GAO

United States General Accounting Office

Report to the Chairman and Ranking 

Minority Member, Subcommittee on 

Readiness and Management Support, 

Committee on Armed Services, U.S. 

Senate

September 1999 MILITARY 

INFRASTRUCTURE

Real Property 

Management Needs 

Improvement

GAO/NSIAD-99-100

Page 1 GAO/NSIAD-99-100 Real Property Management

United States General Accounting Office

Washington, D.C. 20548

National Security and

International Affairs Division

B-280230 Letter

September 7, 1999

The Honorable James M. Inhofe

Chairman

The Honorable Charles S. Robb

Ranking Minority Member

Subcommittee on Readiness and 

Management Support

Committee on Armed Services

United States Senate

The Department of Defense’s (DOD) management of the maintenance of its 

properties has concerned the Congress because of the long-standing 

absence of accurate data for making funding decisions and increasing 

backlogs in infrastructure repairs. As requested, our review of real 

property maintenance (RPM) management focused on the properties that 

the services maintain and repair using RPM funds from DOD’s operation 

and maintenance (O&M) account.1

 Specifically, we (1) analyzed how the 

services determine and prioritize maintenance and repair requirements and 

how they allocate resources to meet their needs, (2) identified promising 

practices2

 in facility management that the services could consider, and

(3) identified barriers to implementing promising practices and ways to 

address them. 

To address our objectives, we sent questionnaires to 571 military bases and 

major commands3

 worldwide; interviewed RPM personnel at 35 bases and 

commands nationwide;4 reviewed literature of RPM experts; and 

1

These funds cover expenses for a wide variety of property controlled by the military services, for 

example, barracks, administrative and training facilities, utility systems, runways, schools, and grounds 

maintenance. O&M RPM funds are not to be used for significant portions of property, such as family 

housing and medical facilities, which are paid for separately. RPM for many industrial-related activities 

is covered separately in contracts. O&M also covers civilian pay, fuel, supplies, repair parts, and 

military operations. 

2

Promising practices are not necessarily fully proven, but rather are those that appear to be designed 

logically to work well and that seem worthy of wider trial involving sound evaluation.

3

We received responses from 529, or 93 percent. Major commands are the administrative entities for 

bases with similar missions, such as the fighter bases that are part of the Air Force’s Air Combat 

Command. 

4

A complete list of sites visited may be found in app. IX, Objectives, Scope, and Methodology.

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interviewed more than two dozen RPM experts and officials at U.S. 

corporate, university, religious and governmental entities. Appendix IX 

further describes our scope and methodology.

Results in Brief DOD does not have a comprehensive strategy for maintaining the services’ 

infrastructure. Rather, each service sets its own standards for maintaining 

infrastructure. As a result, the services differ in the way they rate property 

conditions, prioritize repairs, and allocate resources. For example, a 

barracks rated “satisfactory” by one service may be rated as 

“unsatisfactory” by another. Also, within each service, answers to our 

survey indicated that bases and major commands apply condition and/or 

criteria for rating repairs differently. As a result, the service headquarters 

cannot be certain that the most critical properties in need of maintenance 

and repair are targeted. Given incomplete and inconsistent data, and 

different RPM rating systems among the services, the Congress cannot be 

assured that it is funding maintenance and repairs that will provide the best 

return on its investment. 

There is little relationship between identified RPM needs and the funds the 

services allocate for RPM. None of the services’ RPM spending plans 

provide sufficient funding to keep their total backlog of repairs at current 

levels; under new Navy plans, the total critical-rated backlog will crest in 

fiscal year 2003, and very slowly diminish thereafter.5 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 updated guidance in April 1999.6

 Because the services’ 

headquarters consistently underfund requirements, base and command 

officials request funding to cover only a portion of RPM needs. For fiscal 

year 1997, major commands we 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. (In response to the draft version of this report, the Navy staff at its 

headquarters Facilities and Engineering Division stated that a message had 

been sent to major claimants and bases that all critical RPM needs should 

5

The Navy divides its backlog into “critical” and “deferrable”; only the critical backlog is officially 

reported to the Congress, although both types are tracked by the Navy.

6

DOD, Defense Planning Guidances for Fiscal Years 1999–2003 and 2001–2005.

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be reported. However, this did not apply to non-critical RPM. Non-critical 

repairs can deteriorate into critical over time.) 

Many promising practices exist in the RPM area, including

• establishing a single system for counting and categorizing inventory;

• having a single, valid engineering-based system for assessing facility 

conditions, with adequately trained personnel and multiple levels of 

review; 

• prioritizing budget allocations based on physical condition, relevance of 

facilities to the mission, and life-cycle costing and budgeting;

• 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; 

• creating incentives to demolish or vacate excess space; 

• restricting the use of RPM funds for other maintenance purposes; and

• charging an annual maintenance fee, based on square feet used, to 

ensure adequate funding for facilities and to create an incentive for 

space conservation.

Two nonmilitary organizations—the Capital Needs Analysis Center of the 

Church of Latter-day Saints at Brigham Young University and Lawrence 

Livermore National Laboratory7

—have facility management systems that 

collectively use all of these practices. Both report these practices enable 

them to maintain needed facilities at common levels, stabilize repair 

backlogs, accurately predict future RPM needs, satisfy customers that RPM 

funds are allocated fairly and based on actual need, and prepare credible 

budget requests. Similarly, a military organization—the U.S. Army Health 

Facility Planning Agency—is implementing a life-cycle investment strategy 

that it expects to reduce major repair costs by 50 percent and cut 

programming time from years to months. 

None of the military services has implemented all the promising practices 

for RPM, and their adoption of these practices is hampered by several 

barriers, including 

7

The Laboratory, part of the University of California, is a management and operating contractor for the 

U.S. Department of Energy. It derives most of its budget from the Department and has a 5-year 

contract. 
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• the use of RPM funds for other operations and maintenance purposes, 

complicating budget and contract stability; 

• the lack of common standards for allotting space to certain types of 

facilities;

• the use of multiple budget accounts to pay for RPM, making it difficult 

to determine the cost of maintaining facilities;

• incomplete and noncomparable RPM data; 

• legal and administrative restrictions that, while having distinct 

purposes, may hamper the services’ ability to cost-effectively address 

RPM issues; and

• insufficient training of personnel involved in assessing facility 

conditions.

DOD and the services have multiple options for addressing these barriers, 

including changing their facility rating and cost accounting systems. We 

are making recommendations to DOD to improve its management of 

infrastructure. 

Background According to the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD), the military 

services are collectively responsible for maintaining more real property 

than any other entity in the world—more than 320,000 buildings (with 

about 2.1 billion square feet), tens of thousands of miles of roads, and

1.1 million square yards of pavement (like runways). DOD estimates the 

plant replacement value8

 (PRV) of this property at more than $500 billion. 

RPM—which includes daily maintenance, small repairs, and minor 

construction (projects under $500,000 or environmental and health 

projects under $1 million)—is funded through the O&M account. Facilities 

maintained by the O&M RPM funds include the services’ barracks, 

administrative space, classrooms, ports, hangars and runways, roads and 

railroads, day care centers, schools and churches, and utility structures and 

systems (but not the cost of utilities’ consumption). RPM for family 

housing, many industrial-related and military medical facilities is funded by 

separate accounts. 

8

No standard definition of PRV could be identified; however, the Federal Facilities Council cites two 

methods used by federal agencies in report no. 131, Budgeting for Facilities Maintenance and Repair 

Activities (Washington, D.C., 1996), pp. 10-11. In 1997, we defined PRV as “the cost to replace current 

facilities using today’s construction costs and standards.” See Defense Infrastructure: Demolition of 

Unneeded Buildings Can Help Avoid Operating Costs (GAO/NSIAD-97-125, May 1997), p. 7. See

app. VIII for a discussion of PRV-related issues.
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Each service headquarters sets the annual budget for maintenance and 

repairs based on funding constraints and other priorities. The budget is 

discussed among the headquarters, central facilities management offices, 

and bases and commands. Adjustments may be made if a base or 

command can prove that the funds to be allocated are insufficient to meet 

RPM needs.

Congressional concerns have been repeatedly expressed about DOD’s 

management of RPM. Despite net congressional increases of about

$817 million for RPM over fiscal years 1992-98, the services’ reported repair 

backlog increased 164 percent during the same period in nominal terms.9

 

Covering more than 20 years, reviews by DOD, GAO,10 the Congressional 

Budget Office, and outside consulting organizations have found numerous 

problems with DOD’s management of its properties. (A list of related 

reports is at the end of this report.) These problems include the lack of an 

overall strategy for managing RPM; unreliable and inadequate data on 

facilities’ condition and inventory; lack of centralized data management 

and lack of access to basic data; insufficient funding to maintain facilities, 

in part resulting from moving RPM funds to other O&M accounts;11 and 

problematic service criteria for rating the condition of facilities or to 

allocate resources to facilities. 

As a result of a 1989 review of its RPM activities, DOD stated that it would 

(1) collect RPM costs by facility investment category, (2) standardize 

reports on the backlog of maintenance and repairs, (3) institute 5-year 

maintenance planning, (4) standardize PRV computations, and (5) establish 

a meaningful goal for RPM investments.12 However, most of these actions 

9

Data provided by OSD. We did not validate service backlog estimates. Total reported backlog 

increased from $8.9 to $14.6 billion for fiscal years 1992-98. RPM increases by the Congress above 

requested amounts totaled $1.615 billion during this period, but decreases totaled $798 million, for a net 

plus up total of $817 million. For fiscal year 1999, according to OSD, the Congress provided a net 

increase of $455 million above the request for RPM, an amount equal to almost 57 percent of the total 

net increases of the previous 7 years. However, since these funds are only now being spent, the effect 

on backlog has not yet been determined.

10See High-Risk Series: Defense Infrastructure (GAO/HR-97-7, Feb. 1997), p. 10; Defense Infrastructure: 

Demolition of Unneeded Buildings Can Help Avoid Operating Costs (GAO/NSIAD-97-125, May 1997),

pp. 3 and 21; and Deferred Maintenance Reporting: Challenges to Implementation (GAO/AIMD-98-42, 

Jan. 1998), pp. 32-34. Numerous other GAO reports on RPM problems date back to 1976. 

11To prevent this practice, the Congress had included a statutory floor in each military service’s O&M 

section of DOD’s appropriation acts until the late 1980s (e.g. stating that “not less than” a certain 

amount “shall be available only for the maintenance of real property facilities”).

12DOD, Renewing the Built Environment, March 1989, Executive Summary.
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were not implemented at the time because DOD was concentrating on 

reducing its overall infrastructure through base realignments and closures. 

As noted in the Senate Appropriations Committee report on DOD’s 

fiscalyear 1992 appropriations,13 most of the management problems 

remained. To address the issues comprehensively, the Congress 

appropriated $50 million in fiscal year 1992 for an extensive pilot test of a 

system to evaluate the condition of all service facilities and to prioritize 

spending using a single set of criteria. Outside contractors developed an 

exhaustive condition assessment system with detailed standards and 

instructions that was tested at 10 military installations between July 1994 

and April 1995. The services rejected the system (adoption was not 

mandatory), citing the estimated cost. However, no analysis was done to 

compare this cost to costs the services incurred for individual annual 

assessments.

Without an Overall 

Management Strategy, 

the Services’ RPM Is in 

Disarray

In the absence of an overall, comprehensive management strategy for 

maintaining the services’ infrastructure,14 each service has established its 

own criteria for assessing the condition of its properties and the urgency of 

repairs, prioritizing RPM needs, and deciding how much to allocate for 

RPM. As a result of the differences among the services’ systems, however, 

a facility’s condition may be rated as “satisfactory” by one service and 

“unsatisfactory” by another or might not be rated at all if the service rates a 

repair project’s urgency rather than a facility’s deficiencies. Furthermore, 

respondents to our survey reported weaknesses in their services’ 

assessment systems and a lack of trained inspectors and RPM personnel 

overall. 

Even though service bases do annually assess facility conditions and 

estimate the costs of required maintenance, service headquarters fund 

maintenance and repairs at far less than the bases’ estimates of what is 

needed. Moreover, the major commands do not request the amount 

actually needed to accomplish required maintenance and repairs because

13S. Rept 102-154, pp. 79-80 (1991).

14DOD was to issue a strategic plan for infrastructure in early 1999; however, the plan has been delayed 

indefinitely, as funding intended for it was used for other purposes. We previously cited the absence of, 

but need for such a plan as well as measurable goals, milestones, and actions to specific DOD 

infrastructure problems in High-Risk Series (GAO/HR-97-7, Feb. 1997), p. 10, and in Defense

Infrastructure (GAO/NSIAD-97-125, May 1997), pp. 3 and 21.
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they believe that their headquarters will not fund RPM at that level.15 This 

situation may lead to a bow wave of backlogged repairs, as facilities 

continue to deteriorate when they are not maintained properly. 

Consistently funding maintenance at levels below what is needed to 

maintain infrastructure vitiates the intent if not the letter of OSD guidance, 

which is meant to prevent further deterioration of infrastructure. In 

technical comments on the draft of this report, DOD stated that the April 

1999 update of the Defense Planning Guidance for fiscal years 2001-2005 

requires the services to fund RPM “to at least match” each year’s planned 

RPM spending that had been set forth in the fiscal year 2000 President’s 

budget Future Years Defense Program. However, since none of the 

services’ RPM funding plans for fiscal year 2000 will measurably reduce 

existing total backlog, the spending levels do not appear sufficient to keep 

the overall backlog steady.

Without data on the consistency of ratings of facilities across the services 

and a common standard by which to compare the services’ RPM facilities’ 

conditions, OSD and the Congress cannot reliably compare or prioritize the 

services’ budget requests for RPM. And if the services continue to delay 

maintenance on their facilities, costs for future repairs will increase.

Services’ Rating Criteria Are 

Different

The services’ rating systems differ in how they assess facility condition, 

rate the urgency of repairs, prioritize RPM needs, and allocate resources.16

• The Army rates facilities at three levels, from worst (red), to fair 

(amber), to best (green), using worksheets with both written criteria 

and illustrations. The Army’s Installation Status Report (ISR) provides 

color-coded summaries of conditions at bases and commands and for 

the Army as a whole, and its software generates the estimated costs of 

improving facilities. ISR summary data for every command and its 

component bases are maintained in an automated database and are 

accessible to facility management personnel at headquarters and to 

other authorized users. 

15Although perhaps obvious, we mean the level of funding required to fully meet repair needs, rather 

than to partially address needs. In technical comments, the Navy had stated that its major claimants 

had based funding requests on the amounts needed to bring facilities to levels ranging from C1 (best) to 

C3. A C3 condition is not one in which all needed repairs have been made, since it is not C1.

16The service’s systems are discussed in detail in apps. I, II, III, and IV.
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• The Air Force rates facilities’ deficiencies with regard to their estimated 

impact on four mission areas, at three levels (critical, degraded, and 

minimal) in its Facility Investment Metric (FIM) system. 

• The Navy uses an engineering-based assessment to determine facilities’ 

deficiencies, which it reports in the Annual Inspection Summary (AIS). 

Data from the summary is then used to rate the deficiencies’ impact on 

28 mission areas at four levels, from has fully met demands (C1) to has 

not met vital demands (C4). These ratings are shown in the Navy’s 

Shore Base Readiness Report. 

• The Marine Corps, a part of the Navy, uses its Commanding Officer’s 

Readiness Reporting System and, in addition, a version of the AIS. The 

system is modeled on the Navy’s Shore Base Readiness Report, rating 

readiness in 26 mission areas at four levels, from fully mission capable 

to not mission capable. 

