The Department of Energy works in a 1.8 billion square foot building that currently uses about 6,000 BTUs of energy per square foot above the industry average, GSA acting administrator Tangherlini lamented in a recent speech.
He was speaking about GSA plans to develop an area in Washington, D.C. near L’Enfant Plaza known as Federal Triangle South where many federal agencies and departments are located and that’s likely to mean workspace changes for thousands of federal employees. Tangherlini noted the irony of a wasteful Energy building but suggested the offices of many departments and agencies similarly need to be upgraded.
Many of the spaces in DC are attractive but expensive to heat and cool and aren’t well suited to current and future work practices, he said. Energy, for example, is wasting enough juice to power 300 average sized homes for an entire year and its offices have an architectural feature that complicates safeguarding the property.
Tighter budgets means savings must be found everywhere, and for many agencies, this means taking a look at their space and re-evaluating just how much of it they actually need, Tangherlini said.
He said outdated spaces crammed with cubicles need to give way to shared spaces that can accommodate the need for a collaborative, flexible work environment that facilitates cooperation, mobility, and improved productivity.
GSA has inefficient buildings as well – about 40 percent of staff don’t even use an office at its headquarters on any given day because they are out meeting with customers or teleworking – but it wants to use a separate property as a model for the changes it would like to see throughout the Federal Triangle.
GSA expects to see utilization rates of the offices in that building increase from rates of below 50 percent to as high as 80.
