0 8
"That's when we looked at the numbers and
saw that, on the best day of the week, we were
getting about 45 percent population inside the
building," said Hardy. At first, he wondered if the
swing space was driving a drop in attendance.
But after further observation and research,
he realized that this was how it had always
been. "We just couldn't tell because of the tall
partitions, the space, and the way the building
was laid out," he said. "And looking at that under-
utilized space — here we are, the real estate
managers of the government — we had to ask,
how can we better manage it?"
One of AgilQuest's goals for GSA was to put
technology in place to gather and evaluate
information to make it easy for them to share
space — an approach that could conceivably be
applied across all federal agencies.
"It's the same stuff: the same space, the same
conference rooms," Hardy said. "How can we
figure out a way to take the information about
that space, realize that it's only used [half of the
time] on average, and allow people to choose
places to go to work? More than just at home,
more than just at 1800 F, but within any building
that's in the federal government."
Now that the transformation is complete, with
4,400 GSA employees working out of one building
with 2,200 seats, utilization numbers still hover
just under 50 percent. It seems counterintuitive —
collapsing six buildings into one, but not moving
the needle on utilization — and yet, GSA sees it as
the positive outcome of Johnson's "moonshot".
"[They] broke work from place and said to people
that it's ok to work in the location that best fits
what you want to do," said Vivadelli. "By doing that,
it freed people up to pick the place that best suits
them."
"They broke work from place and
said to people that it's ok to work in
the location that best fits what you
want to do."
John Vivadelli
President
AgilQuest