According to our survey, bases within the same service and between the 

services showed varying degrees of consensus with regard to how they 

ranked the reasons that facilities and/or mission areas received a “worst” 

rating. We grouped the responses from bases for eight criteria used to 

assign a “worst” rating into three categories—most important, moderately 

important, or least important reason for a “worst” rating for a facility or 

mission area. (Results for the Marines are not included because of the very 

few number of Marine bases that ranked these factors.) Figure 1 shows 

how the responding bases ranked eight criteria or factors in this regard.
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Figure 1: Bases’ Ratings of Importance of Criteria in Worst-Level Ratings

Source: Responses to question 6, GAO survey. Totals may not add exactly to 100 percent due to 

rounding.

As shown in figure 1, in terms of cross-service diversity, three times as 

many Army bases as Air Force bases (30 percent vs. 10 percent) rated “age 

exceeded guidelines” as a most important factor in assigning a “worst” 

rating. On the other hand, more than twice as many Air Force and Navy 

bases as Army bases (73 and 72 percent vs. 29 percent) cited mission 

impact as a most important factor in assigning a “worst” rating. Also, 

within the Army and the Air Force, bases lacked consistency on the 

Air Force Army Navy

Severe physical

deficiency

Age exceeded

guidelines

Configuration did not meet

purpose of structure

Configuration did not

 meet a goal

(e.g., restroom vs. latrines)

Significant safety/health

/environmental defects

Appearance

severely deficient

Inadequate space per

guidelines

Conditions severely

impede mission

Percent of respondents rating factor as most important

Percent of respondents rating factor as least important

Percent of respondents rating factor as moderately important

10 20 70 30 38 32 6 41 53

34 58 8 59 35 6 54 46 0

68 29 3 41 49 10 62 38 0

6 78 16 19 68 13 5 90 5

14 82 4 12 82 6 10 67 24

2 39 59 8 48 44 5 33 62 

13 85 2 26 60 14 5 81 14

73 27 0 29 62 10 72 28 0
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importance of several factors leading to ratings of “worst.” For example,

29 percent of the Army bases reported “conditions severely impede 

mission” as a most important reason for a “worst” rating, while 62 percent 

ranked it as of moderate importance. Similarly, 39 percent of Air Force 

bases rated “severe physical deficiency” as a most important factor, while 

59 percent rated it as of “moderate importance.” 

Bases within each service also showed mixed consistency about the 

importance of nine criteria for allocating funds for repair projects for 

facilities rated “worst” at their base. (See app.VI, table VI.1.) For example, 

35 percent of Army bases cited physical condition as the most important 

criterion for determining RPM allocations, but 59 percent rated it as 

moderately important. Similarly, almost twice as many Air Force bases 

rated physical condition as moderately important as those citing it as the 

most important factor (63 percent vs. 36 percent). In the Navy, 19 percent 

of bases ranked a commander’s priority as a most important criterion, 

while more than two-thirds rated it as moderately important. In the Air 

Force, almost twice as many bases rated commander’s priority as 

moderately important as those that rated it most important (63 percent vs. 

34 percent). 

RPM Assessment System Has 

Several Weaknesses

In our questionnaire, we asked bases to indicate which weaknesses, if any, 

they associated with their facility condition assessment systems. Table 1 

shows the percent of bases in each service that chose a given weakness.

Table 1: Weaknesses in Services’ Condition Assessment Systems

Percent of responding bases that checked weakness as relevant 

to RPM process

Type of weakness Army Air Force Navy Marines

Little or no linkage between condition assessments/ 

determination of requirements and RPM budget estimation 46 29 30 50

Little or no linkage between assessments/requirements and 

RPM allocation 61 39 41 56

Cost estimates generally not accurate 36 25 34 37

Ratings too subjective 30 34 40 56

Using one rating for multiple facilities oversimplifies conditions 51 37 38 37

Ratings not informative 53 32 27 25

Ratings too broad 32 30 28 44

Ratings not timely 15 14 22 44

(continued)
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Source: Responses to question 12, GAO survey. Vertical totals exceed 100 percent because more 

than one choice was possible.

Bases identified several weaknesses in their assessment systems. First, in 

all the services, respondents reported budget-related problems—that there 

is little or no linkage between condition assessments and/or the 

determination of RPM requirements with either RPM budget estimates or 

the final allocation of resources. Base officials told us that they were 

concerned that their major commands and headquarters do not adequately 

consider the bases’ identified needs in preparing RPM budgets or allocating 

resources. Also, 25-37 percent of respondents reported that cost estimates 

generated by condition assessments/requirements determination are 

generally not accurate. 

Second, as also shown in table 1, many of the services’ bases identified four 

problems with their assessment systems. First, the criteria for condition 

assessment are too subjective, involving individual judgment. Second, the 

process of summing up ratings for a broad category (such as all community 

support buildings) with multiple facilities oversimplifies conditions. Third, 

the ratings (e.g., critical or degraded) do not make clear what is wrong with 

a specific facility (making it necessary to go back to the original 

paperwork). Finally, overall condition ratings are too broad (e.g., red, 

amber, and green). Substantial percentages among Army respondents also 

felt that the assessments lacked a robust engineering basis and 

overemphasized facility appearance.

In addition, when asked in a different question about ways to improve the 

RPM process, in each service except the Navy, nearly two-thirds of the 

respondents endorsed the idea of a system that places more emphasis on 

long-term, strategic maintenance planning and de-emphasizes annual 

assessments of facilities. Fifty percent of the Navy respondents endorsed 

this idea. Similarly, there was substantial agreement among bases that 

RPM funding should be based on facilities’ physical deficiencies (Air Force, 

56 percent; Army, 53 percent; Navy, 48 percent; and Marines, 50 percent). 

There was even greater consensus that RPM funding should not be based 

Percent of responding bases that checked weakness as relevant 

to RPM process

Type of weakness Army Air Force Navy Marines

Assessments lack robust engineering base 40 25 18 19

Overemphasis on appearance 38 9 7 12

Others 21 25 18 25
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on a fixed increase above or below the previous year’s level (Air Force, 51 

percent; Army, 59 percent; Navy, 61 percent; and Marines, 87 percent).

Survey responses from bases also indicated that bases lack procedures to 

ensure that assessments of facility conditions are valid and reliable, that is, 

that they actually reflect the facilities’ physical conditions. The responses 

are summarized in table 2.

Table 2: Percent of Bases Using Listed Methods to Ensure Condition Assessments Are Consistent

Source: Responses to question 10, GAO survey.

As table 2 shows, 55 percent of all survey respondents indicated that they 

had no formal standardized procedures to determine the reliability of 

inspectors’ ratings. Four percent reported that they used different 

inspectors for follow-up visits to verify reported problems. 

Lack of Trained Inspectors 

Affects the Quality of RPM 

Assessments

According to our survey and discussions during visits to 35 bases and 

commands, training and resource shortages are an unresolved RPM 

problem for large majorities of service installations, and these problems 

constrain the quality of the assessment process. About 25 percent of 

survey respondents in the Army and the Air Force, 31 percent in the 

Marines, and about 51 percent in the Navy, reported that they do not 

provide or require some form of standardized training for personnel that 

assess the condition of facilities. Bases reported that 83 percent of the 

facility inspectors are building users who are not trained professionals 

such as engineers or craftsmen.17 Given this situation, we question how 

Type of validation procedure Army Air Force Navy Marines

Service-wide

average

No formal procedure used to ensure consistency of assessments, 

other than expertise/training of assessor 56 51 60 38 55

Some number of facilities are reinspected by different assessors to 

determine consistency with initial review 4 3 4 6 4

Random sample of facilities are reinspected by different assessors 23 7 7 19 12

Outside contractors used to validate initial ratings 2 1 6 13 3

17The Air Force bases reported that 86 percent of inspectors were building users; the Army, 82 percent; 

the Navy, 71 percent; and the Marines, 64 percent. Bases were asked to identify the qualifications of 

“persons who determine requirements or conduct assessments/inspections of facility conditions.” 
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these inspectors can be expected to produce reasonably accurate and 

consistent ratings of facilities.

In our survey, many bases also reported shortages of personnel in the RPM 

area, sufficiently trained personnel, and personnel to carry out RPM 

administrative work. The responses are summarized in table 3.

Table 3: Percent of Bases Identifying Training and Resource Constraints

Source: Responses to question 11, GAO survey.

Insufficient RPM Funding The services’ plans for funding RPM could result in the further 

deterioration of infrastructure and an increase in backlogs of repairs. The 

Defense Planning Guidances since 1997 were intended, in part, to get the 

services to increase spending in areas considered as underfunded. The 

April 1999 guidance update for fiscal years 2001–2005 requires that RPM 

funding at least match the annual levels in the fiscal year 2000 President’s 

budget Future Years Defense Program while eliminating a previously 

established goal to meet 75 percent of RPM requirements. However, even if 

the service headquarters comply with the update, they do not plan to fund 

RPM at levels that will meet identified RPM requirements (both critical and 

noncritical). Furthermore, many bases and commands do not request 

funding to meet all their RPM needs and some receive uneven allocations 

of funds for RPM, relative to their identified needs.

Services’ Plans May Lead to 

Deterioration of Facilities and 

Increases in Backlogged Repairs

None of the services’ plans provide sufficient RPM funds to keep the 

backlog of repairs at current levels, as measured by their own rating 

systems. As a result, overall service infrastructure conditions may 

deteriorate over the next 4 to 5 years, although improvements in some 

specific type of facilities, such as barracks, may result from targeted 

spending. Delaying repairs is not cost-effective, as noted at a March 1999 

congressional hearing, where an OSD official remarked that the lack of 

Type of constraint Army Air Force Navy Marines

Service-wide

average

Shortage of personnel for RPM 61 45 35 44 47

Shortage of trained personnel (i.e., with skilled craft or 

engineering expertise) 48 42 28 63 41

Shortage of resources—time, budget—to carry out 

assessments 72 61 71 75 67
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timely maintenance leads to expensive repairs in the future.18 Despite this 

situation, the services plan to fund RPM at varying levels as follows: 

• The Air Force plans no funding for repair projects until fiscal year 2003; 

preventive maintenance is funded at 1 percent of PRV. The Air Force 

estimates that through fiscal year 2005, it will provide funding for only 

40 percent of the repairs identified as critical or degraded. 

• The Navy plans to fund RPM at 1.84 percent of PRV in fiscal year 2001, 

increasing that gradually to 2.59 percent by fiscal year 2005; under this 

plan, critical backlog will increase about 10 percent, from about $2.5 

billion to about $2.75 billion in fiscal year 2003, and then begin to 

decline. While critical backlog in barracks will be virtually eliminated, 

according to the Navy, other facilities will continue to be at C2 and C3 

levels,19 and noncritical backlog is not addressed. 

• The Marine Corps estimates that by fiscal year 2005, backlogged repairs 

will increase 60 percent in dollar value.

• The Army plans to increase RPM spending from 64 percent of its 

requirements to about 84 percent over fiscal years 2000–2005, but 

because of the RPM requirements baseline the Army uses, it is unclear 

that this increase will stabilize backlog.20 

Further backlog increases may produce a bow wave of more costly repairs 

in the future. It was estimated that the services’ reported backlog would 

increase by $2 billion (13.6 percent) in 1 year, to more than $16.6 billion in

18Prepared statement of Randall A. Yim, Acting Deputy Under Secretary of Defense (Installations), to 

Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Readiness, March 10, 1999, p. 6.

19The Navy defines the C3 level as the one at which the condition of facilities permits meeting the 

demands of assigned mission “only marginally,” “but with major difficulty.” According to the Navy, the 

RPM funding levels for fiscal year 2001 are intended to bring aviation, waterfront operations, training 

facilities, and utilities to the C2 level (“has substantially met all demands”), “with all other facility 

categories at the C3 level.” 

20The Army defines its RPM requirement as the “estimated cost for the minimum annual sustainment of 

facilities . . . at existing levels plus the cost of renovations that are not new construction.” The Army 

plans to fund this requirement on an upward slope; it estimates it will reach 84 percent of this 

requirement by 2005. According to the Army, however, it would today take about $14.8 billion to bring 

O&M RPM-funded facilities up to the highest level of its condition assessment system, the ISR. The 

Army requested extra annual funding of $1.4 billion to address these deficiencies, but it is slated to 

receive only $178 million annually, if it becomes available, or about 1.3 percent of total ISR-estimated 

needs. Therefore, it is unclear how backlog will be constrained. See app. I. 
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fiscal year 1999.21 A contributing cause may be, as we reported in 1997, that 

total RPM spending decreased 38 percent during fiscal years 1987-96, while 

the services reduced the square footage they maintained only about

10 percent during the same period.22 

RPM Budgets Not Consistent 

With Requirements

The services’ future plans are a reflection of the services’ long-standing 

practice of failing to fund RPM at levels sufficient to meet identified total 

requirements. Responses to our survey showed little relationship between 

the known, identified RPM needs and the funds requested to address those 

needs. For example, major commands’ overall requested an average of

20.4 percent of their bases’ total identified needs in fiscal year 1997.23 

Similarly, bases reported receiving 16.2 percent of known RPM needs from 

their commands in fiscal year 1997. Of their needs, Army bases reported 

that they received funding equal to 15.4 percent; Air Force bases received 

18.3 percent; Navy bases, 14.2 percent; and Marine Corps, 28 percent. 

According to headquarters facility management officials of each service, 

funding RPM is not their service’s first priority. An Army official described 

it as the last of four priorities. The major commands and bases understand 

that this is the culture for RPM and have acted accordingly—as reflected in 

the data reported to us by the commands and the bases. For example, base 

officials said that in their view service headquarters do not adequately 

consider RPM needs identified during the assessment process in making 

decisions about budget and allocation of resources. In light of the lack of 

apparent connection between the assessments, requests, and actual 

subsequent RPM funding allocations, some base officials questioned the 

wisdom of expending resources on annual assessments. 

21House Report 105-591, p. 48 (1998). We did not validate service backlog estimates. The calculation of 

changes in reported backlogs has become increasingly problematic since the Army’s method is different 

from that of the other services. The Army estimates backlog as the amount required to bring designated 

facilities to a higher level of condition according to its condition assessment system. The Army 

previously defined backlog as the unfunded cost of all identified repairs, regardless of their criticality or 

relevance to mission. The Navy reports only critical-rated project costs as backlog; it excludes 

noncritical “deferrable” repairs. The Air Force categorizes backlogs at three levels and reports only the 

most urgent top two as its backlog.

22Defense Infrastructure: Demolition of Unneeded Buildings Can Help Avoid Operating Costs

(GAO/NSIAD-97-125, May 1997), p. 4.

23Request by Army, 9.3 percent; Air Force, 31 percent; Navy, 28 percent; and Marines, 30 percent. The 

overall average percentage was reduced because the Army’s identified needs were more than double 

the next highest of any service, and Army commands requested 9.3 percent of this total. 
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In addition to the disconnect among RPM needs, requests, and allocations, 

responses to our survey suggest that the division of RPM funds among 

bases has been inequitable. Some bases reported allocations as much as 27 

times the amount that other bases received relative to their needs. For 

example, for fiscal year 1997, bases in one Air Force command reported 

receipt of 7 percent to 191 percent of their needs; bases in one Army 

command reported receipt of 9 percent to 118 percent of their needs; and 

bases in a Navy command reported receipt of 3.5 percent to 39 percent of 

their needs. The scope of these differences suggests that funding is based 

on criteria other than need.

