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In the late 1990s, several of the sponsor agencies of the Federal
Facilities Council began developing and implementing initiatives
and policies related to sustainable development. Guidance related
to life-cycle costing and value engineering was recognized as being
supportive of sustainable development, in particular when used in
the conceptual planning and design phases of acquisition, where
decisions are made that substantially effect the ultimate
performance of a building over its life cycle. However, specific
concerns were raised that when federal agencies apply value
engineering in the final stages of design or during construction in
response to cost overruns, design features that support sustainable
development may be eliminated. The primary objective of this study,
therefore, was to develop a framework to show how federal agencies
can use value engineering and life-cycle costing to support
sustainable development for federal facilities and meet the
objectives of Executive Order 13123.
In 1986, the FFC requested that the NRC appoint a committee to
examine the field and propose ways by which the POE process could
be improved to better serve public and private sector
organizations. The resulting report, Post-Occupancy Evaluation
Practices in the Building Process: Opportunities for Improvement,
proposed a broader view of POEs-from being simply the end phase of
a building project to being an integral part of the entire building
process. The authoring committee recommended a series of actions
related to policy, procedures, and innovative technologies and
techniques to achieve that broader view. In 2000, the FFC funded a
second study to look at the state of the practice of POEs and
lessons-learned programs among federal agencies and in private,
public, and academic organizations both here and abroad. The
sponsor agencies specifically wanted to determine whether and how
information gathered during POE processes could be used to help
inform decisions made in the programming, budgeting, design,
construction, and operation phases of facility acquisition in a
useful and timely way. To complete this study, the FFC commissioned
a set of papers by recognized experts in this field, conducted a
survey of selected federal agencies with POE programs, and held a
forum at the National Academy of Sciences on March 13, 2001, to
address these issues. This report is the result of those efforts.
More than 30 federal departments and agencies with a wide range of
missions and programs manage large inventories of facilities, also
called portfolios. These portfolios range in size from a few
hundred to more than a hundred thousand individual structures,
buildings, and their supporting infrastructure. They are diverse in
terms of facility types, mix of types, and geographic dispersal.
For federal senior executives, facilities portfolio-related
decisions revolve around the allocation of resources (staff,
funding, time) for acquisition, renovation, operation, repair, and
disposition of facilities. To make informed decisions, senior
executives require information that will allow them to answer such
questions as: What facilities do we have? What condition are they
in? What facilities are needed to support the organization's
missions? This study lays out a framework for developing and
evaluating trends in facilities portfolio conditions, investments,
and costs and identifies a set of key indicators that can be used
to track performance over time. Some of the indicators are
currently in use in some federal agencies; others will need to be
developed. Table of Contents Front Matter Executive Summary 1
Introduction 2 Facilities Asset Management and Performance Goals 3
Existing Performance Indicators for Federal Facilities Portfolios 4
Additional Performance Indicators for Federal Facilities Portfolios
References Appendix A Executive Order Federal Real Property Asset
Management Appendix B Biographies of Consultants Appendix C
Engineered Management Systems and BCI Appendix D Space Utilization
Index
The National Academy of Construction (NAC) has determined that
disputes, and their accompanying inefficiencies and costs,
constitute a significant problem for the industry. In 2002, the NAC
assessed the industry's progress in attacking this problem and
determined that although the tools, techniques, and processes for
preventing and efficiently resolving disputes are already in place,
they are not being widely used. In 2003, the NAC helped to persuade
the Center for Construction Industry Studies (CCIS) at the
University of Texas and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to finance
and conduct empirical research to develop accurate information
about the relative transaction costs of various forms of dispute
resolution. In 2004 the NAC teamed with the Federal Facilities
Council (FFC) of the National Research Council to sponsor the
"Government/Industry Forum on Reducing Construction Costs: Uses of
Best Dispute Resolution Practices by Project Owners." The forum was
held on September 23, 2004, at the National Academy of Sciences in
Washington, D.C. Speakers and panelists at the forum addressed
several topics. Reducing Construction Costs addresses topics such
as the root causes of disputes and the impact of disputes on
project costs and the economics of the construction industry. A
second topic addressed was dispute resolution tools and techniques
for preventing, managing, and resolving construction- related
disputes. This report documents examples of successful uses of
dispute resolution tools and techniques on some high-profile
projects, and also provides ways to encourage greater use of
dispute resolution tools throughout the industry. This report
addresses steps that owners of construction projects (who have the
greatest ability to influence how their projects are conducted)
should take in order to make their projects more successful.
Although most federal facilities projects are successfully
completed (i.e., they reasonably meet the agency's requirements and
expectations), the perception is that development of the scope of
work for design for these projects is challenging and in some cases
poorly performed. Based on this perception, a study was
commissioned by the Federal Facilities Council (FFC) of the
National Research Council to identify the elements that should be
included in a scope of work for design to help ensure that the
resulting facility is one that supports the fulfillment of a
federal agency's program or mission. Its objectives also included
identifying key practices for developing effective scopes of work
for design involving new construction or major renovation projects
and identifying key practices for matching the scope of work with
the acquisition strategy, given a range of project delivery systems
and contract methods.
