GSA sets 80% occupancy target for federal buildings in push to cut office space

Trump administration officials are setting a higher minimum occupancy standard for federal buildings, as part of a governmentwide push to bring employees back to the office full time.

The General Services Administration, the federal government’s landlord, is planning to deploy new tools to ensure agencies make full use of their buildings. If not, GSA is planning to make the underutilized office space available to other agencies or sell it.

Michael Peters, the commissioner of GSA’s Public Buildings Service, told employees in a town hall meeting earlier this month that the agency is setting an 80% utilization goal for federal buildings.

“One of the best ways to measure the efficiency of what we’re providing is the occupancy of our facilities. Just one problem with that: I could do a survey of all of us and say, ‘Well, what’s the occupancy of our buildings right now?’ My guess is I’d get a couple hundred different answers, because we have no idea,” Peters said on April 3.

Federal News Network obtained a recording of the PBS town hall. GSA held an agencywide town hall on March 20. 

“We literally don’t know how many people are in our buildings,” Peters added. We kind of have an idea of how many people are in this building, which is good. But we should know it for every one of the facilities that we own or lease, because that’s a fundamental metric.”

The Office of Management and Budget estimated in August 2024 that telework-eligible employees were working in the office about 60% of the time. OMB determined that about half federal workforce is not telework-eligible and works onsite full-time.

But Peters said many agencies, including GSA, do not have accurate numbers on how full offices are on any given day.

“We do know that number is sub-optimal,” he said. “Whether it’s 50% or 60% or 40%, it’s definitely not the 80% level that we want to get to.”

Tracking federal office space occupancy

Dan Mathews, a member of the Public Buildings Reform Board and a former PBS commissioner under the first Trump administration, said some headquarters buildings in the D.C. metro area have basic occupancy data, based on employees swiping their ID badges at security checkpoints.

“Once you get outside of D.C., very, very rarely is there any data at all. Step one of implementing a plan is actually collecting data. There are different ways you can collect that data. None of them are perfect, but some are better than others,” Mathews said.

David Winstead, former PBS commissioner under the Clinton administration and another PBRB member, said this data will help agencies understand where space is available, as the Trump administration plans to relocate federal employees and offices 

“It’s much easier to match them to those buildings that have been better maintained by GSA through congressional appropriations. And so that data can really help,” Winstead said. “It’s going to help very much to argue that that’s the correct move for the federal taxpayers, moving that agency or moving that division to that building and utilizing available space at a lower cost.”

Former President Joe Biden signed the Utilizing Space Efficiently and Improving Technologies (USE IT) Act in his final weeks in office, requiring GSA and the OMB to reduce or consolidate space if federal building utilization rates fall below 60%.

GSA, as required under the USE IT Act, recently updated its website with a list of tools agencies can use to capture occupancy data.

Peters said GSA is working on tools to get occupancy data across the federal government on a “real-time basis.”

“Part of that will be taking basically the daily check-in that we use at GSA, and sharing that with other agencies, so they’ll be able to deploy that,” he said.

GSA will use laptop data to be able to assess how many employees are in a building. Peters said this data will give agencies clarity about their office space needs amid major reductions to the federal workforce.

“It’s particularly important that we get that data right now, because the number is moving,” Peters said. “It’s very much a moving target. We need real-time, day-to-day data on that front to improve our efficiency.”

Federal buildings, he added, were “below optimal occupancy” before the COVID-19 pandemic, and stood “close to empty” at the height of the pandemic.

In March, GSA launched a program called Space Match that connects agencies in need of more office space with agencies that have extra seats available.

“We’re moving in the right direction, and in the next couple of months, we should have very good, real-time data to help us assess where do we have excess space,” Peters said. And if we do have excess space, should we dispose of that space, or should we make it available on something like Space Match and let other agency partners come and deploy there?”

GSA’s website mentions using badge swipes as one way to measure building occupancy, but Mathews said it’s not the most efficient way to gather that data.

“Those systems are designed for security, not for utilization. It’s really expensive, so you can’t deploy it at scale. That’s just not a possibility. You won’t be able to do it,” he said.

However, GSA is also considering using occupancy sensors, which it describes as specialized “people counters.” Mathews said these tools are purpose-built to track building occupancy.

“They know what part of the buildings are being used, and why,” he said. “They can figure out this part of the building, hardly anyone’s using it. Why is that? Is it a configuration issue? Is it a heating/cooling issue? An operating issue?”

‘We don’t need to own office buildings’

Meanwhile, GSA is also cancelling hundreds of leases and drawing up a new list of federal office buildings marked for expedited sale and disposal.