Promising Practices 

Could Help DOD 

Improve RPM 

Management

On the basis of experts’ recommendations and other criteria, we had 

discussions with almost 2 dozen nonmilitary entities about their facility 

assessment, planning, and budgeting systems.24 The other criteria included 

citations in the expert literature of entities with good reputations for RPM 

practices, size of the organization, and comparability of entities to the 

military services in terms of goals of maintaining infrastructure for long 

periods. Of these, we found two that have a set of particularly promising 

practices that bear consideration by the military services. These are (1) 

Brigham Young University’s Capital Needs Analysis (CNA) Center, Provo, 

Utah, and (2) the University of California’s Lawrence Livermore National 

Laboratory (LLNL), Livermore, California.25

Two Organizations’ 

Promising Practices

The practices used by CNA and LLNL are designed to ensure reliable and 

valid property assessments, rational prioritization of needs, equitable 

allocation of resources, and cost-effectiveness in terms of making repairs 

at the appropriate time to avoid the deterioration of facilities and thus more 

expensive repairs.

CNA and LLNL have incorporated the following six practices into facilities 

management, which they say have made maintenance management more 

efficient and cost-effective: 

• established a single system for counting and categorizing inventory;

24App. IX contains a complete list of these experts and the organizations we queried. 

25The CNA Center manages the worldwide facilities of the Church of Latter-day Saints at more than 

7,000 locations, including 4 universities. The LLNL system encompasses 600 diverse buildings

(6.2 million square feet) with a PRV of almost $3 billion.
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• have a single, valid engineering-based system for assessing facility 

conditions, using adequately trained personnel at multiple levels of 

review; 

• prioritized budget allocations based on physical condition, relevance of 

facilities to the mission, and life-cycle costing and budgeting;

• set 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; 

• created incentives to demolish or vacate excess space; and

• restricted the use of RPM funds for other maintenance purposes.

As discussed below, one of these practices—life-cycle planning—requires 

further explanation; and LLNL uses a seventh practice—an annual 

maintenance charge.

Life-Cycle Planning a Key 

Element to Managing Facility 

Maintenance

Life-cycle planning is a core element of LLNL’s and CNA’s management of 

facility maintenance. Under the life-cycle concept, a building’s useful life is 

limited by the durability of facility components such as electrical systems.26 

The two organizations have created databases on facilities and their 

components (such as heating, ventilation, and air conditioning units) based 

on their inspections. With this data, the two organizations can estimate 

facility components’ remaining life cycles (taking into account previous 

results as well) and replace components only when necessary. For 

example, a component such as an air-conditioning system would be 

replaced only when its repair cost exceeded a given percentage of its 

replacement cost or it broke down so often that it was ineffective to repair 

it both in terms of cost and maintenance time. 

With life-cycle data, both organizations can project peaks and valleys of 

future maintenance spending and estimate the RPM funding level required 

to sustain facilities through their life cycles. CNA budgets RPM based on a 

40-year life cycle27 and a 4-year budget that it adjusts annually based on 

condition assessments and the resulting estimated future costs. The center 

states that the transparency of the life-cycle system and its objectivity in 

26Sean C. Rush, Managing the Facilities Portfolio: A Practical Approach to Institutional Facility Renewal

and Deferred Maintenance (Washington, D.C.: National Association of College and University Business 

Officers, 1991), p. 48.

27For more details, see app. VIII and Robert E. Hutson and Frederick M. Biedenweg, “Before the Roof 

Caves In: A Predictive Model for Physical Plant Renewal,” in APPA, Capital Renewal and Deferred

Maintenance in Critical Issues in Facilities Management, vol. 4 (1989), pp. 12-29, and Managing the

Facilities Portfolio, pp. 52-62.
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assessing RPM needs have helped reshape the culture of its component 

institutions; the change has permitted the center to base maintenance on 

real needs rather than on the internal influence of different entities within 

CNA. With this process, CNA as ensured overall systemwide minimum 

adequate conditions for all facilities; entities that choose higher standards 

must use external funding. Further, according to CNA, the use of life-cycle 

analysis has made its budget requests more credible, helping it to obtain 

adequate funding for true RPM needs. 

Even though LLNL operates on a 1-year budget, as do most federal agencies 

and the military, it uses life-cycle data to prioritize RPM spending: that is, 

the components most likely to fail receive funding first. LLNL management 

has used the life-cycle process to demonstrate the need to adequately fund 

preventive maintenance and thus preclude costly component failures. 

Both LLNL and CNA also require departments and programs to use their 

own funds to pay for improvements that do not address a repair or 

maintenance need, such as replacing carpeting that is not worn out. 

One government entity, the Army’s Health Facility Planning Agency 

(HFPA),28 uses life-cycle principles for facility management. HFPA has 

developed a costing and budgeting process based on life cycles that it is 

extending across 1,600 hospitals, clinics, and other health-related facilities 

worldwide. The agency prioritizes RPM spending based on a combined 

assessment of predicted needs over a life cycle, known physical 

deficiencies, and mission impact, and it targets funds for those facilities 

that serve the largest number of people. It assumes a 50-year facility 

replacement cycle and uses life-cycle estimates to optimize investments in 

operations, maintenance, repairs, and minor construction. 29 HFPA reports 

that in the 5 years it has used life-cycle costing and budgeting, it has 

reduced its anticipated major repair costs by 50 percent.30

28HFPA is in charge of RPM for Army hospitals and clinics worldwide; its funding comes from the 

Defense Health Program, not from the Army’s O&M RPM account. HFPA also develops long-term 

strategic RPM plans and the methods used to assess the condition of facilities and allocation priorities.

29Army HFPA mission booklet, p. 4.

30Army HFPA mission booklet, second to last page. We did not validate the claimed savings but find that 

RPM experts emphasize that adequate preventive maintenance can reduce overall RPM costs by 

avoiding costly, catastrophic repairs resulting from neglect. Timely and adequate preventive 

maintenance is widely regarded as essential to making RPM cost-effective.
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Lawrence Livermore’s 

Annual Maintenance Charge

LLNL has another practice that stands out as potentially promising and 

cost-effective in managing facilities. It charges an annual fee of $6 per 

square foot for maintenance and repair, cleaning, grounds care, and waste 

disposal costs. According to Laboratory officials, the charge compares 

favorably to those incurred by other organizations for the same range of 

services. Also, external reviewers have twice examined the LLNL charge 

and found it to have been based on incurred costs. According to 

Laboratory officials, the charge has focused facility users’ attention on 

their maintenance costs and has, as intended, led to reductions in the 

amount of space claimed to be necessary. Through the fee, the Laboratory 

has generated sufficient revenue to pay for repairs, thereby preventing 

increases in its maintenance backlog. It has not reduced the existing 

backlog (at current rates) but does not consider this significant because the 

backlog includes deficiencies in buildings that are excess to its needs and 

that are being maintained at a minimum level. 

Charging for maintenance by the square foot makes clear how much space 

costs, and such a charge could be a required component of any military 

base’s budget to create a minimum annual funding level to ensure adequate 

maintenance. Military entities that use working capital funds have a similar 

system in that RPM and other overhead costs are included in the rates that 

are charged to military customers for services rendered. 

Barriers Hinder the 

Services’ Use of 

Promising Practices

None of the services use all of the promising maintenance practices we 

found at CNA and LLNL, and they would have to overcome several barriers 

to successfully adopt these practices. These barriers include the services’ 

differing cultures related to RPM standards for maintaining facilities, 

budget limitations and the low priority given to fund RPM, the lack of 

comparable and adequate data, the lack of common space allocation 

standards, and legal and administrative rules. These barriers would be a 

significant challenge to overcome; however, other organizations have faced 

similar challenges and met them.

Services’ Cultural Barriers DOD’s 1999 Annual Defense Report recognizes that base facility conditions 

affect quality of life and retention.31 At the same time, each service has 

different standards to which facilities are maintained. As a result, the 

31DOD, 1999 Annual Defense Report, ch. 9, p. 10. 
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services have created widely varying living and working conditions. For 

example, the Air Force emphasizes high-quality conditions in part because 

Air Force bases are collocated with their platforms (their aircraft). 

However, Air Force RPM spending plans, as well as those of the other 

services, permit increases in backlog, including critical-rated repairs, over 

the next several years.

RPM Budgeting Barriers

Migration of O&M RPM Funds The services have long used RPM funds for other O&M purposes (such as 

unfunded emergency military operations), moving funds from the RPM 

account for other purposes considered more pressing. Although the RPM 

funds are generally returned toward the end of the fiscal year, urgent 

repairs may be delayed if contracts are canceled. Thus, the flexibility 

afforded by fungibility makes cost-effective planning and management of 

RPM problematic. Migration or even the outright reduction of planned 

funding also greatly hinders the use of life-cycle costing and budgeting. 

Although the Army’s HFPA uses life-cycle principles to assess its facilities 

and to plan its RPM budgets, its ability to implement its plans was 

compromised in fiscal year 1999 by the arbitrary movement of its RPM 

funds to other accounts. As noted, both LLNL and CNA prohibit RPM fund 

migration because it creates budgeting and contracting instability. 

Budget Process There is little, if any, clear connection between the detailed assessments of 

actual repair needs made at the base level and subsequent RPM budget 

requests or allocations. While RPM needs are reported by bases and major 

commands to headquarters, the service headquarters have funded only 

about one-sixth of the total known RPM needs, according to the budget 

data reported on the surveys. Moreover, we were told that commanders do 

not request the full amounts needed, knowing that funding will never be 

provided at those levels.

Federal Budget Cycle The single-year O&M budget constrains each service; all are barred from 

accumulating reserves to address future, predictable surges in repair 

needs. However, some organizations that are similarly constrained, such as 

LLNL and the Army’s HFPA, use life-cycle analyses for planning purposes 

to set RPM budgets at levels sufficient to address predicted RPM needs. 

Multiple Accounts Military RPM is paid for from multiple accounts, some of which are quite 

large in dollar terms (e.g., military family housing, industrial activities 
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under working capital funds, hospitals and health clinics) and not included 

in O&M. For example, the Army pays for RPM from 27 different accounts; 

O&M RPM accounted for just 55 percent of the Army’s expenses related to 

real property maintenance in fiscal year 1997. In addition, the Center for 

Naval Analyses found that the Navy had 110 different accounts for RPM use 

in 1995. Navy O&M RPM applied to just 45 percent of the estimated total of 

Navy plant value in 1995.32 As a result of these multiple accounts, funding 

for RPM is fragmented, creating problems in tracking how much is actually 

being spent. 

Barriers Created by 

Incomparable, Inaccessible, 

and/or Incomplete Data 

The services have different coding schemes to record their inventory of 

facilities; as a result, this information across the services is not 

comparable. In addition, inventory data are often inaccessible and/or 

incomplete. Only the Army published an annual report—called the Annual 

Summary of Operations (now discontinued)—that specified spending per 

square foot at every base worldwide, by type of facility and by different 

type of maintenance.33 The Army’s database contained separate costs in 

standard metrics (e.g., per square foot, per railroad mile, per square yard of 

pavement) for 113 different facility types and RPM-related activities. The 

Air Force and the Navy (and, the Marines, whose inventory is recorded in 

the Navy’s database) already have large property inventory databases, but 

they are neither on-line nor nearly as detailed as the Army’s in terms of 

RPM-related spending categories.34 In addition, OSD has not required the 

Navy to fully fill out budget exhibit data sheets, making it impossible to 

compare Navy RPM spending to the other services’ spending on a

per square foot basis. 

32Ackerman, Glenn, et.al., The Backlog of Maintenance and Repair: Preventing Its Growth and 

Measuring Its Impact, Center for Naval Analyses (Alexandria, Va.: Apr. 1995), p. 7.

33Department of the Army, Directorates of Public Works, Annual Summary of Operations, for any fiscal 

year through 1997. We found no comparable report by other services. The Army’s Installation Support 

Center reports that the requirement for publishing the annual summary has been withdrawn, as of fiscal 

year 1998, and that no comparable report will be forthcoming. The report was also available on-line.

34Although the Army’s database is more comprehensive, it requires greater clarity regarding who is 

paying for what, and over what time period, since RPM expenditures by DOD entities for which the 

Army has technical responsibility are listed as Army spending, when in fact the spending is by 

non-Army entities and is actually reimbursed. For example, at one base, we found that an intelligence 

entity made extensive renovations through RPM at an annual cost of $8 per square foot (four times 

more than the Army average for comparable space), and the cost was recorded as Army RPM spending. 

Although reimbursed, the spending was averaged into Army accounts, and the $8 cost noticeably 

increased the average cost per square foot for both that base and for the command in which its 

spending was averaged. 
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Without valid, reliable data, OSD and the services cannot adequately 

evaluate the cost-effectiveness of real property management or even know 

how much is being spent on RPM. A March 1998 Logistics Management 

Institute analysis found that during the Quadrennial Defense Review 

(QDR), DOD analysts and managers often worked with databases 20 years 

behind modern systems and practices used in private industry. The 

Institute noted that the databases “lacked the capability, flexibility, and 

responsiveness to meet analysts’ needs.”35

In April 1999, OSD issued a cost factors handbook for facilities that 

reduced about 3,000 service facility category codes to about 400 and that 

reports average RPM costs per square foot for each of these codes, as well 

as new construction costs per square foot. These were based on 

commercial cost-estimating guidelines compiled by multiple expert 

sources, including the Building Owners Management Association, the 

International Facilities Management Association, R.S. Means, Whitestone, 

and the Army Cost and Economic Analysis Center.36 OSD intends to use 

these cost factors, once validated, to show the services the level of 

spending required to sustain facilities. However, the services have not yet 

decided whether to accept the revised facility category codes.

Barrier Due to Lack of Common 

Space Allocation Standards 

The services set their own space standards for facilities and workers (e.g., 

the Army allocates 162 square feet per administrative worker; the Navy and 

the Marines allocate 110 to150 square feet). Without common standards, it 

is difficult to constrain the use of space, including identifying “excessive” 

use. (The Army uses space standards to determine RPM funding and 

penalizes bases that have excess space.) Although some facilities will 

always be service-unique (e.g., nuclear submarine repair facilities; 

intercontinental ballistic missile silos), many (such as barracks, standard 

classrooms, administrative space, and family housing) are common across 

the services. 

Legal and Administrative 

Barriers 

Certain laws and administrative restrictions can hamper the services’ 

ability to cost-effectively address RPM issues, even though they have other 

35Gerald W. Westerbeck and Jordan W. Cassell, Infrastructure Planning and Real Property Management: 

New Facility Category Coding (Logistics Management Institute, McLean, Va.: Mar. 1998).

36DOD Facilities Cost Factors Handbook, DOD (Apr. 1999), p. 2.
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important purposes. For example, the National Historic Preservation Act37

places restrictions on the demolition of some buildings and imposes 

potentially costly standards of repair on some historic structures. At one 

base, for example, decorative fireplace tiles in officers’ homes were 

deemed historic, and replacements had to be ordered from England 

because no source for them could be found in the United States. At 

another base, windowsills for “historic” buildings required repair by 

craftsmen with special certification. However, the base could not afford 

the specialist craftsmens’ rates and chose to let the sills continue to fall 

apart. Under the McKinney Act,38 the services must rate properties slated 

for demolition in the contiguous 48 states, Alaska, and Hawaii, to 

determine their potential utility to house the homeless; in fiscal year 1998, 

the Army rated nearly 9,900 buildings for this purpose, including facilities 

at remote locations. 

Conclusions and 

Recommendations

In the absence of a sound DOD strategy for managing the upkeep of its 

infrastructure, the services use different methods and criteria for assessing 

the condition of properties, prioritizing maintenance and repair needs, and 

allocating resources. Without standard assessment criteria, DOD cannot 

compare maintenance costs or facility conditions across the services. This 

hampers the development of a sound strategy for managing the upkeep of 

the military’s infrastructure. Moreover, the services cannot ensure that 

their ratings of facilities’ conditions or urgent repairs are valid or reliable 

either at individual bases or within each of the services because facility 

assessors do not apply their service’s criteria consistently. As a result, DOD 

does not have accurate and comparable databases on facility conditions, 

mission impact, and repair costs, and the Congress cannot be assured that 

it is funding maintenance and repairs that will provide the best return on its 

investment. 

