Studies that assess the performance of federal real property, and develop innovative workplace measures.

What is real property performance?
In 1998, GSA convened an interagency project team made up of several federal agencies that collaborated in developing performance measures. This team included agencies that managed or own real property. GSA has 5 measures of Governmentwide real property activity, and 2 broad statistical measures. GSA assessed nine indicators of performance:

• Cost per square foot (owned)
• Cost per square foot (leased)
• Vacancy rate
• Cost per person
• Customer satisfaction
• Employees housed
• Total square feet
• Federal teleworkers
• Sustainability

Key data were collected on a voluntary basis from federal customers concerning office (or administrative-type) space owned or leased under their own authority. This exercise provides the stakeholders and other interested parties with the relative performance of federal real property asset management as compared to other commercial owners/users, or government organizations.

Check out the Library, to view PDF files of the Real Property Performance Results. Hard copies of these publications can be obtained by calling (202) 501-3802.

What is the Cost per Person Model?
A special feature included in the 2003 edition is a section updating the Cost per Person (CPP) Model and its accompanying users guide. GSA developed this Excel-based model in 1999 to help federal agency customers estimate their total cost per person, including other administrative cost components in addition to real estate, as a new approach to measuring the 21st Century workplace. The cost per person is one of GSA's seven original governmentwide performance indicators and continues to be a useful benchmark for federal agencies. The model estimates the average cost per person in each of the following areas: real estate (space usage), telecommunications, information technology (IT), and alternative work environment. An additional feature is a “what-if” tool that calculates potential cost savings resulting from an alternative work environment, such as hoteling or desk sharing.

GSA Cost per Person Model, Version 2 is available by e-mail request only. There is no charge.

What are the benefits of real property benchmarking?
GSA presents this information to the federal real property community to facilitate more informed decision-making leading to improved asset management. GSA's goal is to clearly summarize the relevant data and to provide customers with a concise reference document. GSA expects this to be useful to federal real property asset management decision-makers, as well as stakeholders. The publication will also benefit interested professionals in other governments, the private sector, and academia.

The advantages to real property benchmarking are numerous and exceed the investment time:

1. Reality check on the real property information system's ability to generate very basic inventory cost information.
2. Enrollment in one of the original Government Performance and Results Act-inspired performance measurement efforts in government, and still one of the very few cross-cutting initiatives.
3. Annual confirmation of the overall effectiveness of federal real property asset management compared to private sector alternatives.
4. An individual, private analysis of how agency data compares to the rest of government and the private sector. (Several contributors have taken advantage of this offer over the years and received valuable feedback to improve their real property asset management.)

How can the agency participate?
The agency is invited to participate in the benchmarking study and benefit from the report. GSA launches the annual performance measurement benchmarking effort with a data call to the core group of federal agency partners in mid August; contributing customers generally report only on the first three measures. For owned buildings, data is collected on cost per square foot (defined as cleaning, maintenance and utilities). These are current operating costs, not the historical or replacement cost. For leased buildings, data is collected on cost per square foot (defined as fully serviced lease cost). In either case, data is collected on vacancy rate. Vacancy rate is the difference between total space and space occupied. Please be assured that agency data will be kept confidential and reported in aggregate..