Deputy PBS Commissioner Andrew Heller said GSA issued about 650 terminated notices for leases up for renewal, eliminating nearly 8 million square feet of office space and saving nearly $220 million in annual rent payments.

Federal News Network first reported that GSA and the Department of Government Efficiency originally sought to terminate 1,000 leases, but walked back the termination of several hundred leases.

“As we engage with our customers on this opportunity for savings, it’s likely that some of those notices may get pulled back as we learn about customer needs and other opportunities in the market,” Heller said.

GSA expects to conduct five other rounds of mass lease reductions later this year.

In March, GSA added the headquarters of more than a dozen agencies to a list of 440 “non-core” federal buildings marked for possible sale or disposal.

GSA quickly deleted the list but recently posted a new list with about two dozen federal properties marked for “accelerated disposition.” Heller said GSA will make “weekly announcements” and add more buildings to the disposal list.

Peters said the agency will generally keep specialized buildings — including courthouses, land ports of entry, law enforcement facilities and certain laboratories.

“Core means we’re going to retain it for the long term. We’re going to invest in it. We’re going to drive our limited capital dollars to those assets,” Peters said.

GSA is looking to move away from owning office buildings. Instead, it will shift federal employees to working from leased space.

“We don’t need to own office buildings. We need the flexibility of leasing, which allows us to upsize or downsize as needed, depending on space requirements. It lets us move more easily,” Peters said. They can take care of the building, where we historically haven’t had the resources to do so.”

Peters said the agency faces a multibillion-dollar maintenance backlog and can’t afford to address “substantial leaks” or “unsafe conditions.”

“A lot of our buildings are really in very, very poor shape. They are not the type of space you would want to occupy or be in,” he said.

$24B maintenance backlog ‘getting worse’

GSA Administrator Stephen Ehikian said the federal real estate portfolio faces a $24 billion backlog in deferred liabilities and “is getting worse.”

“Instead of hoping that we get more money from Congress — hope is not a strategy — I think this is us thinking differently of how to reduce these liabilities on our balance sheet,” Ehikian said.

GSA is setting an example for other agencies and is planning to sell its own 1800 F St. headquarters. No decision has been finalized yet, but Federal News Network first reported that GSA leaders are planning to move into the Interior Department headquarters.

Peters said GSA headquarters needs renovations, and that $250-$300 million of repairs are needed to fully utilize the building.

“Congress isn’t going to provide those funds to us, so we needed a different solution to it. We’ve got to come up with a different strategy. It’s not a PBS failing. We just haven’t been given the resources to address the problem,” he said.

As GSA cuts leased and owned buildings from its portfolio, Peters said it will encourage more agencies to share office space — including agencies that work with classified and sensitive data.

“If there are two agencies that have very low utilization of [Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility] space, they should be able to share that,” Peters said.

The Government Accountability Office added federal real property management to its High-Risk List in 2003. The Obama administration mandated a freeze and reduction of government real estate.

But the issue received increased scrutiny in July 2023, after GAO found that all 24 agency headquarters buildings it studied had excess office space, and that 17 of them had a utilization rate of 25% or less.

“This isn’t going to solve the government’s deficit problem. But there’s still a lot of money at stake here, and I think why it resonates with the political leadership  — because it’s just such an obvious area to fix, and it’s so simple for people to understand. Why are we paying for empty buildings? Why would we do that? It doesn’t make any sense. It’s not that hard to fix it,” Mathews said.

Winstead said the board is in “very active and close coordination” with GSA and OMB on underutilized office space.

“I think the commissioner’s staff sees our data as complementary of what they’re doing,” he said. “We’re coordinating weekly with them, sharing our analysis of all these buildings.”

The Public Buildings Service is setting these ambitious goals, despite major cuts to its workforce. PBS is looking to cut 63% of its total workforce and has laid off entire regional offices.

“There’s no sugarcoating it. This has been a very difficult time. I take no pleasure in it.  The reductions that we’ve had to make, I think they are essential for the fiscal future of this country,” Peters said. “It doesn’t mean any of the individuals impacted deserved what happened to them. Notwithstanding that, you all have done an amazing job pulling together, continuing to work toward the objectives.”

Peters told employees it’s not clear if PBS will need to go through more staffing cuts. He said the decision depends on how many PBS employees sign up for separation incentives — including another chance to apply for deferred resignation, Voluntary Early Retirement Authority (VERA) and Voluntary Separation Incentive Payments (VSIP).

“As we go through that and assess what additional resignations we have from the DRP and VERA and VSIP, we’ll be making an assessment of what resources we need under the new structure, and then what resources are available. So I’d say that’s to-be-determined at this point in time,” Peters said. “There’s nothing planned at the moment. But I’m also not saying it’s not possible.”

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