Bases report little connection between their efforts and actual budget 

allocations from their headquarters. Furthermore, RPM funds are 

reallocated for non-RPM purposes. Given the uncertainty and instability in 

RPM funding, contracting and rational planning for maintenance are made 

37The National Historic Preservation Act (16 U.S.C. §470h-2) governs the preservation of historic 

buildings and can prevent the services from demolishing a historic building. 

38The McKinney Act (16 U.S.C. §11411) requires DOD to work with the Department of Housing and 

Urban Development to determine whether unused or underused facilities scheduled to be demolished 

are suitable for use by the homeless.
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more difficult. When maintenance is deferred, facilities further deteriorate 

and become more expensive to repair. 

DOD has the opportunity to improve its infrastructure management 

through the adoption of promising practices already in place in the private 

sector. We recognize that barriers to implementing these practices exist 

and that DOD will face challenges in overcoming some of these barriers. 

However, in the long term, the adoption of sound standards, measures, and 

processes will help DOD maximize its RPM investment and ensure that 

needed facilities are adequately maintained, and those that are unneeded 

are removed from inventory. Development and issuance of a meaningful, 

comprehensive cross-service strategic plan is essential to eliminating the 

disarray in the management of the services’ infrastructure. Such a strategic 

plan should provide for effective and equitable methods to connect actual 

repair needs to budget allocations to repair and maintain those facilities 

that are essential to the multiple missions of most bases, from operations 

to community welfare.

To improve DOD’s RPM management and address barriers to change, we 

recommend that the Secretary of Defense 

1. fund the development of DOD’s strategic facilities plan and 

2. develop a cross-service integrated strategy, in close coordination and 

consultation with the heads of facilities infrastructure of each service, to 

comprehensively address RPM issues; the strategy should provide, at a 

minimum, for

• uniform standards that set the minimum condition in which military 

facilities are to be maintained and standardized condition assessment 

criteria;

• standard criteria by which the services are to allocate space for different 

types of facilities (e.g., barracks, classrooms, administrative buildings) 

and against which RPM funding allocations will be measured;

• standard criteria for inventorying DOD and service property (except for 

relatively few service-unique facilities);

• computerized, on-line inventory and cost databases that permit 

meaningful comparisons, across and within the services, of RPM 

spending by type, size, and location of facility and RPM activity, 

including direct data access by OSD; 

• standard cost accounting methods by which the services will record and 

track their RPM expenditures so that they and DOD know how much is 
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being spent, where it is being spent, and on what type of facility or 

RPM-activity it is being spent, by common metric, using the Army’s 

Directorate of Public Works’ Annual Summary of Operations report 

(published through 1997) as a potential model;

• the identification of priorities for the services to use to explicitly link 

needs assessments with resource allocations and tracking systems that 

show whether or not identified high priority needs are allocated the 

funds intended for them by the Congress; 

• mandated training standards (curriculum and hours) for all those 

involved in condition assessment and ratings of repair urgency; and

• the services’ adoption of a comprehensive, valid, engineering-based 

assessment system that incorporates life-cycle planning into facilities 

maintenance based on the well-developed methods already used by 

nonmilitary entities.

In addition, the Department’s RPM strategy needs to deal with the issue of 

funding instability, particularly the migration of RPM funds to non-RPM 

uses and the lack of RPM reserve funds. In this regard, the Department 

should consider the feasibility of adopting the promising practices 

identified in this report. To the extent that adoption of any of these 

practices would require changes to existing law, we recommend that the 

Department develop a legislative proposal for submission to the Congress. 

Agency Comments and 

Our Evaluation

DOD stated that, overall, our report provides a good review of the 

Department’s real property maintenance program. In addition, it stated 

that our survey results provided the Department feedback on efforts to 

improve existing policy and methodologies. 

DOD concurred or partially concurred with 9 of 12 components of two 

overall recommendations, nonconcurred with 3 of the 12, and provided a 

number of comments that it characterized as technical. Where appropriate, 

we made minor changes and clarifications in responses to these technical 

comments. However, we believe that some of the agency’s comments 

warrant further discussion. 

DOD believes that our report does not give credit to the services for their 

accomplishments in better defining their RPM requirements and 

determining RPM funding allocation. DOD also stated that it has 

previously examined some of our recommendations but did not implement 

them because—in the case of condition assessment surveys—of their high 

cost or because of “policy decisions regarding devolution of DOD-wide 
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standards or establishment of working capital funding.” DOD also 

expressed the view that “anomalies of the survey results may be 

attributable to misunderstandings of the survey instrument by installation 

level personnel rather than an indicator of a lack of clear policy for field 

activity personnel.” 

With regard to crediting the services’ efforts to better define RPM 

requirements, we recognized the services’ efforts in our report. We analyze 

the systems used by each service in detail, with a separate appendix on 

each system, citing the strengths we found, such as the Army’s annually 

published RPM inventory database. We also noted advanced techniques for 

RPM used by the Army’s Health Facility Planning Agency, which could be 

used as a model by other service branches and other Army components. 

With regard to the cost of implementing a DOD-wide standardized 

Condition Assessment Survey (CAS), we found that no cost comparison 

had been made by DOD of a CAS to the systems used by the services when 

a CAS was field tested in the early 1990s. Moreover, we note that without a 

standard CAS, conditions, mission impact, and inventory data cannot be 

compared from one service to another and, therefore, DOD cannot 

prioritize the RPM needs of the services. 

We do not agree that answers to our questionnaire were due to 

“misunderstandings of the survey instrument.” DOD does not cite any 

particular issue on which they believe personnel were confused by the 

survey. In order to eliminate potential misunderstanding in the survey 

instrument, we pretested it at 15 Army, Navy, and Air Force bases and 

commands, and provided for its review by each services’ headquarters 

facility management staffs. Revisions were made based on feedback from 

the field pretests and from the headquarters’ RPM experts. Moreover, at 

some bases, facility management personnel told us orally that they found 

the regulations and policies confusing and contradictory. 

DOD nonconcurred with our recommendations that 

1. DOD’s strategy for RPM should, at a minimum, provide for standard cost 

accounting methods by which the services will record and track their RPM 

expenditures, stating that “the level of recommended detail is too great to 

provide a meaningful evaluation;” 
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2. DOD should consult with the Congress on the most feasible method by 

which to restrict the use of RPM funds for non-RPM purposes, stating that 

commanders need the maximum flexibility possible; and 

3. DOD should mandate training standards (curriculum and hours) for all 

those involved in RPM assessments, stating that it is not certain such 

training is needed and is unwilling, without further study, to commit 

resources to it.

We continue to believe that requiring standard cost accounting methods to 

track how much each service is spending on RPM and by what type of 

facility will help DOD provide oversight responsibility. Also, we believe 

that meaningful evaluation of the comparative costs of maintaining the 

same types of facilities across services (e.g., barracks, classrooms, and 

administrative space) requires the kind of detail provided in the Army’s 

Directorate of Public Works annual reports. The same data are required for 

major commands to be able to compare expenditures of their bases. With 

current databases and budget data, it is not possible to readily compare 

RPM spending per square foot for like facilities across the services. OSD’s 

new facility category code system, which includes industry cost standards, 

will have no clear purpose unless these costs—which are per square foot—

can be compared to what military installations spend. The Army’s 

databases permit such comparisons and are on-line; these should be used 

as the model for the other services. 

We note that many officials told us migration of funds out of RPM for other 

purposes routinely disrupts rational planning and contracting. Therefore, 

while we appreciate the need for flexibility, we continue to believe that 

fund migration is an issue for DOD to address. As the National Research 

Council notes, “Spending below targets set for normal maintenance . . . may 

substantially increase costs of repair, replacement, and loss of use, costs 

that might have been avoided.”39 It would appear, therefore, that better 

management of fund migration could prove cost-effective in both the short 

and long term. We have modified our recommendation to suggest that 

DOD consider the feasibility of adopting the promising practices identified 

in this report and seek legislative changes, if needed. 

Concerning the need for DOD to mandate standard training for personnel 

conducting RPM assessments, we note that common training will help 

39Quoted in DOD Facilities Cost Factors Handbook, Version 1.0, April 1999, p. 3.
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ensure consistency in the assessment of facility conditions and RPM needs. 

The Navy noted in its technical comments that its guidance on RPM 

inspector qualifications “addresses such things as technical trade 

background, formal education in theory, experience in maintenance and 

repair operations, and skills in inspection techniques, planning and 

estimating, maintenance standards, and building codes.” This guidance 

could well serve as the model for a DOD-wide standard for all facility 

inspectors.

DOD’s comments and our evaluation can be found in appendix XI. 

We conducted our review from May 1997 to March 1999 in accordance with 

generally accepted government auditing standards.

We are sending copies of this report to the Honorable William S. Cohen, 

Secretary of Defense; the Honorable William J. Lynn III, Under Secretary of 

Defense (Comptroller); the Honorable F. Whitten Peters, Secretary of the 

Air Force; the Honorable Louis Caldera, Secretary of the Army; the 

Honorable Richard Danzig, Secretary of the Navy; General James L. Jones, 

Commandant of the Marine Corps; the Honorable Jacob J. Lew, Director, 

Office of Management and Budget; and interested congressional 

committees and members. We will also make copies available to others 

upon request. 

Please contact me at (202) 512-3092 if you or your staff have any questions 

concerning this report. GAO contacts and staff acknowledgments are 

listed in appendix XII.

Kwai-Cheung Chan 

Director, Special Studies 

 and Evaluations
Page 29 GAO/NSIAD-99-100 Real Property Management
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Contents

Letter 1

Appendix I

Army Strategy, 

Methods, and Criteria 

for Determining Real 

Property Maintenance 

Requirements

36

Background 36

Army RPM Funding Strategy 37

Army Systems to Determine RPM Needs 38

ISR System 39

Facility Inspections 42

ISR Ratings 42

Review and Validation Process 46

Resource Allocation 51

Bases Visited 54

Appendix II

Air Force Strategy, 

Methods and Criteria 

for Determining Real 

Property Maintenance 

Requirements

56

Background 56

Air Force RPM Funding Strategy 58

FIM Assessment System 59

Allocation of RPM Resources 70

Bases Visited 72

Appendix III

Navy Strategy, 

Methods, and Criteria 

for Determining Real 

Property Maintenance 

Requirements

74

Background 74

Navy RPM Funding Strategy 75

Methods and Criteria to Determine Maintenance Needs 76

Validation of Inspection Results 81

Allocation of RPM Resources 83

Bases Visited 86
Contents

Page 31 GAO/NSIAD-99-100 Real Property Management

Appendix IV

Marine Corps’ Strategy, 

Methods, and Criteria 

for Determining Real 

Property Maintenance 

Requirements

88

Background 88

RPM Funding Strategy 88

RPM Assessment System 89

CORRS: A New System 89

Survey 93

RPM Needs Exceed Requests Fivefold 93

Bases Visited 93

Appendix V

Summary Comparison 

of Service Methods and 

Criteria

95

Appendix VI

Criteria for Allocation 

of Funds

96

Appendix VII

Percent of Value 

Measures for 

Estimating RPM 

Requirements

99

Appendix VIII

Promising Practices in 

Facilities Management

106

Sources of Expertise on Promising Practices 106

Criteria Used to Select Entities for Interviews 107

Experts and Expert Organizations Consulted 107

Entities Contacted for Information on Management Practices 108

Fragmented Knowledge Base of Promising Practices 109

Federal Facilities Council’s Promising Practices 110

Life-Cycle Principles of Facility Management 111

Preventive Maintenance and Life-Cycle Management 113

Summary: Identified Promising Practices 118
Contents

Page 32 GAO/NSIAD-99-100 Real Property Management

Appendix IX

Objectives, Scope, and 

Methodology

119

Scope of the Study 119

Methodology 119

Appendix X

Our Survey on Real 

Property Maintenance 

for Installations

127

Appendix XI

Comments From the 

Department of Defense

136

Appendix XII

GAO Contacts and 

Staff 

Acknowledgments

149

Bibliography 150

Related GAO Products 160

Tables Table 1: Weaknesses in Services’ Condition Assessment Systems 10

Table 2: Percent of Bases Using Listed Methods to Ensure Condition 

Assessments Are Consistent 12

Table 3: Percent of Bases Identifying Training and Resource

Constraints 13

Table I.1: Steps to Ensure Assessments Are Valid 47

Table I.2: Steps to Ensure Assessments Are Consistent 47

Table I.3: Army Installation Views on Constraints 49

Table I.4: How Army Bases Would Change Methods 50

Table I.5: Fiscal Year 1997 Requirements Versus Funding Requested 52

Table I.6: Army Bases’ Views on ISR Weaknesses 53
Contents

Page 33 GAO/NSIAD-99-100 Real Property Management

Table I.7: How Army Bases Would Change the Funding Allocation

Process 54

Table II.1: Air Force FIM Spending Plans Versus Needs Fiscal Years 

1998-2005 58

Table II.2: Fiscal Year 1998 Air Force FIM Project Ratings and Cost 60

Table II.3: Steps to Ensure FIM Project Ratings Are Valid 66

Table II.4: Steps to Ensure Consistency 67

Table II.5: Factors That Constrain Assessment Quality 67

Table II.6: How Bases Would Change Determining RPM Requirements 68

Table II.7: Additional Assessment Tools That Supplement FIM 68

Table II.8: Top Five Frequently Cited Weaknesses 71

Table II.9: How Bases Would Change Funding Allocations 72

Table III.1: Type and Frequency of Inspection 80

Table III.2: Steps to Ensure Inspections Are Valid 82

Table III.3: Steps to Ensure Consistency 82

Table III.4: Factors That Constrain the Quality of Assessments 83

Table III.5: Top Weaknesses in RPM System 85

Table III.6: Bases’ Choices to Proposed Changes in Allocation Process 86

Table IV.1: Dimensions and Ratings in CORRS 91

Table IV.2: How Installations Would Change Methods to Determine 

Requirements 93

Table V.1: Basic Characteristics of Services’ Condition Assessment

Systems 95

Table VI.1: Ranking of Factors Affecting Allocation of Funds,

by Service 96

Table IX.1: Responses to GAO Questionnaires 121

Figures Figure 1: Bases’ Ratings of Importance of Criteria in Worst-Level

Ratings 9

Figure VIII.1: Life-Cycle Model for a Single Building 112

Figure VIII.2: Effect of Adequate and Timely Maintenance and

Repairs on the Service Life of a Building 114
Contents

Page 34 GAO/NSIAD-99-100 Real Property Management

Abbreviations

AIS Annual Inspection Summary

ANG Air National Guard

ASIP Army Stationing and Installation Plan

BASEREP Shore Base Readiness Report

BCE base civil engineer

CAS Condition Assessment Survey

CEAC Cost and Economic Analysis Center

CFA Commander’s Facility Assessment

CNA Capital Needs Assessment

CNET Chief, Naval Education and Training

CPV current plan value

DOD Department of Defense

FCG facility category group

FDM facilities degradation module

FII facility investment index

FIM facility investment metric

FOMA facility operation and maintenance activities

HFPA Health Facility Planning Agency

ISR Installation Status Report

LLNL Lawrence Livermore National Labortory

LMI Logistics Management Institute

MARM Mission Area Rating Matrix

NASA National Aeronautics and Space Administration

NAVFAC Naval Facilities Engineering Command

NRC National Research Council

O&M operation and maintenance

OSD Office of the Secretary of Defense

PCMS Projects by Contract Management System

PM preventive maintenance

PML preventive maintenance level

PRV plant replacement value

PWC Public Works Center 

QDR Quadrennial Defense Review

RDT&E research, development, test, and evaluation

RPLANS Real Property Planning and Analysis System

RPM real property maintenance

USAF U.S. Air Force

USMC U.S. Marine Corps
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Appendix I

Army Strategy, Methods, and Criteria for 

Determining Real Property Maintenance 

Requirements ApenxIdi

In this appendix we discuss the Army’s strategy, methods and criteria for 

determining its real property maintenance (RPM) requirements and for 

allocating resources to those needs. We also include the responses to our 

questionnaire on RPM-related issues that we sent to Army bases.1

 In 

particular, we examine a key part of the Army’s system for evaluating 

infrastructure conditions and estimating costs for facility sustainment and 

improvement, the Installation Status Report (ISR), Part I--Infrastructure. 

