S74^v
• U.S. Environmental Protection Agency	13-P-0162

|	\ Office of Inspector General	February20 2013
s
"V—'—J"
s v\|/v S
At a Glance
Why We Did This Review
We sought to determine to what
extent the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency's (EPA's)
efforts to reduce under-utilized or
unneeded property resulted in cost
savings. The February 2004
Executive Order 13327, Federal
Real Property Asset Management,
promotes efficient and economical
use of federal real property assets
and assures management
accountability for implementing
federal real property management
reforms such as the development
and implementation of agency
asset management plans. Federal
real property is defined as any real
property owned, leased, or
otherwise managed by the federal
government. The June 2010
Presidential Memorandum,
Disposing of Unneeded Federal
Real Estate, requires federal
agencies to eliminate excess
properties and lease
arrangements that are not cost
effective.
This report addresses the
following EPA Goal or
Cross-Cutting Strategy:
• Strengthening EPA's Workforce
and Capabilities
For further information, contact
our Office of Congressional and
Public Affairs at (202) 566-2391.
The full report is at:
www.epa.qov/oiq/reports/2013/
20130220-13-P-0162.pdf
EPA Can Further Reduce Space in
Under-Utilized Facilities
What We Found
Although EPA has been releasing unneeded space since 2007, it continues to
have under-utilized space. The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA)
owns or leases facilities for EPA use. At 13 of the 16 facilities reviewed, we
estimated that EPA had 433,336 square feet of under-utilized space as of
February 2012. EPA is limited in what type of space it can release back to
GSA before a lease expires. Space can only be released if it is marketable;
configuration issues and the cost to relocate employees can pose problems.
If all under-utilized space in our sample was marketable, we estimate EPA
could save up to $21.6 million annually by releasing under-utilized space.
Also, EPA does not have a policy for determining when it should be housing
contractors on-site in its facilities. Contractors occupied an estimated 197,000
square feet in the sampled facilities. We estimated that EPA spent up to
$9.9 million annually in housing contractors on-site at the sampled facilities.
EPA lacks accurate, current, and complete information on the number of
personnel and usable square feet (USF) in its Strategic Lease and Asset
Tracking Enterprise (SLATE) system for its GSA-owned/leased offices. As of
April 2012, SLATE had incorrect personnel information for 13 of the 16
facilities sampled (81 percent), and 5 of 16 facilities sampled (31 percent) had
incorrect information on USF. SLATE recorded a net 548 more personnel than
what EPA facility managers had provided for the sampled facilities and a net
235,918 less USF than the sampled facilities had. Additionally, the entire USF
of 325,128 for the Region 5 Ralph H. Metcalfe building was not reported in
SLATE. This occurred because updates to SLATE are sporadic and
inconsistent. Inaccurate data in SLATE hamper EPA's ability to make
informed decisions about managing its facilities.
Recommendations and Planned Agency Corrective Actions
We recommend that the Assistant Administrator for Administration and
Resources Management assess utilization of space and relocate staff where
warranted. We also recommend that the Assistant Administrator develop and
enforce a policy that requires contracting staff ensure that approval for
on-site contractor performance is obtained from the responsible office, and
require that personnel information for each facility be consistently tracked and
updated in the appropriate EPA systems. The Agency concurred with all of the
recommendations and proposed revised language, which we incorporated
where appropriate.
Noteworthy Achievements
Since fiscal year 2007, EPA has saved nearly $12.9 million by reducing space
and plans to save an additional $1.8 million by fiscal year 2014, for a total of
$14.7 million in savings.

-------