Vista Tech to offer property asset services
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A company that specializes in computer-assisted military base realignment services has expanded its offering to help agencies meet the new presidential mandates on assessing real-estate property holdings.
A company that specializes in computer-assisted military base realignment and closure services has expanded its offering to help agencies meet the new presidential mandates on assessing real-estate property holdings.
Vista Technology Services Inc. of Herndon, Va., will begin offering its facilities infrastructure analysis service to federal agencies. Formerly, the company had focused its efforts on providing BRAC services.
Executive Order 13327, signed by President Bush this February, calls for agencies to examine their property holdings through newly created 'senior real property officers.'
According to a 1999 General Services Administration estimate, the federal government owns or leases about 3.2 billion square feet of building space.
Vista specializes in what it calls facilities infrastructure analysis, according to David Baxa, CEO and president of the company. The company can dispatch consultants to inspect property and facilities, and the results are compiled in reports that are delivered to the agency. The company can also calculate, given the agency's mission, how much building space and supporting physical infrastructure that agency would need to complete its job.
Unlike BRAC, this executive order does not explicitly call for the agencies to trim the amount of property they have, but the additional oversight required does implicitly send the message that agencies should shed the excess real-estate holdings they find, Baxa said.
'BRAC is certainly directed at more efficient use of the Defense's real property assets. [It] prescribes a process and procedure for dealing with reconfigurations of real property and disposals of excess property. In the case of 13327, you have an executive order that promotes efficient and economic use of real property under government, but there is not a corresponding law [for reconfiguration],' Baxa said.
Baxa said that agencies are still in the early stages of formulating a plan to meet the mandate. Earlier this year, GSA also established a new Federal Real Property Council, which will develop standards for reporting property assets in the upcoming months. Now, Vista can offer its assessments in any format that the agency requires, Baxa said.
Thus far, the company has been contracted for about $1 million worth of BRAC services for the Defense Department, serving such agencies as the Defense Contract Management Agency, the Defense Finance and Accounting Service, Defense Information Systems, the Defense Logistics Agency, the Defense Supply Center, the Missile Defense Agency and the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Infrastructure Analysis (GCN story).
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