(A Part II--Environment--addresses compliance with environmental rules 

and regulations and was outside the scope of this report. Part III, under 

development, addresses performance standards.) For brevity, we refer 

henceforth to part I as the “ISR.” 

Background The Army owns and manages a very large amount of real property at about 

1,900 installations and sites worldwide (including active, Reserve, and 

National Guard-related sites), on 14.1 million acres of land. This property 

is managed by over 200 parent installations in 15 major commands.2

 As of 

September 30, 1997, the real property at these locations consisted of 

178,256 buildings (including 53,999 family housing buildings), with 

1.039 billion square feet and an average age of 40 years. The Army’s 

infrastructure also includes 3,016 miles of railroads, 965 vehicular bridges, 

623 central heating plants, and 77,114 miles of surfaced areas (such as 

roads). The Army estimates its plant replacement value (PRV) at about 

$212 billion.3

 (We did not verify the accuracy of the Army’s inventory 

report, or its PRV estimate. However, in 1998, we reported that, with 

regard to all of DOD’s property, plant and equipment, DOD’s Inspector 

General stated that control procedures over assets were inadequate and 

cause inaccurate reporting of real property, capital leases, construction in 

progress, inventory, and preparation of footnotes.)4

Army RPM is funded by several sources. The Army’s operation and 

maintenance (O&M) account is the largest funding source, representing 

about 55 percent of the total real property maintenance activity costs in 

1

The survey, which asked about bases’ facility inventory, RPM processes and funding, was sent to 180 

Army bases; 149 returned the questionnaires, or 83 percent. See app. X for a copy of the survey.

2

Parent installations have responsibility for managing and supporting several subinstallations. 

3

Army Directorate of Public Works, Annual Summary of Operations, Fiscal Year 1997, vol. I, p. 2-13. The 

Army defines PRV as the cost of replacing current facilities with state-of-the-art facilities. Ibid., p. 1-3.

4

See Deferred Maintenance Reporting: Challenges to Implementation (GAO/AIMD-98-42, Jan. 30, 1998, 

p. 32).
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Requirements

Page 37 GAO/NSIAD-99-100 Real Property Management

fiscal year 1997. The remainder is funded through other sources, such as 

the Army’s Defense Health Program, Military Family Housing, and Army 

Working Capital Fund. The Army's fiscal year 1999 O&M RPM 

appropriation was $1.446 billion (active, Reserves and National Guard). 

Currently, the Army estimates that it would cost $14.8 billion to improve all 

O&M RPM-funded facilities from their current levels to the “C-1” (i.e., best 

level) in the Army’s condition assessment report, the ISR.5

 

Army RPM Funding 

Strategy

The Army defines its RPM requirement as the amount needed “for the 

minimum annual sustainment of facilities” to maintain them “at existing 

levels plus the cost of renovations that are not new construction.” 

Estimates are adjusted annually for inflation.

For fiscal year 1999, the Army’s RPM appropriation was $1.446 billion, or

64 percent of the $2.26 billion estimated as its requirement to sustain 

facilities, according to the Office of the Assistant Chief of Staff for 

Installations Management (ACSIM), the office responsible for the Army’s 

infrastructure.6

 However, the Army currently plans to increase O&M RPM 

funding over the next 6 years to about 84 percent of its RPM sustainment 

requirement, which is expected to increase to about $2.7 billion. As a 

result, annual O&M RPM funding would increase 53 percent (in nominal 

terms) from $1.446 billion in fiscal year 1999 to $2.21 billion in fiscal year 

2005, if the Department of the Army provides the funds. However, these 

plans appear uncertain, as the Army reduced the goal from 91 percent in 

March 1999 to 84 percent in August 1999.

The Army’s RPM sustainment requirement is only a fraction of the amount 

required to fix all identified repair needs, as of fiscal year 1997, that Army 

bases reported in responses to our survey. Army bases reported to us that 

they had $12.4 billion in outstanding repair needs, compared with the 

estimated Army-wide sustainment requirement of about $2.26 billion, or 

less than one-fifth that amount.7

 The responses were from 83 percent of 

5

This amount is different than backlog of maintenance and repair, which is the estimated cost to fix all 

identified repairs, regardless of urgency or mission relevance. The Army no longer reports this as 

backlog, rather, it cites the ISR-generated estimate.

6

Figures cited are for all Army components—active, Reserve, and National Guard.

7

The $2.26 billion was calculated by taking the Army’s statement that $1.446 billion in fiscal year 1999 

RPM funding represented meeting 64 percent of its RPM requirement. One hundred percent would be 

$2.26 billion.
Appendix I

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Determining Real Property Maintenance 

Requirements

Page 38 GAO/NSIAD-99-100 Real Property Management

the Army bases to which we sent questionnaires, suggesting that additional 

needs were not reported, given 17 percent nonrespondents. Therefore, 

while the Army plans to significantly increase its RPM funding, the 

53-percent increase by 2005 does not appear to come near to fully funding 

currently identified repair needs. The Army states that because it has other 

priorities, it chooses to accept a risk of deterioration in some facilities in 

order to fund these other priorities. 

In addition, the Army’s ACSIM stated that it would cost $14.8 billion to 

bring all O&M RPM-funded facilities from the current ISR levels, ranging 

from C-4 to C-2, up to the highest (C-1). (The ISR software estimates costs 

for going from one C-level to a higher C-level.) The ISR estimate is not the 

same as backlog; these are different ways to estimate RPM needs. The 

Army used the $14.8 billion as the basis for competing for “unfinanced 

requirements” in fiscal year 1999, requesting one-tenth that amount

($1.48 billion) from the Office of the Secretary of Defense, if extra monies 

became available. However, the Army stated that OSD reduced the 

requested amount by first cutting it to the estimated cost of bringing 

facilities up to the C-2 level (versus C-1), which was $7.12 billion, and 

spreading that over 40 years. As a result, the Army’s “request” for unfunded 

requirements was reduced from $1.48 billion to $178 million.

Army Systems to 

Determine RPM Needs

 The Army uses a number of computerized databases to determine its RPM 

needs and allocate resources to them. These have been referred to as the 

Infrastructure Decision Architecture (IDA). This architecture assists “in 

management and funding decisions and enables leadership to implement 

non-incremental, comprehensive decisions on Army infrastructure 

management issues.”8

 The IDA databases and related decision support 

systems include:

• An on-line computerized database of the total inventory of real property, 

called the Integrated Facilities System. 

• The Real Property Planning and Analysis System (RPLANS), a decision 

support system that provides a 7-year estimate of needed space at 

installations, based on predetermined space allowances for each type of 

Army facility. RPLANs calculate how much excess (or deficit) space an 

8

Army contractor paper for FDM, p. 1. According to the Army, the term IDA is not currently widely 

used, but that no other term has replaced it to describe the “broad conceptual framework” of databases 

and decision support systems that make up the IDA. 
Appendix I

Army Strategy, Methods, and Criteria for 

Determining Real Property Maintenance 

Requirements

Page 39 GAO/NSIAD-99-100 Real Property Management

installation has or will have by comparing existing and projected space 

to the permitted amount.

• The Army Stationing and Installation Plan (ASIP), which defines and 

projects installation population, also over a 7-year period, based upon 

Army force structure databases. 

• The facilities degradation module (FDM), a computerized database that 

predicts the life-cycle condition of facilities over specified time periods, 

given different funding levels for maintenance, based in part on data 

from 80,000 Army facilities. 

• The ISR, a facilities rating database that includes software that 

generates condition ratings and estimated cost of repairs of facility 

categories. 

• The Headquarters Executive Information System (HQEIS), an on-line 

decision support tool that allows users to access a variety of 

institutional data sources and to view it at multiple levels (Army 

headquarters, major commands, bases, etc.). Data that are on-line 

include the Headquarters ISR (summary data), Integrated Facilities 

System, and the Army Stationing and Installation Plan.9

The Army emphasizes that it manages property, including maintenance and 

repair, by using all of these systems. The ISR was the central focus of our 

analysis because the Army uses it to assess the condition of its facilities 

and its data can be used to predict the consequences of funding at levels 

below (or above) those required to maintain facilities in their current state.

ISR System Implementation of part I of the ISR began in 1995. It assesses the physical 

condition of certain facilities or facility category groups (FCG) using the 

same standards. 

The objectives of the ISR are to: 

1. assess and report the current condition of Army facilities and 

nonbuilding infrastructure (such as roads), measured in terms of quality 

and quantity; 

2. provide Army-wide indicators on such things as conditions, trends, 

facility shortfalls, and deviations from standards; 

9

We did not verify the reliability of the data in the various Army databases. Access to the HQEIS data 

requires a password.
Appendix I

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Determining Real Property Maintenance 

Requirements

Page 40 GAO/NSIAD-99-100 Real Property Management

3. assist in allocating resources and prioritizing infrastructure programs; 

4. provide information for determining changes in Army policy or needs for 

new policies; and 

5. provide information for use in stationing and force structure decisions.

The majority of Army installations are required to complete the ISR. (In 

general, only installations scheduled for closure under the Base 

Realignment and Closure program or coded as “Lay Away” are exempt.) 

However, government-owned, contractor-operated installations have not 

conducted ISR assessments, contrary to ISR instructions.

Management of ISR System The ACSIM is responsible for overall ISR policies, standards, and 

procedures. Army headquarters develops facility standards and issues 

guidance to meet Army-wide infrastructure goals and objectives. Army 

major commands are responsible for program management and 

administration. Each command is to ensure that the ISR is implemented at 

the installations it controls and that the bases comply with ISR 

requirements. Each installation commander is responsible for completing 

the ISR as required, certifying the results, and forwarding it to the major 

commands. Parent installations are responsible for ISR assessments at 

their subinstallations.

ISR Structure To achieve the objectives of the ISR, Army installations annually evaluate 

the quality (physical condition) and quantity of real property and enter the 

results into a database. These data, along with data from the other Army 

databases, are used to generate overall ratings for each base, including the 

extent to which facilities meet unit needs, Army standards, and mission 

requirements. The ISR system includes software that estimates the costs to 

improve facilities from the level they are rated at in the ISR up to any 

higher level—such as from C-4 to C-3, or C-4 to C-1.

ISR results are generated for four infrastructure levels:

• 5 broad top-level areas (mission, mobility, housing, community, and 

installation support);

• 28 categories; 

• 60 subcategories; and 

• 219 facility category groups.
Appendix I

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Determining Real Property Maintenance 

Requirements

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In some categories, there is no FCG lower than the subcategory; this is the 

case for unaccompanied personnel housing (i.e., barracks.) The 

installations evaluate facilities by FCG and these ratings form the basis for 

all ratings/calculations rolled-up in the ISR software to subcategory, 

category, and area levels.

ISR Assessment Criteria The ISR established common Army-wide standards for assessing facility 

quality. Criteria for quality evaluations are contained in separate standards 

booklets for most of the 60 ISR subcategories (e.g. operations buildings, 

small arms ranges, maintenance facilities, and barracks). Facility groups 

are rated in terms of green, amber, or red:

• red indicates dysfunctional or substandard, “overall poor condition”;

• amber indicates that the facility “does not fully meet standards,” but is in 

“overall fair condition”; and

• green indicates that it “complies with standards” and is in “overall good 

condition.”

These color levels are further defined in considerable detail in ISR 

standards booklets with narrative statements that characterize the area 

being assessed and, in most cases, pictures that illustrate the general 

condition for each rating level. For example, four criteria are spelled out 

for each of the 3 color levels for the lobby of an administrative facility; 

there are eight criteria for a green rating for building exteriors. Criteria are 

written in layman’s terms, such as “building walls, windows and doors in 

sound condition”; “entry in good repair”; “inadequate exterior signage.” 

According to the Army, the ISR “articulates facility conditions and RPM 

requirements through an affordable and understandable process.” “It 

provides data showing possible problem areas and trends, which at HQDA 

[Headquarters, Department of the Army] level, influence development of 

facility investment programs.”10

Only permanent and semi-permanent assets identified in the ISR database 

are to be assessed. Temporary structures are generally not rated because 

they are not considered long-term solutions to facility requirements. 

Certain other facilities at installations using he ISR also are not required to 

be rated. For example, World War II wooden structures, even if in use, do 

10Army technical comments on the draft of this report.

Lert
Appendix I

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Requirements

Page 42 GAO/NSIAD-99-100 Real Property Management

not have to be rated under ISR because they are expected to be 

demolished.

Facility Inspections Under the ISR system, inspections can be done by anyone designated to do 

the ratings, including engineers, contractors, and building users 

(occupants). The installation’s ISR coordinator identifies which offices are 

responsible for base facilities within the ISR categories and each unit 

designates who will inspect what facilities. According to ISR instructions, 

the inspectors should be the primary users of the facility and 

knowledgeable of the facilities’ condition and uses. For example, the base 

facilities maintenance staff (engineers or other skilled craftsmen from 

public works or the engineering offices) should rate all base utilities and 

other facilities managed by this office.

Having building users do the inspections is intentional, according to 

headquarters staff, as this is more likely in the Army’s view to ensure that 

those most familiar with a facility’s condition over time are doing the 

rating. Among the 149 Army installations that responded to our 

questionnaire, 82 percent of inspectors were described as building users.

Inspector Training Each inspector should receive a short training session on the facility 

inspection process. Headquarters level training is provided for the 

installation ISR team/coordinator. These staff can then train unit 

inspectors at the base. This training generally includes a briefing (about

2 hours), a video, and a self-teaching computer-based training package. 

According to some facilities management personnel, it is challenging to get 

all inspectors to attend training and the preponderance of building-user 

inspectors change annually.

ISR Ratings The ISR requires inspectors to rate the physical condition of facilities 

against Army-wide standards/criteria for that type facility. For example, 

the ISR Standards Booklet 5 contains rating criteria for maintenance 

facilities that apply to 14 FCGs, including aircraft maintenance facilities, 

vehicle maintenance shops, and depot ammunition maintenance shops. 

Inspectors are to use the appropriate standards booklet to evaluate 

facilities and record the results on an inspection worksheet. In some 

instances, if a required “critical” component, such as a restroom, is not in 

the facility, the item is rated red automatically. Similarly, a barracks cannot 
Appendix I

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Requirements

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be rated above red if it has a common latrine. The overall facility rating 

cannot exceed that of the worst critical component. 

A separate inspection and rating is to be prepared for each purpose/FCG in 

the same building; these are not averaged to produce one rating for the 

facility. Therefore, if a building/facility were multipurpose, there would not 

be a building-specific rating. Separate color ratings for each FCG are to be 

entered into the ISR database. However, at one of the Army sites we 

visited, one unit did not complete separate ratings for each FCG within a 

building. The unit inspector said that if the building housed more than one 

FCG, the user who occupied the largest part of the facility also included the 

other area in his rating (in other words, there was a “building” inspection).

