Post Award Consulting and Project Management
If you are looking for Post Award Consulting and Project Management services for the tenant improvement buildout of your newly awarded GSA or other Federally Occupied lease, then let us first say, Congratulations!
Assuming you had owner representation from a Federal / GSA leasing expert, receiving notice that you are the successful offeror in a Federal Lease Procurement is always great news. That said, this is not the end of the process. In fact, to some extent, the work is just beginning.
While many owners who have experience with GSA TI design and construction will want to treat this phase of the project like past projects with their private sector tenants, doing so can lead to some real issues. By approaching the design and construction phase, or what is officially known as the Post Award phase of the project, like a private sector TI project, it will likely cause this phase to be a time of great frustration, misunderstanding, and missed opportunity to preserve ownership’s capital. That is where Arco comes in.
Arco views its role during the post award phase as 5 crucial responsibilities:
- Ensure that all parties are acting in accordance with the GSA lease / Federal Lease. This is truly a time where knowledge of the lease and the process are critical to the project’s success.
- Ensure that all parties are doing what they are supposed to be doing, when they are supposed to be doing it, in the hopes of avoiding costly delays. Unfortunately, this is a significant issue when dealing with GSA lease tenant improvement buildouts. This is even more true in situations where this is a “first generation Government lease” and the Government is not already a tenant in the offered space.
- Preserve and protect ownership’s capital during the Tenant Improvement cost proposal phase by assuring that costs are properly allocated on the Tenant Improvement Cost Summary Sheet, or TICS Table. This can also be a source of project delay if the ownership team is not familiar with the proper way to segregate costs between TI and Shell.
- Preserve and protect ownership’s capital by tightly adhering to the proper Change Order process. We see time and time again where ownership teams are not reimbursed for scope of work changes based on technicalities. If you do not follow the proper process and ensure that the correct approvals are in place, then ownership can be left holding the bag for increased project costs. Don’t let this happen to you!
- Finally, Arco does everything it can to avoid the almost inevitable conflicts that will arise during this phase of the project. While the GSA lease is generally well written, the size of the lease, including the Agency’s Special Requirements and Facility Security Level Requirements, can present multiple opportunities for conflicting language, misinterpretation, and ultimately a complete lack of clarity of who is responsible for what. This is again where expertise with the lease, experience with this phase of the project, and knowledge of who the players are and more importantly what their role is, can go a long way to avoiding and resolving conflicts. However, if the conflict is unresolvable, Arco has deep relationships with the top attorneys in the country that specialize in resolving these issues via legal intervention.
As is true with every aspect of leasing real estate to the GSA or any Federal entity, expertise and experience in this very narrow niche is critical to your success as an owner.
Give us a call or contact us via our website to learn more about Arco Real Estate Solutions and how we can help you with all aspects of leasing real estate to the Government!