“This is a great and challenging time for us,” said Bruce Ware, PE for the USACE, who cited that the USACE has awarded some 124 recovery-funded projects already. And, it has another 300-plus solicitations currently posted.Thanks to a financial surge brought on by the stimulus funds, the USACE has a $43.3 billion budget at its disposal for FY2009 -- $27.7 billion for military projects and facility management and $15.6 billion for civil projects.
General Services Administration
The GSA is enjoying a similar influx of funds. With oversight of facilities for 400 federal agencies, 8,600 owned or leased assets, and 353.9 million square feet of rentable space that can house more than 1 million tenants, the GSA is truly the landlord of the federal government.Each year, the GSA takes in $8 billion in rental revenue, and it has $900 million in new starts annually. The $5.5 billion in ARRA funds “is on top of our normal workload,” said Dean Smith, regional recovery executive for GSA’s public building service for the national capital region. The majority of it, $4.5 billion, has been earmarked to retrofit existing government buildings into high-performing green buildings, he said. That includes renewable energy (photovoltaic and wind energy), green roofing, windows, lighting, high-performance building systems and advanced metering.
Department of Transportation
With $48 billion in ARRA funds dedicated entirely to transportation capital improvement projects, the Department of Transportation is well on its way to improving the nation’s infrastructure. The largest portion of its funds will go to highway projects. The rest is earmarked for facilities and rolling stock, fleet expansion, preventative maintenance, engineering and design, mobility management, crime prevention and security, facility and equipment leasing, and ADA paratransit. “These are prudent investments that will generate jobs,” said Mary Martha Churchman, senior policy advisor for the FTA.
Accountability
Stewardship over so much money brings a certain amount of accountability and government-mandated transparency. For the Corps of Engineers, “We’re reporting … on a weekly basis as to how the expenditures are going,” Ware said. “It’s a lot of work coming really fast for us.”“GAO is really watching for signs of waste, fraud and abuse.… You can expect the usual eagle eye to be sharper than ever,” Churchman said. “Under the Recovery Act, even governmental entities that are recipients or sub-recipients and their contractors have to be registered with the [Central Contractor Registration] list in order to fulfill some of the reporting requirements.” This is usually only required for entities doing direct business with the federal government, but ARRA has expanded the requirement.
For more information about government contracting opportunities, visit the federal government’s Federal Biz Opps website at www.fbo.gov.
For more on what the speakers had to say, read the upcoming August 2009 issue of Construction Project Controls & BIM Report.
Please, free feel to comment below.
Lanna C. Broyles, Editor
I sincerely hope the comments about accountability are true. I have long advocated interim project reviews to look at things like project organization, project delivery method, project controls (especially the team's ability to accurately forecast costs to complete), and recommendations to assist the team to bring the project on time and within budget. The problem with these type of reviews is they take highly skilled people with backgrounds in estimating, scheduling, contracts, project controls, project management, quality control, and project closeout.