HHS Facilities Management Program Assessment

Background:
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Office of the Inspector General (OIG) is responsible for promoting efficiency and effectiveness through the elimination of waste, abuse, and fraud by conducting audits, investigations, and evaluations of HHS programs. Within OIG, the Office of Management and Policy (OMP) is responsible for providing facilities management services to the other OIG components, including identifying space projects, coordinating projects within OIG and with the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA), developing space requirements, providing funding, tracking project status, maintaining space and project data, and other support activities.  OMP provides these services for OIG’s national inventory of space, which includes its headquarters in Washington, D.C., eight regional offices, and 78 field offices throughout the country.  In 2007, Fentress began working with HHS-OIG to assess its facilities management program, including the areas of organizational structure, staffing, project delivery, budgeting, space standards, and information technology.  In particular, HHS-OIG required a comprehensive facilities management plan that would define effective procedures for identifying and prioritizing facility needs to support its annual requests for funding.

Project Summary:
In conducting the assessment of HHS-OIG’s facilities management program, Fentress facilitated interview sessions with key personnel within the organization to document current practices. Using our knowledge of real property programs and input from the study interviews, Fentress developed a comprehensive set of recommendations to improve facilities management practices, which were published in a two-volume report.  The report included a description of current operations, 38 recommendations for program improvement, and an implementation plan.  Following the completion of the reports, Fentress assisted HHS-OIG in implementing the recommendations, including:

• • Designing a brochure to assist with communicating both the HHS-OIG's facilities management services and the milestones within the project delivery process

• • Developing a demonstration model of a web-based project database

• • Developing a facility assessment process for HHS-OIG

• • Producing an assessment checklist, along with factors and performance measures to score and prioritize projects in federal office and private-lease facilities

• • Developing a space calculation tool to produce draft operational requirements

• • Conducting pilot facility assessments in 13 HHS-OIG offices

Results:
Fentress is presently working on a long-term effort with HHS-OIG to complete facility assessments in the remainder of its regional and field offices throughout the country.  Using the results of these assessments, along with many of the tools described above, Fentress is producing a facility project prioritization method that scores each project according to its urgency and identifies the associated costs.  The scored projects will be used to develop a prioritized, five-year national asset management plan to support HHS-OIG in formulating its annual budget requests. 

The services provided by Fentress will continue to benefit OMP as it expands and develops its facility management program.  This support will ensure that HHS-OIG is more efficient in providing facility services to the regions and field offices while also managing its budget and planning for the future.  Fentress' project scoring and prioritization methodology will also ensure that HHS-OIG focuses on improving its facilities in a way that supports the overall mission of the agency, an important component of all Fentress asset management programs.