What Are Federal Facilities Executives Doing To Hit The 30% Plus Reduction?

On Tuesday, March 16th Centennial representatives including myself attended the National Academies Of Science, Board on Infrastructure and the Constructed Environment. This session was part of the Federal Facilities Council focused on Workforce and Management Practices. The lead presentation was given by Mr. Brian Costlow, director of the Office of Administration at the U.S. Department of Energy, on the topics of federal facilities management, customer service, and staff retention.

The presentation was very interesting and covered a lot of points on looking at building your support teams and what it takes to hire, retain and build a world class team. During his presentation a few interesting points beyond just staff development popped out:

At the Department of Energy alone there is a need to provide space for almost 2,500 new employees coming in as part of the ARRA funding efforts. These are three-year positions and as such not long term employees to the DoE. His challenge is the fact that they must utilize the existing space they have in DC today and cannot add new leased space. This spike in people has created the opportunity to think differently about the space and about how people do their jobs. They are looking at “hot seating” shared space/cubes and working from home via the internet. They are setting up cubical banks, shared conference rooms, etc. and basically people are “hoteling” where they work.

Executive Order 13423 requires all federal agencies to reduce greenhouse gases through a reduction in energy intensity at all federal facilities by 30% by the end of fiscal year 2015. Federal agencies must ensure that at least half of renewable energy comes from new renewable sources and agencies must reduce water consumption by 2% annually through fiscal year 2015. Costlow stated that this date will be here very quickly; the Department of Energy has done all the low hanging fruit efforts in the past, like replacing the lighting systems with florescent set ups and moving to Energy Star equipment; and the next stages will require more creativity, thinking and development. His goal is to surpass the 30% and shoot for a higher number.

What hit me was the need for increased creativity, flexibility and speed of change. When looking at construction methods to support these rapid changes and renovation efforts its clear that the traditional contracting methods of design-bid-build do not allow for the necessary two-way communication, sharing, collaboration to come up with the best solutions. Methods like Design-Build and Job Order Contracting are exactly what are needed at this time to help with these challenges.

While sitting at the table with the Department of the Army, the Air Force, NASA, Department of Energy, District of Columbia Capital Planning Commission and DC Government, I wondered how they can accomplish all these goals, plus deal with human resource issues, marketplace demands and economic issues? They will need different tools in their toolboxes – including a key collaboration tool, Job Order Contracting and a trusted advisor who understands how to help them succeed.