AGC Meets with GSA Public Buildings Service

On November 8, AGC met with Dan Mathews, the Commissioner of Public Buildings Service for the General Services Administration (GSA), to discuss the current and future role for the agency and to provide AGC guidance on improving GSA. Among the topics discussed, AGC encouraged GSA to continue to consolidate and reduce federal footprint and reduce short-term leased facilities. At the end of FY 2015, the total domestic federal inventory of office and warehouse space was 705.4 million square foot, which is a 3.4 percent reduction from the FY 2012 office and warehouse baseline. Existing policies under administrations of both parties have made incremental, but positive change that has saved taxpayer dollars. Additionally, AGC suggested ways the GSA could procure construction services like the private sector, including standardize GSA’s Construction Manager as Constructor procurement and project delivery method.

AGC urged the agency to rescind GSA’s Project Labor Agreement (PLA) preference policy that gives additional points to contractor bids that include PLA. Of the major federal construction agencies, the GSA is the only one that includes a bid preference for construction services proposals for contracts that include a project labor agreement. AGC neither supports nor opposes contractors’ voluntary use of PLAs on the Laboratory Project or elsewhere but strongly opposes any government mandates or preferences for contractors’ use of PLAs.

For more information, contact jordan.howard@agc.org or (703) 837-5368.