GSA Could Do More To Improve Energy Conservation in New Federal Buildings

GAO reviewed the General Services Administration's (GSA) ability to reduce energy consumption in newly designed federal buildings to meet the standards specified in Executive Order 12003.

Ineffective communications concerning energy conservation requirements between the GSA Central Office, its regional offices, and architect-engineer (A/E) firms is one reason the firms are submitting unsatisfactory designs. The condition exists even though GSA has issued guidelines and criteria for its energy conservation requirements and offers any assistance necessary to help A/E firms achieve the building energy usage goals. The Norris Cotton Federal Building is the GSA energy conservation demonstration project. The successes, failures, and problems experienced in this building are not made known by GSA to others for consideration in designing new federal buildings. Other factors which contribute to unsatisfactory designs and which need to be improved are: (1) the regional offices' not having adequate knowledge of energy conservation technology to ensure that design submissions comply with GSA requirements; (2) the central office's having no assurance that problems identified will be solved because the regions are not required to implement the corrective actions; (3) the failure to conduct all planned post-occupancy evaluations; (4) a delay in completing the instructions implementing the revised management for processing designs; and (5) the lack of a standard for evaluating energy conservation expertise when selecting A/E firms.

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) 275-8678