General Accounting Office Headquarters
Washington D.C.

The headquarters GAO office building, at 2.1 million square feet, is one of the largest buildings in the U.S. Government's inventory, and one of the largest structures in the Washington metropolitan area. In addition to the difficulty of maintaining and tracking performance of building "systems" in such a large structure, the GAO constantly shuffles staff in order to create special investigative units and study teams. Historically, "space and personnel planning" area officers, located on each floor of the building, used hard copy as-built drawings and pencil and paper to track, identify, and plan personnel moves. The Louis Berger Group (Berger), using an off-the-shelf software computer aided facility management (CAFM) program, developed a user-friendly "click and drag" function that allows for personnel (and associated asset) movement between, and within floors. Based upon the success of the space planning function, GAO requested that Berger implement additional "asset management" modules of the CAFM system. As part of the CAFM implementation, Berger developed a furniture inventory tracking system utilizing Herman Miller intelligent furniture blocks for asset accountability and tracking.

After several months of utilizing the space, personnel, and asset planning modules developed by The Louis Berger Group, GAO requested that the program be expanded to include operation & maintenance (O&M) modules, and custodial tracking modules. The O&M CAFM module developed by Berger for GAO provides graphic data for major mechanical, electrical, and plumbing equipment located within the facility. Within the next year, the O&M CAFM module will be linked to the existing computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) currently used by GAO. The linkage of the two systems will result in an integrated preventive maintenance scheduling and work order system with graphic linkages.

GAO outsources custodial services for the headquarters building. In order to assist the GAO in negotiating with custodial service providers, the GAO requested that Berger develop a CAFM module that identifies quantities of types of surfaces and rooms to be cleaned and maintained, coupled with standard rates for various types of custodial services. The CAFM module developed by Berger allows the user to change the frequency and type of custodial services in order to rapidly identify potential costs and savings, and for use during negotiations with custodial service providers.

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