When there are a number of similar facilities for the same FCG, a 

representative sample may be taken if the number is large enough and the 

facilities are of the same design. The color ratings of the sample are to be 

proportionately entered into the ISR database to generate an overall 

C-rating for the FCG. For example, in fiscal year 1996, one base we visited 

inspected about 5 percent of family housing units (139 out of 2,924) 

because these were all from the same FCG.

As we observed during our site visits, most base ISR files contained the 

Summary Mission facilities worksheets, and, in some cases, supporting 

documentation (the pertinent standards booklets with checkmarks of each 

related element indicating the reason(s) for the inspection rating results). 

At one base, many files also contained a copy of the engineering report on 

the building’s structural condition (e.g., walls, window, mechanical, 

electrical, and fire alarm). 

Once the inspection worksheets are completed, they are returned to the 

installation ISR coordinator. Based on discussions during our site visits, 

the ISR coordinating office generally reviews selected worksheets to 

ensure they accurately reflect the conditions of the facilities. The 

reviewers focus on any significant changes or apply their expertise or 

personal knowledge of the facilities. Some subsequent checks are made. 

However, because of limited resources, facilities’ staff told us that it is not 

possible to check them all. The ISR coordinating office and the public 

works directorate then check if there are any disconnects with the 

inspection results and work orders.
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Software Generated Quality 

and Quantity Ratings

The ISR software calculates separate quality and quantity ratings (C-1, the 

highest, to C-4, the lowest), and then an overall C-rating (the lower of the 

two ratings) using installation ratings and information from existing Army 

databases. A C-1 rating indicates that an infrastructure group requires little 

immediate attention; a C-4 rating highlights a significant problem area for 

the installation. C-ratings are calculated for all four infrastructure levels, 

beginning with the FCG. The C-ratings for the three higher levels are an 

aggregation of all the lower level ratings. For example, the “area” C-ratings 

result from the aggregation of FCG, subcategory, and category ratings that 

comprise the area. However, the base commander can adjust the overall 

area C-ratings (raise or lower) with a written justification. No C-rating 

overwrites are allowed below the area level.

The method of calculating quality C-ratings and area and category level 

C-ratings changed for the 1998 ISR cycle. Rather than using the percentage 

of inventory rated green, amber, or red, it is now based on a numerical 

(weighted) value assigned to each color rating. Area and category level 

C-ratings are now a weighted average of the lower level ratings rather than 

a nonweighted average. This change is intended to correct having a small, 

less important FCG counting the same as a large important group. The 

C-ratings from previous years will be normalized to reflect the changes.

The quality C-ratings are generated by comparing the facility condition 

ratings for each FCG to space allowances specified in the Headquarters 

Real Property Planning and Analysis System. The color ratings are first 

linked to system data on the number of facilities in a given FCG and the ISR 

software calculates the amount that is green, amber, and red. Next, quality 

points are awarded based on the amount of inventory rated green, amber, 

and red. For example, facilities rated green are given three quality points; 

amber and red get two and one quality point(s), respectively. The total 

points are summed and the C-rating is awarded. The cut-off values for 

ratings are

• C-1 equals 90 percent or greater,

• C-2 equals 75 percent or greater,

• C-3 equals 60 percent or greater, and

• C-4 less than 60 percent.

The quantity C-ratings are calculated by the ISR software, which compares 

reported space to installation mission requirements. The inventory data
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are obtained from the Integrated Facilities System.11 The quantity 

C-ratings—based on a percentage requirement satisfied by either 

permanent or semi-permanent—are defined as follows:

• C-1—95 percent or more of required facilities are available and meet the 

unit’s needs and Army standards. There are very minor, if any, 

functional deficiencies. Infrastructure fully supports mission 

performance.

• C-2—80 percent or more of required facilities are available and meet the 

unit’s needs and Army standards, but there are some minor functional 

deficiencies. Infrastructure supports the majority of assigned missions.

• C-3—60 percent or more of required facilities are available and meet the 

majority of the unit’s needs and Army standards. However, there are 

some functional deficiencies and mission performance is impaired. 

• C-4—less than 60 percent of required facilities on hand do not meet 

needs or Army standards and significantly impair mission performance.

• C-5—an installation is undergoing major reorganization, inactivated, or 

closure.

Software-Generated Cost 

Estimates

The C-ratings are then linked to ISR cost factors to calculate the cost of 

new construction requirements, renovation, and annual sustainment 

(maintaining permanent/semi-permanent facilities as well as temporary 

facilities at current condition). All cost factors are at the FCG level of 

detail. Cost factors for new construction are expressed as dollars per unit 

of measure for each FCG (e.g., for FCG F7218P—enlisted barracks, trainee, 

there is a designated dollar cost per sleeping space). Local cost factors are 

built into the software to reflect geographic differences. The Army Cost 

and Economic Analysis Center (CEAC) develops the cost factors to 

estimate the costs for installation infrastructure sustainment and 

improvement.

ISR Reporting The ISR is a computerized system. Its rating results and inventory are 

transferred by disk from individual bases to their major commands and 

then to a central computer maintained by the Department of the Army and 

available to ACSIM staff and other authorized users. 

11The ISR does not include the condition rating for each Army building/facility listed in the Integrated 

Facilities System database. The system uses a five-level rating scale (A= serviceable/excellent, 

B=serviceable/fair, C=serviceable/poor, I=functionally inadequate, and N= physically not serviceable) 

for each item. 
Appendix I

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The installation commander submits the ISR report to the major command 

with a cover memorandum containing the commander’s narrative 

statement prioritizing five broad infrastructure areas (1) mission facilities, 

(2) mobility facilities, (3) housing, (4) community facilities, and

(5) installation support—and highlighting mission impacts due to 

infrastructure deficiencies. Each major command aggregates data from its 

installations, prepares a written assessment of the status of its installations, 

and submits the reports to Army headquarters.

Other reports include the category/subcategory report, the 

assets/requirement report, the renovation/new construction cost report, 

and the sustainment cost report. The facility quality condition report, used 

at the installation level, lists the ratings from inspection worksheets for 

each permanent/semi-permanent asset at the installation. It includes the 

facility number, FCG, size of asset, color rating, and unit identification 

code. Other reports can be generated from the ISR software such as 

appropriations reports.

Once the ratings have been reviewed and approved at the headquarters 

level, the results for every rated installation are available on-line to 

authorized users.12 This makes it possible to compare installations 

worldwide across various outcome and cost measures, both by command 

and by base, and by type of mission. ISR data can be viewed in many ways. 

For example, it can provide information on how many sleeping spaces in 

barracks are rated at what level, either at an individual installation, across 

all bases within a command, or across the entire Army.

Review and Validation 

Process

At the installations we visited, we were told that the ISR coordinating office 

generally reviews selected worksheets to ensure they accurately reflect the 

conditions of the facilities, based on their personal knowledge of the 

facilities, including work that may have been done during the year. Some 

subsequent checks are made. However, facilities staff at bases we visited 

stated that because of limited resources, it is not possible for them to check 

all the facilities.

Responses from Army installations to our survey reflected what we were 

told in field visits, with most bases stating that the primary validation 

12According to the Army Installation Support Center, any Army employee in facilities management is 

assigned a password for access to the ISR results that are kept on-line upon request.
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method was review of selected worksheets by facility management staff, 

based on the staff knowledge of facilities. Table I.1 summarizes the bases’ 

responses.

Table I.1: Steps to Ensure Assessments Are Valid

Source: Responses to question 9, GAO survey.

Ensuring Consistency of 

Assessments

We also asked installations how they ensured that the consistency of 

facility condition assessments given by one rater would be, on average, the 

same reported by other raters. Most respondents said they had no formal 

procedures or mechanisms other than the expertise and/or training of their 

staff who do the ratings. Table I.2 shows the responses.

Table I.2: Steps to Ensure Assessments Are Consistent

Source: Responses to question 10, GAO survey.

Step taken to ensure validity Percent citing step

Selected worksheets are reviewed by facility management 

office staff 

65

Rely on expertise of assessor; no formal procedures used 24

Facility staff makes follow-up visits to verify reported problems 

on a sample of selected rating worksheets 

20

Other validation methods. 18

Outside contractors are used to validate facility ratings. 5

Steps taken to ensure consistency Percent citing step

No formal procedures other than expertise and/or training of 

the assessors

56

Other method to ensure consistency 26

A random sample of facilities is reinspected by different 

assessors from our base to determine whether the second set 

of ratings is similar to the first

23

A set number of percentage of facilities are reinspected by 

different assessors from our base to determine if second set of 

ratings were similar to the first

 4

Outside contractors are used to validate facility ratings 2
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As the table shows, the Army respondents rely primarily on the 

expertise/training of its raters to ensure assessments are consistent. 

Outside contractors are used relatively infrequently.

However, despite the detailed instructions and worksheets, during our site 

visits we found a lack of consistency in assessments. Some inspectors 

were very conscientious about using the standards booklets whereas 

others did not use them at all. Consistency and accuracy in ratings were a 

prominently cited concern in an Army analysis of the 1994 field testing of 

the ISR, as was a related concern about adequate personnel understanding 

of ISR “standards and processes” in a September 1998 After Action 

Report.13

At the installations we visited, the inspectors used several different 

approaches to complete their ISR ratings. Based on a comparison of 

several ratings to the appropriate standards booklets and our observations 

of actual facility conditions, we found there were some cases where 

individual building areas could have been rated differently or worksheets 

were incorrectly summarized and the overall quality rating should have 

been different (in some cases higher, in some, lower). We also found that 

some Army units believe that they do not have the resources to adhere to 

all ISR instructions (such as having enough facility inspectors). In one 

case, according to base officials, staff from the base assigned amber ratings 

to all the facilities at various subinstallations. They said that this was done 

without inspecting the buildings and with no input from building users, 

because there were not enough resources (staff, time, or money) to comply 

with ISR instructions. Based on our inspection of building conditions at 

one of these sub-installations, the amber ratings did not reflect the actual, 

more deteriorated condition of some buildings.

At another installation, we were told that some ratings were questioned 

because the facility was rated green; yet, there were several high-cost 

repair projects scheduled for the building. Based on our observations, the 

exterior of this facility was in extreme disrepair, having crumbling concrete 

walls, cracks, and leaking windows.

13Army, “ISR Test After Action Review,” June 8, 1994, pp. 5 and 7, and September 2, 1998, p. 1.
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Army Installations 

Comments on the ISR

We asked installations to cite any or all of four factors that might constrain 

the quality of facility condition assessments at their bases. Regarding the 

overall quality of the ISR process, 72 percent of the Army respondents 

reported the primary factor affecting overall quality was the shortage of 

resources—insufficient time and/or budget to carry out assessments.

(See table I.3.)

Table I.3: Army Installation Views on Constraints 

Source: Responses to question 11, GAO survey.

It is readily apparent that a large majority of Army installations reported a 

shortage of resources and personnel as a constraining factor on the quality 

of condition assessments.

How to Improve 

Assessment Methods and 

Criteria

We also asked facilities management personnel at bases to choose what 

they would change about the methods or criteria used to determine real 

property maintenance requirements. 

Constraining factor

Percent that checked

factor as a constraint

Shortage of personnel 61

Shortage of trained personnel with engineering or craft 

backgrounds 

48

Shortage of resources (i.e., insufficient time and/or budget to 

carry out assessments)

72

Other 11

Does not apply—no factors create a significant constraint on 

the quality of reviews of facility conditions

13
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Table I.4: How Army Bases Would Change Methods 

Source: Responses to question 13, GAO survey.

These responses show that 64 percent of Army respondents agree that the 

role of appearance should be reduced in facility assessments and the same 

percentage agree that “much more emphasis” should be placed on 

long-range maintenance. 

At one base we visited, the facilities staff said that because the deficiencies 

causing poor ratings are not identified, the urgency of the repair work 

cannot be assessed. They suggested that each red rating be accompanied 

by a work order to fix the condition. They also suggested including a 

standardized deficiency database as part of the ISR process to better 

manage problems identified. In their view, such a system would allow 

sorting by type of deficiency and priority, provide trend data, and post 

correction of deficiencies. 

Other Systems Used to 

Determine Repair and 

Maintenance Needs 

In addition to the ISR, the Army National Guard maintains a Project 

Inventory Evaluation Report for all guard units for use in preparing budget 

submissions. Each state prepares a comprehensive list of repair projects 

that includes data such as individual project description, costs, installation 

name and location, and status. The report is updated periodically and sent 

to the National Guard Bureau annually. 

Yet another system is used to fund RPM for Army government-owned, 

contractor-operated installations, such as industrial plants that produce 

ammunition. In general, these sites have contracts that govern what the 

contractor is required to do, with maintenance included as part of the 

operator’s responsibility. Some survey government-owned, 

contractor-operated respondents stated that they use some type of 

assessment/inspection of facility conditions.

Change in method 

Percent choosing

proposed change

Rate building/facilities primarily according to engineering, 

life-safety, and health criteria, while decreasing the role of 

aesthetics

64

Place much more emphasis on long-range maintenance, 

while de-emphasizing annual assessments of facilities

64

Other 20
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Resource Allocation According to ACSIM personnel, there is no direct link between the ISR 

assessments and the allocation of resources. The emphasis of the ISR, they 

said, is to take a "snapshot" of the condition of the inventory; its software 

then estimates what it would cost to improve facilities to C-1 or to 

intermediate levels, from the rated level. In budget terms, the installations 

do not actually request RPM funds. Instead, Army officials told us, the 

Department of the Army decides how much “risk” to infrastructure they are 

willing to tolerate, given other competing funding needs, and this leads to 

an overall Army RPM spending total. This total is then divided 

downwards, with each major command receiving a “target” figure; in turn, 

each major command informs its component bases how much each will 

receive in RPM funding. 

How Bases Prioritize 

Spending

Certain bases we visited had formal systems to review projects and 

priorities or make funding decisions. At one base, resources are allocated 

after projects are prioritized by a project priority list determined by their 

installation planning board. The panel includes members from the major 

staff directorates and tenants (such as the school house dean) and is 

chaired by the base commander. There are about 20 voting members and 

20 nonvoting members. The board is supported by working panels. 

Customer work requests are evaluated using a local “project priority 

matrix.” Projects are categorized (medical, operations/training, housing, 

utilities, maintenance, administrative, supply, and community support) and 

classified by type of work--health/safety, force protection, 

mission/readiness, infrastructure). The matrix “points” are then weighted 

according to the seriousness of the problem to be corrected (complete 

failure, component failure, failure is imminent, system functional, or little 

deterioration).

Work orders for repairs are not linked to the ISR and can be prepared at 

any time. However, a customer can reference the ISR results as a basis for 

the work (which could help when prioritizing all base projects). Other 

bases implied that there simply is too little money to focus on prioritizing 

spending. Substantial funds are used to pay for “must pay” items such as 

utilities. Finally, the major command and base level commanders have the 

authority and can use RPM funds for other needs. 
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Maintenance Needs Versus 

Requested Funding

We asked installations to report the funding they requested for RPM and 

the amount they would need to meet all identified repairs. This 

unconstrained RPM requirement is how much it would cost to fix all 

deficiencies previously identified but not funded and is commonly referred 

to as backlog. These data are no longer officially collected or reported by 

the Army to OSD or to the Congress. Instead, the ISR software generates 

the estimated cost to bring ISR-rated facilities to the C-1 condition level (or 

any lower level above the rated one). 

At the Army bases we visited, we found a general sense among facilities 

staff that although they made a significant effort to identify deficiencies, 

the subsequent funding was so low that it appeared their efforts were 

meaningless. The large difference between total backlog requirements and 

the funding actually requested by bases for RPM, as reported on the 

surveys, is shown in table I.5.

