United States Government Publishing Office publisher pbl distributor dst United States Government Accountability Office National Security and International Affairs Division author aut Government Organization text government publication eng GAOREPORTS Legislative Agency Publications gao legislative 2010-08-12 U.S. Government Printing Office 1999-09-07 monographic deposited born digital 165 p. GA 1.13:NSIAD-99-100 https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/GAOREPORTS-NSIAD-99-100 P0b002ee18038e317 f:ns99100 DGPO 2010-08-12 2011-03-23 GAOREPORTS-NSIAD-99-100 machine generated eng fdlp REPORT GAOREPORTS-NSIAD-99-100 NSIAD-99-100 Military facilities Facility maintenance Maintenance costs Military budgets Facility repairs Private sector practices Funds management Federal property management DOD Quadrennial Defense Review Letter Report NSIAD F7218

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Department of Defense's (DOD) management of the maintenance of its real properties, focusing on: (1) how the services determine and prioritize maintenance and repair requirements and how they allocate resources to meet their needs; (2) promising practices in facility management that the services could consider; and (3) barriers to implementing promising practices and ways to address them.<p/>GAO noted that: (1) DOD does not have a comprehensive strategy for maintaining the services' infrastructure; (2) rather, each service sets its own standards for maintaining infrastructure; (3) as a result, the services differ in the way they rate property conditions, prioritize repairs, and allocate resources; (4) the service headquarters cannot be certain that the most critical properties in need of maintenance and repair are targeted; (5) given incomplete and inconsistent data, and different real property maintenance (RPM) rating systems among the services, Congress cannot be assured that it is funding maintenance and repairs that will provide the best return on its investment; (6) there is little relationship between identified RPM needs and the funds the services allocate for RPM; (7) none of the services' RPM spending plans provide sufficient funding to keep their total backlog of repairs at current levels; (8) although DOD instructed the services in July 1997 to fund RPM to enable them to meet 75 percent of their RPM requirements by 2003, DOD removed that goal from an update guidance in April 1999; (9) because the services' headquarters consistently underfund requirements, base and command officials request funding to cover only a portion of RPM needs; (10) for fiscal year 1997, major commands GAO surveyed reported they requested funding to cover an average of about one-fifth of the RPM needs of their bases and bases reported receiving funding equal to only about one-sixth of their needs; (11) many promising practices exist in the RPM area, including: (a) establishing a single system for counting and categorizing inventory; (b) having a single, valid engineering-based system for assessing facility conditions, with adequately trained personnel and multiple levels of review; (c) prioritizing budget allocations based on physical condition, relevance of facilities to the mission, and life-cycle costing and budgeting; (d) setting up a single property maintenance budget that is controlled by a central office with the power to shift resources to facilities in the greatest need; (e) creating incentives to demolish or vacate excess space; (f) restricting the use of RPM funds for other maintenance purposes; and (g) charging an annual maintenance fee, based on square feet used, to ensure adequate funding for facilities and to create an incentive for space conservation; and (12) none of the military services has implemented all the promising practices for RPM, and their adoption of these practices is hampered by several barriers. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GAOREPORTS-NSIAD-99-100/html/GAOREPORTS-NSIAD-99-100.htm https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GAOREPORTS-NSIAD-99-100/pdf/GAOREPORTS-NSIAD-99-100.pdf GAO/NSIAD-99-100 https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/GAOREPORTS-NSIAD-99-100 Letter Report GAO/NSIAD-99-100; Military Infrastructure: Real Property Management Needs; Military facilities Facility maintenance Maintenance costs Military budgets Facility repairs Private sector practices Funds management Federal property management DOD Quadrennial Defense Review Title 16 Section 11411 Title 16 Section 470h-2 16 U.S.C. 11411 16 U.S.C. 470h-2