GSA Can Do More To Ensure Leased Federal Office Space Meets Its Firesafety Criteria

As of January 1980, the General Services Administration (GSA) was leasing about 66 million square feet of space in privately owned and operated buildings. Federal Property Management Regulations require GSA to provide workspace that equals the accident and fire prevention standards contained in the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970. The regulations also require that all Federal agencies be concurrently responsible with GSA for developing and maintaining a sound fire prevention program. GAO reviewed the GSA management of its firesafety program for leased space to determine if GSA: (1) was adequately administering building leases to ensure that lessors were complying with lease firesafety requirements; (2) was including all GSA firesafety standards in leases; and (3) was inspecting adequately and in a timely manner the leased space to determine its adequacy for Federal employee occupancy as far as firesafety matters were concerned.

Buildings with leased space in the three regions reviewed contained numerous firesafety deficiencies, according to GSA criteria. Some deficiencies had existed for many years. Thus, Federal employees were working in leased space that did not meet the minimum firesafety protection required by the GSA criteria, and the Government was not receiving all the firesafety features that it should have obtained. The regions were not aware that the buildings contained firesafety deficiencies. The process for evaluating firesafety conditions in leased space contained serious flaws in applying firesafety requirements, identifying and scheduling buildings for inspection, performing firesafety surveys, and reporting the results. Firesafety inspectors did not realize that they needed to apply the requirements of local codes, Schedule B of leases, and GSA national firesafety criteria or that it was necessary to cite the specific violation or violations in their reports to establish liability for corrective action.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

Director: James G. Mitchell Team: General Accounting Office: Procurement, Logistics, and Readiness Division Phone: (202) 275-4128