GSA creates new MAS to help agencies go green

By Dorothy Ramienski
Internet Editor
FederalNewsRadio

The General Services Administration recently created the Energy Management Services contract by creating a combined service and adding to an energy services schedule that has existed since 2000.

This new Multiple Awards Schedule is designed to help agencies comply with Executive Order 13423, which sets some green goals.

On Monday’s Daily Debrief, hosts Christopher Dorobek and Amy Morris spoke with Steven Kempf, Acting Deputy Commissioner, FAS, who says the new program is comprehensive and deals with all phases of facilities management and maintenance.

[It] provides for things like energy management program support, energy audit services, energy planning and strategies, energy choice and analysis, metering services, risk management, billing and management oversight and a whole host of other activities that many of the agencies need to comply with Executive Order 13423.

GSA combined several schedules in the ’03 Facilities Schedule to make this happen. In July of this year, GSA also added more to round up the service offerings to give customers total solutions.

Kempf says this was necessary because the Executive Order sets the eco-friendly bar so high. He also says that GSA is working to be one of the leading agencies that operates in a more green manner.

One of the things that we’re trying to do at GSA is really become the provider of choice for comprehensive energy management solutions to the federal government — and provide . . . the agencies with opportunities to help them conserve energy, protect the environment — and we take that responsibility seriously.

Kempf says one of the main benefits of this new MAS has to do with helping agencies develop risk strategies for changing the way they operate.

You may be wanting to change over to a different kind of energy, so you have to plan to see what kind of options might be available [and] how you might approach that. One of the things, also, that the Executive Order does . . . is ask each agency to set up what’s called an Environmental Management System, which is a way of tracking their energy and environmental solutions — and trying to identify goals and how you meet those goals. . . . So one of the things that many of the agencies need to do is to track their progress and how they’re meeting those goals.

This can be a lot of work, which is why GSA is offering this newly-redesigned MAS. Kempf says, to date, they have over 50 awarded contractors supporting the contract, with 28 of them being small businesses. He notes this number is only expected to increase.

In addition, there’s already been progress under the contract.

In FY 07, we did about $10 million [and] last year that moved up to about $16.5 million. . . . A lot of the agencies have been slow in developing their EMS’s and I think they’re really moving forward and doing a lot more. Certainly as the price of energy has gone up, the need for providing different solutions that are much more cost effective has risen, as well.

This new MAS is also forward-thinking according to Kempf.

Certainly as the products change and the technology that supports those products changes, the payback and the return on investment is so much greater and so much quicker, that you realize the initial investment so much faster.

—
On the Web:

GSA – Environmental Products Overview

OFEE – Executive Order 13423

(Copyright 2008 by FederalNewsRadio.com. All Rights Reserved.)

Copyright © 2024 Federal News Network. All rights reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.