Many institutional and commercial facilities have been wrestling with the size of the facilities portfolio in recent years as the fallout from the pandemic and other factors have prompted a reassessment of the return to work effort. In the case of the federal government, the process played out in public and with daily headlines about shuttered offices and canceled leases. How has that effort actually played out in the last year?
Early in the current administration, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) directed the General Services Administration (GSA) to cancel hundreds of leases for governmentwide office space. GSA officials say they successfully terminated hundreds of leases this year but far fewer than goals set by DOGE, according to the Federal News Network.
The latest data from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) shows that GSA carried out 260 lease terminations, saving about $112 million in annual costs. GAO’s findings match data available from DOGE. Several sources, including employees at GSA’s Public Buildings Service, said that overall, the agency finalized about 30 percent of the approximately 900 lease terminations it sent to landlords earlier this year.
GSA began its mass termination of governmentwide leases in the early days of the administration. But by March, the agency began walking back hundreds of those lease terminations after officials discovered that closing these offices would impact public-facing benefits and services.
Dan Hounsell is senior editor for the facilities market. He has more than 30 years of experience writing about facilities maintenance, engineering and management.?
