New Supervisor’s Office and Ranger District Building

Some interesting things that can happen when initiating a build-to-suit lease

Mike Shoup2007

Old Supervisor’s Office and Ranger District Office

30,629 sq ft

New Supervisor’s Office and Ranger District Office

25, 203 sq ft

Old Warehouse/Shop

12,840 sq ft

New Warehouse/Shop

10,132 sq ft

Lease Statistics

• $ 21 per square ft lease price awarded, for a total of $742,000 per year

• 15 year lease with a five year renewable option.

Challenging Items:

• Creative Press reports

• General Contractor Safety, schedule, & quality issues

• Telecommunications

Press Reports• It was reported that

the Forest Service chose to leave it’s current office lease of $404,000 to move into a new office and pay $742,000

• The press indicated the current building owner offered a better deal than $742,000

Facts Omitted by the Local Press:

• The $404,000 lease price was last awarded in 1982. Lease costs rose with each extension and were currently well over $750,000 per year.

• The government is at the end of its lease extensions and a new solicitation is required for best price competitiveness.

• The government received five offers and selected the best value based on price, location, and conformance with the solicitation.

• The old building owners’ proposal to offer a cut rate price did not meet the requirements for the building code, energy code, space requirements, or solicitation and could not even be considered.

Schedule, Safety, Quality Issues with the builder.

• Weird Dynamic– Owner: a Business

Man– On site

superintendent: owner’s former son-in-law.

Poor Emphasis on Safety.

• It was a drain on contract administration time to continually explain basic employee safety requirements to the general contractor.

Schedule

• Notice to Proceed delivered November 2006.

• Lease expiration was Oct. 15, 2007

• Eleven month construction contract that began in the winter didn’t allow for any schedule problems. Float in schedule was not available.

• Schedule commitments to the CO were not backed up with accelerations in the construction effort.

Move In Day• No siding

– Consider what it takes to put on siding (just a little noise).

• Boarded up windows due to window delivery problems

• Numerous punch list and quality issues.

• No phone or computer hook-up

Telecommunications Challenge

• Oct. 5th was scheduled telecommunications move date. Movers, phones, computer access, vacating current lease, and public opening pivoted around the Oct. 5th date.

• Sept. 21st, we received notice from the Facilities Move Strike Team that Qwest would not be able to connect phone and data until Oct. 22nd.

Results of Telecomm Challenge

• Planned telecomm move dates of cut service on Friday Oct. 5th and resume service and open for business on Tuesday Oct. 9th turned into partial telecomm service available Oct. 24th, 9 days after the current lease expiration.

• Strike Team departed with phone and data only 75% connected.

Telecommunciations

Good News

• Moved from 43,469 sf to 35,335 sf leased space

• Made an 8,134 sf reduction in square footage or 19%

• At $21 per sf, made a $170,814 reduction in lease cost per year, $3.4 million over the terms of the lease.

How did we do it?

• Each employee gets a 9’x 9’ (81 sf) modular work area

• Staff gets a 10’x12’ office

• Forest Supervisor and District Ranger have a 150 sf office. Forest Supervisor down from 266 sf office.

Modular Work Stations

• Each employee gets a 9’x 9’ (81 sf) modular work area

• We used HON furniture company.

• Total price for the modular furniture contract was $ 214,000

More Good News• Combined the Forest

Supervisors Office with a Ranger District Office and the Interagency Fire Dispatch Center.

• Energy efficiency is in the top 25% for buildings in its class

• Eventually, everything was completed and the building became a big improvement over the old building