In 1996 the Federal Accounting Standards Advisory Board (FASAB) 1
enacted Standard Number 6, Accounting for Property, Plant, and
Equipment (PP&E), the first government-wide initiative
requiring federal agencies to report dollar amounts of deferred
maintenance annually. The FASAB has identified four overall
objectives in federal financial reporting: budgetary integrity,
operating performance, stewardship, and systems and control. FASAB
Standard Number 6, as amended, focuses on operating performance and
stewardship. The FFC Standing Committee on Operations and
Maintenance has prepared this report to identify potential issues
that should be considered in any future amendments to the standard
and to suggest approaches for resolving them. The committee's
intent is to assist the CFO Council, federal agencies, the FASAB,
and others as they consider how best to meet the objectives of
federal financial reporting for facilities.
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Expansion Joints in Buildings - Technical Report No. 65 (Paperback)
National Research Council, Division on Engineering and Physical Sciences, Federal Facilities Council, Building Research Advisory Board, Standing Committee on Structural Engineering of the Federal Construction Council
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R1,063
Discovery Miles 10 630
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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Many factors affect the amount of temperature-induced movement that
occurs in a building and the extent to which this movement can
occur before serious damage develops or extensive maintenance is
required. In some cases joints are being omitted where they are
needed, creating a risk of structural failures or causing
unnecessary operations and maintenance costs. In other cases,
expansion joints are being used where they are not required,
increasing the initial cost of construction and creating space
utilization problems. As of 1974, there were no nationally
acceptable procedures for precise determination of the size and the
location of expansion joints in buildings. Most designers and
federal construction agencies individually adopted and developed
guidelines based on experience and rough calculations leading to
significant differences in the various guidelines used for locating
and sizing expansion joints. In response to this complex problem,
Expansion Joints in Buildings: Technical Report No. 65 provides
federal agencies with practical procedures for evaluating the need
for through-building expansion joints in structural framing
systems. The report offers guidelines and criteria to standardize
the practice of expansion joints in buildings and decrease problems
associated with the misuse of expansions joints. Expansions Joints
in Buildings: Technical Report No. 65 also makes notable
recommendations concerning expansion, isolation, joints, and the
manner in which they permit separate segments of the structural
frame to expand and to contract in response to temperature
fluctuations without adversely affecting the buildings structural
integrity or serviceability. Table of Contents Front Matter I.
Introduction II. Recommendations III. Discussion Appendix A:
Computer Printout of an Elastic Analysis Appendix B: Temperature
Data
Federally owned capital assets include some 500,000 buildings and
similar facilities worldwide acquired during 200 years of
government operations. Government facilities are used to defend the
national interest; conduct foreign policy; house historic, cultural
and educational artifacts; pursue research; and provide services to
the American public. These buildings and structures project an
image of American government at home and abroad, contribute to the
architectural and socioeconomic fabric of their communities, and
support the organizational and individual performance of federal
employees conducting the business of government . Federal
facilities embody significant investments and resources and
therefore constitute a portfolio of public assets. At least 30
separate agencies manage these facilities. As stewards of this
public investment, federal facilities program managers face a
number of challenges. In the 1990s Congress and the Executive
Branch took a number of initiatives to improve capital asset
decision making in the federal government. These include enacting
the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993, the Federal
Acquisition Streamlining Act of 1994, the Clinger-Cohen Act of 1996
and a series of federal financial accounting standards; developing
the Capital Programming Guide (1997); and appointing the
President's Commission to Study Capital Budgeting (1997). Senior
and mid-level agency officials are now seeking ways to implement
these initiatives efficiently and effectively. The Federal
Facilities Council (FFC) sponsored a conference entitled "Capital
Asset Management: Tools and Strategies For Decision Making" to
highlight strategies and ideas for capital asset management so that
federal and other public agencies can improve decision making for
facilities investment. Held at the National Academy of Sciences in
Washington, D.C., on September 13, 2000, the conference featured
speakers from the public, non-profit, and private sectors. Capital
Asset Management: Tools and Strategies For Decision Making:
Conference Proceedings summarizes the presentations made at that
conference. The speakers focused on trends and best practices in
capital budgeting; capital asset decision making processes in three
federal agencies; building a case for capital reinvestment; and new
tools for federal agencies. Online resources referred to by the
speakers are listed in Appendix A. Appendix B contains the
speakers' biographies. Table of Contents Front Matter 1
Introduction 2 Trends and Best Practices in Capital Budgeting 3
Capital Asset Decision Making in Three Federal Agencies 4 Building
a Case for Capital Reinvestment 5 New Tools for Federal Agencies
Appendix A Online Resources Appendix B Speakers' Biographies
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