branch of the federal…
A New GAO Report Questions GSA Savings Claims
The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) leases private property at a cost of billions of dollars—$5.7 billion annually, to be precise, spread out over more than 8,000 leases. Every year, the agency claims, it saves taxpayers…
Child Care Centers and Security Vulnerabilities
The title of a new report by the US General Services Administration (GSA), issued on January 30, 2020, speaks volumes: “Child Care Centers in GSA-Controlled Buildings Have Significant Security Vulnerabilities.” The 30-page report that follows, drawing…
The Public Buildings Reform Board Eyes Federal Properties to Sell
On December 27, 2019, the five-person Public Buildings Reform Board (PBRB) presented a report to the Office of Management and Budget that identifies a dozen federal properties that, it urges, should be sold. Guided by the…
BLM’s Proposed Reorganization Stirs Controversy
In January 2018, then–Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke announced a sweeping program to reorganize the department, the largest such reorganization since its founding in 1849. Zinke’s plan involved dividing the United States into thirteen regions,…
GAO Finds Fault with GSA’s Delegated Leasing
The federal entity principally charged with leasing property for the use of government agencies is the U.S. General Services Administration. In keeping with decentralization efforts in many areas of government, however, GSA long ago created a…
Space Force Takes Flight
On February 19, President Donald J. Trump signed an order directing the Pentagon to develop plans to establish a U.S. Space Force, with its mandate to “marshal its space resources to deter and counter threats in…
Agency Profile: The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, popularly known as BuRec, is not much heard of east of the Hundredth Meridian, but in the 16 mainland states to the west it plays a central role in managing water…