Table I.5: Fiscal Year 1997 Requirements Versus Funding Requested

Source: Responses to question 15, GAO survey.

As the table shows, Army bases reported that they requested funding equal 

to only about one-sixth (15.8 percent) of their identified RPM needs. We 

were told by facilities staff that these differences were due to the fact that 

everyone knows the funding environment is low and that total needs are 

not expected to be funded given the gap between available funding and 

identified requirements. It is also the case, however, that total repair and 

maintenance needs are not a statement of priority, but rather what it would 

cost to fix all known things that need fixing, regardless of importance to 

mission or severity of defect. 

We asked installations to indicate which of several factors they saw as 

weaknesses in their facility condition assessment system. The results with 

regard to the top rated items, in descending order of percent, are shown in 

table I.6. 

Army bases’ unconstrained RPM requirements (total cost of fixing all 

identified deficiencies)

$12.4 billion

RPM funding requested by bases from major commands, fiscal year 1997 $1.96 billion

Funding requested as a percent of unconstrained requirement 15.8%
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Table I.6: Army Bases’ Views on ISR Weaknesses

Source: Responses to question 12, GAO survey.

The major ISR weakness, according to Army base respondents, is that there 

is little or no linkage between condition ratings and subsequent resource 

allocations. A majority of respondents also reported that the system does 

not reflect the reason(s) for the ratings and that “rollup” ratings for a 

category with multiple facilities oversimplify conditions.

Installation Views on 

Proposed Changes to 

Allocation Processes

We also asked installations about their views with regard to how they 

would change the RPM funding allocation process. Table I.7 shows the 

percentage of installations that cited any of four alternatives.

Weakness 

Percent that checked

option

Little or no linkage between condition assessment and 

allocation of resources

61

Ratings do not tell what is wrong within facility or mission 

category; reasons not readily available

53

Rollup oversimplifies conditions 51

Little or no linkage between condition assessment and budget 

estimation

46

Assessment process lacks robust engineering base 40

Focuses too much on facility appearance 38

Cost estimates are generally not accurate 36

Overall condition ratings are too broad 32
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Table I.7: How Army Bases Would Change the Funding Allocation Process

Source: Responses to question 22, GAO survey. Total exceeds 100 percent because more than one 

choice could be made.

The top choice among Army respondents was that RPM funding should not 

be based on a fixed increase above or below the previous year’s level. A 

majority of respondents also favored basing funding on physical 

deficiencies, with more for “needier” bases.

Consequences at Base Level Personnel responsible for real property maintenance at bases we visited 

were virtually unanimous in pointing out that they could not adequately 

maintain their facilities at the funding levels allocated to them in recent 

years. For example, at one base, we were told that there is simply not 

enough money to maintain all the required facilities. The major command 

allocates a recurring base amount by activity; officials said that resources 

were not adequate to provide the amount needed to take care of 

requirements. At another base, the real property maintenance budget level 

is “incremental”; i.e., it receives a fixed increase above or below the 

previous year’s allocation.

Bases Visited The following sites were visited to ask facilities management officials at 

each about how RPM requirements are determined, how funds are 

allocated, and their views on the RPM process in their service. The 

questionnaire was pretested at some, and subsequently validated at others, 

as indicated. In addition, we visited Fort Bragg (Forces Command), 

Fayetteville, North Carolina, and Fort Belvoir (Military District of 

Washington), Alexandria, Virginia, to gain a better understanding of the ISR 

and the Army’s RPM processes from personnel involved in RPM, as well as 

to see a diverse selection of Army property and facilities.

Suggested change Percent checking option

Funding should not be based on a fixed increase above or 

below the previous year’s level

59

Funding should be based primarily on the physical 

deficiencies, with “needier” bases receiving more funds than 

those in better condition

53

Funding should be based on average age, total square 

footage and number of facilities

45

RPM funding/allocation should not be centrally managed by 

major command.

39
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Sites visited to pretest questionnaires

Fort McPherson, (Forces Command), Atlanta, Georgia;

Fort Hood, (Forces Command), Killeen, Texas;

Fort Sam Houston, (Medical Command), San Antonio, Texas;

U.S. Army Forces Command, Atlanta, Georgia; and

U.S. Army Medical Command, San Antonio, Texas.

Sites visited to validate survey responses

Fort Sill (Training and Doctrine Command), Lawton, Oklahoma;

Texas Army National Guard, Austin, Texas; and

Rock Island Arsenal (Army Materiel Command), Rock Island, Illinois.
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Appendix II

Air Force Strategy, Methods and Criteria for 

Determining Real Property Maintenance 

Requirements ApenxIdi

In this appendix, we discuss the Air Force’s strategy, methods and criteria 

for real property maintenance (RPM), including the responses to the 

questionnaire on RPM-related issues that we sent to Air Force bases and 

major commands.1

 In particular, we focus on the Air Force’s Facility 

Investment Metric (FIM) system that is used to rate the urgency of repair 

projects funded from the operation and maintenance (O&M) RPM account. 

Background As of fiscal year 1998, worldwide Air Force installations had over 105,000 

buildings totaling just over 650 million square feet. Approximately 51,500 

of the buildings were family housing units and were paid for from the 

military family housing account, meaning O&M RPM funds paid for the 

repair and maintenance of the other 54,000 buildings with 480 million 

square feet.2

 The O&M RPM-funded facilities had an estimated plant 

replacement value (PRV)3 of $146.4 billion. The Air Force’s Real Property 

Maintenance Account Program/Programs and Analysis Branch administers 

O&M RPM-funded facilities and serves as the advocate for RPM funding 

within the Air Force. According to the Air Force, RPM appropriations for 

fiscal year 1999 were $1.52 billion. Of this total, $1.359 billion was for the 

active Air Force, $66 million for the Air Force Reserve and $95 million for 

the Air National Guard.

In the Air Force, O&M RPM funding consists of spending for (1) preventive 

maintenance level repairs (PML) and (2) repair and minor construction 

projects.4

 To better determine repair and minor construction needs, the 

service implemented the Commander’s Facility Assessment (CFA) in fiscal 

1

The survey, which asked about base facility inventory, RPM processes and funding, was sent to 202 Air 

Force bases (including Air Force reserve and Air National Guard); 200 returned the questionnaires, or 

99 percent. See app. X for a copy of the survey.

2

Air Force data provided to GAO.

3

PRV is defined by the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) as “the cost to replace the current 

physical plant (facilities and supporting infrastructures) using today’s construction cost (labor and 

materials) and standards (methodologies and codes).”

4

Preventive maintenance is defined as the planned, periodic inspection, adjustment, and minor repair of 

equipment and systems. It is “the minimum level of maintenance required to sustain the day-to-day 

operation of the Air Force facilities and infrastructure between periodic repairs and replacement.” (Air 

Force: FIM Executive Overview, p. 5.) Air staff said that repair and minor construction projects are 

those that the Air Force bases contract out for a number of reasons, such as the size or dollar amount of 

the project. The service also allocates funds to support the civil engineering workforce at each base. 

This amount is based on historical amounts allocated for this purpose and base size factors, such as 

square feet and average age of the facility.
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year 1993, which was then replaced in 1998 with FIM, which the Air Force 

views as a more objective method to assess and present its RPM needs. 

CFA, used from fiscal year 1993 to 1997, required bases to gather condition 

assessment data on buildings and rank the impact of building conditions on 

their missions. However, CFA had two major limitations, according to the 

Air Force. The rating criteria were considered too subjective and the 

method used to summarize data was problematic. The Air Force felt that 

CFA criteria allowed commanders overly wide interpretation of CFA 

ratings. CFA also grouped multiple requirements into one level, which 

placed lower-impact requirements in the same category as more critical 

requirements. Air Force RPM officials stated that these limitations reduced 

the credibility of the system with the Air Force senior leadership. 

According to the Air Force, the FIM’s purpose is “to put a mission face on 

existing facility and infrastructure requirements in order to advocate for 

funds at the Air Force Corporate Structure.”5

 The FIM is used to rate only 

RPM O&M funded repair projects that are not PML work. In contrast to the 

CFA, the Air Force states that the FIM measures specific requirements 

(rather than rating an entire facility or infrastructure system); has more 

objective ratings; and provides feedback to leaders.6

 According to the FIM 

operational guide, it is intended to link RPM spending to the Air Force’s 

“investment philosophy: to address the most urgent facility needs of the Air 

Force.” 

The FIM guide appears to endorse the need for a comprehensive strategy, 

stating that the Air Force will use the data gathered under FIM “to develop 

a corporate investment strategy, measure adherence to this strategy, and 

ascertain the adequacy of long-term levels of investment to meet facility 

requirements.”7

 Given that FIM had only been used for 1 year at the time of 

our review, it was not possible to determine the extent to which it had met 

these goals.

5

“Air Force Facility Investment Metric: Implementation and Operations Guide,” August 1997, p. 1. In 

this regard, it is very similar to the Army’s Installation Status Report, which was also implemented as 

part of a strategy to advocate for RPM funding. The Air Force corporate structure is, according to the 

Air Force, “the Secretariat and HQ USAF leadership structure, to include the Air Force council, Board, 

Panels, and integrated product teams.” 

6

Air Force: FIM Executive Overview, August 1997, p. 4.

7

Air Force: FIM Executive Overview, August 1997, p. 1.
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Air Force RPM 

Funding Strategy

Using the FIM infrastructure rating system, Air Force bases identified

$355 million in critical-rated projects for fiscal year 1998. However, the Air 

Force funding plan provides no funding for FIM-rated repair projects from 

fiscal year 1998 to fiscal year 2003, while funding the PML portion of RPM 

at 1 percent of the PRV of each installation. According to the Air Force 

Installations and Logistics office, repair projects are zeroed out until fiscal 

year 2003 because “we must look at overall needs, and the need is 

[weapons] modernization.” 

The Air Force’s December 1997 Annual Planning and Programming 

Guidance states that bases should use the FIM “to identify and 

accommodate RPM projects that satisfy the most urgent needs of the Air 

Force.” The Air Force estimates that the planned FIM-based spending of 

$1.694 billion for fiscal years 2003-2005 is 40 percent of the $4.22 billion 

total of FIM-estimated needs for projects rated “critical” or “degraded.” 

Table II.1 shows the Air Force spending plan through fiscal year 2005 

versus the estimated cost of projects rated critical or degraded using FIM 

criteria. 

Table II.1: Air Force FIM Spending Plans Versus Needs Fiscal Years 1998-2005 

a

No estimate provided for these 2 years. However, critical and degraded FIM projects for fiscal

year 1998 alone totaled just over $4 billion (see table II.2). 

Source: Air Force.

Table II.1 shows that the estimated cost of FIM critical and degraded level 

projects will increase until fiscal year 2004, when resumed funding for FIM 

begins to reduce the total. However, due to the zeroing-out until fiscal

year 2003, the total of backlogged repairs will be about $4.22 billion by 

fiscal year 2005. Moreover, this funding is only for FIM projects rated 

critical or degraded—excluding those rated “minimal,” which were 

estimated to cost $3.4 billion in fiscal year 1998 (see table II.2). Using this 

funding strategy, therefore, the amount of critical and “degraded’ repairs 

increases, while “minimal” ones remain unfunded.

Dollars in millions

Fiscal year 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 Total

FIM funding planned by Air Force 0 0 0 0 0 246 666 782 1,694

Need above funding level (for 

critical/degraded projects)

a a 1,700 800 800 800 120 0 4,220
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An OSD official expressed skepticism about the wisdom and realism of the 

Air Force RPM funding strategy, noting that since the Air Force had only 

funded PML repairs, emergency repairs remain unfunded. Therefore, in the 

view of the OSD official, when emergencies occur, PML funds would be 

used for them—providing even less for PML. This, in turn, could increase 

the cost of repairs due to insufficient funds for PML. 

FIM Assessment 

System

The Air Force’s FIM requires active and reserve bases to identify and 

prioritize repair and minor construction projects based on the impact that 

deficiencies are having on the capability of units to carry out missions of 

different types, in four broad categories. 

Under FIM, repair projects (rather than individual buildings or facilities) 

are rated as “critical,” “degraded,” or “minimal,” referring to the existing 

impact of conditions on mission, defined as follows:

• A critical rating indicates a significant loss of installation mission 

capability and frequent mission interruptions; continuous work-arounds 

are needed.

• A degraded rating indicates a limited loss of installation mission 

capability; work-arounds to prevent mission disruption and degradation 

are often required.

• A minimal rating indicates marginal or no adverse impact to installation 

mission capability; work-arounds are seldom needed. 

Impact ratings are not further quantified, and, to some degree, reflect the 

judgment of those doing the ratings. In contrast, the Marines use similar 

categories for impact on mission, but define most with specific quantified 

measures (e.g., critical impact is interfering with a mission specified 

percent of the time, in a year). (See app. IV.) FIM projects are funded from 

O&M and are for repair and minor construction. They do not include 

military construction, PML (day-to-day repair and maintenance), or funds 

from other accounts, such as family housing.

To determine FIM impact ratings, engineers may consult with the facility 

users and/or other engineering staff to determine how the project impacts 

the installation’s mission. For example, at Scott Air Force Base, several 

civil engineering staff met and collectively determined the ratings. The 

base civil engineer then approved them and forwarded them to the base’s 

major command. 
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Mission Categories The impact ratings are used to rate the condition of four major mission 

categories—primary mission, mission support, base support, and 

community support—as follows:

• Primary mission—facilities and infrastructure that directly accomplish 

or indirectly support the installation’s primary mission. Examples 

include airfield pavements, navigational aids, and missile alert facilities.

• Mission support—facilities that support the installation’s primary 

mission, some infrastructure, and primary emergency response facilities 

that provide immediate life support and rescue service. Examples 

include aircraft maintenance facilities, fire stations, and the base 

communication center.

• Base support—facilities and some infrastructure that are not directly 

tied to the primary mission, but are necessary to keep the installation 

functioning properly (e.g., administrative facilities and chapels). 

• Community support—facilities that support the installation, such as 

lodging facilities and theaters. 

As noted, the FIM ranks projects in terms of the impact that the 

deficiencies they are intended to address are having on current mission 

readiness, as well as their estimated cost. This is then rolled up into a 

“Mission Area Rating Matrix” (MARM), which also includes the PRV of 

RPM-funded facilities, and a facility investment index (FII) for each 

mission area, critical projects, and critical and degraded projects. (The FII 

is the estimated cost of FIM projects divided by the PRV of the facilities in 

which they will be done.) The FIM data for the estimated cost of projects 

from the MARM for the entire Air Force for fiscal year 1998 is shown in 

table II.2.

Table II.2: Fiscal Year 1998 Air Force FIM Project Ratings and Cost 

Source: Headquarters, Air Staff, Office of the Civil Engineer.

Dollars in millions

FIM Rating

Mission category Critical Degraded Minimal Estimated total cost

Primary mission $178 $1,025 $544 $1,747

Mission support 134 1,459 1,120 2,713

Base support 33 1,102 1,444 2,580

Community support 10 94 290 394

Total $355 $3,681 $3,398 $7,434
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According to the FIM operational guide, “the Air Staff must use the MARM 

to develop” its facility investment strategy—that is, to prioritize repair 

projects based on the criticality of the impact on mission.8

FIM Data On-line The data from FIM are available on-line in summary form to the Air Force 

Office of the Civil Engineer, Programs Divisions, permitting rapid 

comparisons of the needs of different installations rated under FIM. Unlike 

the Army’s ISR (see app. I), the FIM on-line data do not provide an overall 

condition rating for the base. Instead, the FIM on-line data show the 

ratings for individual repair projects (i.e., critical, degraded, or minimal) 

and the estimated cost of these repairs. The system also shows the cost of 

all FIM projects in a given mission area at an installation. Moreover, the 

data can be easily “sliced and diced,” permitting comparison and analysis 

of the repair projects at any number of chosen installations or major 

commands. This makes it comparable to the way ISR data can be analyzed. 

Further, the data gathered by FIM show a 7-year estimate of all the projects 

at an installation identified with regard to their level of urgency, their 

estimated cost, and the year in which the money will be spent on them. 

Since the year assigned for doing a repair project is based in large part on 

the base’s estimate of its urgency—including when a component or facility 

may fail—these timeline projections are a form of life-cycle analysis. 

Repair urgency is also based on what mission it affects and how important 

that mission is relative to other missions. 

After a FIM rating of a given installation is reviewed and approved by the 

Facility Board or equivalent, the data that go into the FIM are inputted from 

the installation to the FIM computerized system. The data are 

administered by Gunter Air Station, Alabama, which maintains both the 

FIM and the Air Force’s RPM inventory data. The data are also 

simultaneously “released” to the installation”s major command for review. 

However, the data are not funneled through the major command. Once 

sent to the on-line system, the data are also available to the Programs and 

Analysis Branch. 

Major commands review the ratings and can change them. Air Staff use the 

data to create an Air Force-wide MARM that they present to Air Force 

leaders to advocate for FIM funds. For fiscal year 1998, the FIM raters 

8

FIM guide, August 1997, p. 5.

Lert
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estimated that FIM projects would cost $7.4 billion, of which only 540

(2 percent of 27,000) were rated as critical, estimated to cost $355 million, 

or about 5 percent of total FIM-estimated repairs. Forty percent of the 

projects were rated as “degraded,” and 58 percent as minimal. According 

to headquarters staff, the MARM can and should be used to prioritize RPM 

spending, so that funds are expended on critical and degraded categories. 

This, the staff told us, would also help reduce future repair costs for 

catastrophic failure. 

Criterion to Determine 

Preventive Maintenance 

Needs 

In addition to the rating and prioritizing of repair projects, the Air Force 

allocates funding for PML—a component of RPM—at 1 percent of the 

estimated PRV of infrastructure at a base. According to Air Force Civil 

Engineering staff, this level is adequate to satisfy PML requirements, given 

the recommendation of the 1989 DOD infrastructure study that 

recommended that the services annually budget a minimum of 1.75 percent 

of PRV for maintenance and repair, excluding any additional funds required 

to reduce existing backlog.9

While this 1-percent method for allocation provides a guaranteed 

minimum, it is based on a set percent of PRV rather than on a 

determination of physical deficiencies. It is a shorthand way of assuring a 

given funding minimum, which may equal, exceed or fall below actual 

needs. (See app. VII for more discussion.)

Preventive Maintenance 

May Not be Fully Funded

Although the Air staff uses the same 1 percent of PRV to allocate to its 

major commands, according to the Air Staff, the Air Force does not require 

major commands or bases to spend that allocated 1 percent of PRV for 

PML; commanders can use the funds in other areas. An Air Mobility 

Command official told us that they try to allocate one percent of PRV to 

PML, but that other needs may have a higher priority. 

At Scott Air Force Base, a civil engineer estimated they actually receive 

only about a half percent of PRV for PML. Further, of the PML money, most 

is not used for this purpose, but rather to replace and repair items that are 

broken due to prior insufficient PML. For example, a 10-inch water main, 

now a $1-million critical FIM project, is being replaced because of 

inadequate PML. 

9

DOD, Renewing the Built Environment, March 1989, p. 28.
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A base civil engineer from the Alabama National Guard said that they had 

replaced overhead doors that would not have been needed if adequate PML 

had been done to preserve the existing doors. When PML is not done, the 

work will (eventually) show up as a FIM project and typically cost more 

than the amount of PML needed, according to the Alabama official. 

Another factor in Air Force RPM decision-making is the criterion for repair 

versus replacement. The Air Force has a guideline that requires 

reconsideration of a project when the estimated cost of the project exceeds 

70 percent of the PRV of a building.10 As in the other services, this is a 

guideline.

Installation Views on FIM Some facilities management engineers at bases we visited expressed the 

view that the FIM ratings may be too restrictive, citing the fact that only

2 percent of the 27,000 Air Force-wide FIM projects were rated critical for 

fiscal year 1998; these represented about 5 percent of the total estimated 

cost of repairs ($355 million of $7.4 billion). However, headquarters Air 

Staff told us that the Air Force intentionally made the ratings more 

restrictive than under CFA and that FIM was to intended to reflect only the 

Air Force’s most urgent needs. In their view, CFA ratings were too 

subjective, resulting in many facilities rated as critical. 

Some base engineers told us that because FIM ratings were too restrictive, 

few projects would get a critical rating and a chance of being funded. For 

example, at one base that we visited, of the total 103 projects, none were 

rated critical as of November 1997. Civil engineering staff at another Air 

Force Base said that they were concerned that few critical ratings might 

appear to make the Air Force look in better shape than it was. At yet 

another base we visited, 6 of 88 projects were rated critical and engineering 

officials expressed concern that FIM would make their base look in better 

shape that it was. They said that the FIM did not show that 132 roofs were 

leaking and were concerned that the system would not convey an accurate 

overall picture of conditions at the base. 

Using the FIM rating system, although total estimated Air Force repair 

backlog increased about 278 percent from fiscal year 1997 to fiscal

10Air Force Instruction 32-1032, 11 May 1994, “Planning and Programming Real Property Maintenance 

Using Appropriated Funds,” p. 6. 
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year 1998 ($2.667 billion to $7.434 billion), only 5 percent in dollar value

($355 million) under FIM was rated critical. 

Engineering officials at three bases we visited said they were concerned 

the Air Force would only fund those projects with critical ratings in the 

primary mission category. They expressed concern that other mission 

areas, especially community support, would not receive funds. (As noted, 

for fiscal years 1998-2002, the Air Force has “zeroed out” all funding for 

repair projects.) An official at headquarters stated that bases can spend 

more on repair projects if they choose, noting that the amount of funding 

received by bases through their major commands is not the maximum 

spending allowed. He added that bases can move funds from other O&M 

accounts, if available. 

At one of the bases we visited, facilities officials said that in their view, 

many base support and community support projects could not get a critical 

rating because funding was being reserved only for critical projects, and 

base commanders wanted to reserve it for facilities connected to 

operations. Further, because ratings were too restrictive, in their opinion, 

funding all critical projects in all mission areas still would not provide them 

with sufficient funds for repairs that they felt needed to be made.

Air National Guard Bureau 

Uses Additional Criteria

Facilities held by the Air National Guard (ANG) represents about 5 percent 

of the Air Force’s total PRV. However, the ANG accounts for about half of 

Air Forces bases (103 of 202 identified to us for the purpose of our 

questionnaire). In the ANG, FIM projects and large PML projects are 

normally contracted out and are 100 percent federally funded. Other 

activities, such as smaller PML—changing filters, adjusting equipment, 

etc.—are covered by the state/federal agreement for Facility Operation and 

Maintenance Activities (FOMA). Under this agreement, the state and 

federal government share costs for a variety of items such as utilities, 

rental of equipment, state employees’ salaries, and supplies and materials. 

The cost-share ratio depends on the mission of the unit, but according to 

the ANG Bureau (i.e., headquarters), the typical share is 75 percent federal 

and 25 percent state.11

11The federal share of FOMA is based on manpower standards, actual salary rates for the state, and 

historical/predicted costs for utilities, services, supplies, and materials.
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For maintenance and repair that is 100-percent federally funded, such as 

FIM projects, the ANG Bureau uses a mix of factors as criteria to determine 

the annual amount each base receives—square footage and condition, 

pavement area and condition, area cost factors, and overall real property 

funds availability.

Daily Repair and 

Maintenance

In the Air Force, base civil engineers (BCE) and building users identify 

repair and minor construction projects. Building users report problems to 

civil engineering, and civil engineering staff, through their day-to-day work, 

report problems. Among the 200 Air Force installations that responded to 

our survey, approximately 12.4 percent of inspectors were reported to be 

engineers or skilled craftsmen, with the remainder being building users, 

and about a half percent being contractors.

Typically, work orders for repairs are entered daily into a base’s work order 

system, upon receipt of a request for repair. When building users identify 

repairs, civil engineering staff determine whether the requested repair or 

minor construction is valid through personal knowledge of the facility or 

inspection. For example, at a small base, the civil engineer would have 

personal knowledge of the age of systems, such as an air conditioning 

system in the command building. If the system historically had not cooled 

the building adequately, the base engineer would know that a work order to 

repair the system to properly cool the building is a valid request. At larger 

bases, civil engineers may have to visit the site to validate the request.

Through a work order board that meets as needed, BCEs prioritize projects 

according to whether in-house engineering can handle or whether the 

projects need to be contracted out. BCEs enter the estimated cost of the 

contract projects into the Air Force’s Projects by Contract Management 

System (PCMS).12 (These data are also centralized at a Gunter Air Station 

facility that maintains the FIM database.)

Civil engineers use PCMS and real property records to create the FIM 

database.13 BCEs update PCMS projects to reflect FIM mission impact 

ratings, and real property records provide the specific mission category 

12PCMS was implemented around 1989 and is the Air Force civil engineering system that tracks contract 

work from design to completion. All FIM projects are in PCMS.

13One FIM objective was to use existing databases and reduce the workload of gathering the 

information. We did not verify data in PCMS or in real property records.
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codes for each base. In fiscal year 1998, base engineers assigned initial FIM 

mission impact ratings to all projects in PCMS. 

Methods to Ensure Rating 

Validity

FIM ratings are validated through a review and approval process. After 

base engineers assign an initial rating to all PCMS projects, the base 

commander reviews/approves the ratings. Typically, each base in the Air 

Force has a facility board that consists of all the base’s unit commanders. 

This board assists the base commander in making facility infrastructure 

decisions, including approval of FIM project ratings. BCEs present the FIM 

ratings at a board meeting and resolve any differences in opinions. The 

base engineer also obtains the commander’s priorities for the projects and 

includes this ranking in the FIM database. 

Our survey results reflected the use of a FIM review and approval process. 

Installations reported a number of ways in which initial ratings are 

reviewed, with use of outside contractors ranking the lowest, at about

3 percent. Table II.3 summarizes base responses.

Table II.3: Steps to Ensure FIM Project Ratings Are Valid 

Source: Responses to question 9, GAO survey. 

Methods to Ensure 

Consistency in Ratings

When asked about the steps taken to ensure ratings given by one rater 

would be, on average, the same reported by another rater, 51 percent of 

respondents said they had no formal procedures or mechanisms other than 

the expertise and/or training of their staff who do the ratings. Forty-eight 

percent wrote in about other methods used to ensure consistency. Table 

II.4 shows the responses.

Step to ensure validity

Percent of respondents

citing method

Rely on expertise of assessor; no formal procedures used 21

Selected worksheets are reviewed by facility management 

office staff 

46

Facility staff makes follow-up visits to verify reported problems 

on a sample of selected rating worksheets

25

Outside contractors used 3

Other validation methods 34
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Table II.4: Steps to Ensure Consistency 

Source: Responses to question 10, GAO survey. 

Installation Views on 

Constraints

Regarding the overall quality of the FIM process, 61 percent reported the 

primary factor affecting overall quality was the shortage of resources—

insufficient time and/or budget to carry out assessments. Table II.5 shows 

the responses.

Table II.5: Factors That Constrain Assessment Quality 

Source: Responses to question 11, GAO survey. 

When asked how methods could be changed, 64 percent of the responding 

bases reported that the Air Force should place much more emphasis on 

long-range planning, while de-emphasizing annual assessments of facilities. 

Thirty-nine percent responded that buildings and facilities should be rated 

primarily according to engineering, life-safety and other factors, as shown 

in table II.6.

Step to ensure consistency

Percent of respondents

citing step

No formal procedures used other than expertise of the raters 51

Set number or percent of facilities are reinspected by different 

assessors 

3

Random sample of facilities are reinspected by different 

assessors

7

Outside contractors used 1

Other method to ensure consistency 48

Constraining factor

Percent that checked

factor

Shortage of personnel 45

Shortage of trained personnel, that is, engineering or skilled 

craft background

42

Shortage of resources (that is, insufficient time and/or budget 

to carry out assessments)

61

Other 9

Does not apply--no factors create a significant constraint on 

the quality of reviews of facility conditions

22
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Table II.6: How Bases Would Change Determining RPM Requirements 

Source: Responses to question 13, GAO survey. 

Some Major Commands 

Supplement FIM With Other 

Assessment Tools

We found the Air Force allows major commands to use assessment tools in 

addition to FIM to rate the condition of their facilities and prioritize RPM 

spending. Three major commands—the Air Force Materiel Command, the 

Air Combat Command, and the Air Force Academy—use non-FIM 

assessments. Command officials told us these systems provide more 

detailed information about projects than FIM does and helps them make 

more informed decisions regarding project funding. The Air Force 

Academy uses a system that includes life-cycle principles of property 

management. 

The systems used by Air Force Materiel Command and the Academy are 

based on engineering assessments as to whether facilities are working 

adequately. In contrast, FIM prioritizes projects based on how deficiencies 

are impacting missions. Air Staff stated that commands are allowed to use 

other tools if it helps them to better manage their facilities. Table II.7 

outlines the three systems’ major features.

Table II.7: Additional Assessment Tools That Supplement FIM

Source: Air Force civil engineering officials at each of the cited commands.

Proposed change Percent agreeing

Rate building/facilities primarily according to engineering and 

life-safety criteria, while decreasing the role of aesthetics

39

Place much more emphasis on long-range maintenance 

planning while de-emphasizing annual assessments 

64

Other 28

Major command Name of system Principle characteristic

Air Force Materiel Command Infrastructure Condition System (ICS) Provides engineering assessment/ratings on the 

physical condition of the system on a scale of 0 to 10.

Air Combat Command Civil Engineering Risk Matrix (CERM) Rates projects impact on mission more extensively 

than FIM and provides a measure indicating 

probability of funding from low to high.

Air Force Academy Facility Investment Strategy Rates buildings not projects, updated each year by a 

contractor; buildings managed to extend maximum life 

of facility.
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Inspection Condition System The Air Force Materiel Command Inspection Condition System is a series 

of checklists that establish detailed rating criteria for evaluating the 

physical condition of the components and subcomponents of five 

designated infrastructure systems—building systems, utility systems, 

pavement and grounds, airfield systems, and water and wastewater system. 

Inspectors read physical condition descriptions and assign a rating scaled 

from 0 to 10 (0 is complete failure; 10 is new condition) that best describes 

the subcomponents physical condition. Each subcomponent is then 

assigned a weighting factor that best represents the importance of the 

subcomponent to the overall component system. Component ratings are 

then used to determine project ratings. The Air Force Materiel Command 

will continue to use its system along with FIM because, officials told us, it 

gives the command an engineering-based technical assessment of projects. 

An Air Force Materiel Command official said that FIM provides the impact 

on the mission and Inspection Condition System tells them technically how 

well the system, such as a heating and air conditioning system, is 

performing. 

Civil Engineering Risk Matrix 

System

The Air Combat Command planned to require its bases to use its Civil 

Engineering Risk Matrix System in addition to the FIM through fiscal

year 1998, after which it would transition to FIM only. The matrix system 

was similar to FIM in that it rates projects according to mission impact. It 

has five mission areas and impact ratings, each with a numerical value. 

When combined, the values produce a funding probability from low to 

maximum. The five impact ratings are catastrophic, critical, essential, 

required, and desired. Catastrophic is valued at seven, whereas desired is 

valued at one. The Air Combat Command developed the matrix to provide 

it with a risk-based methodology to advocate for project funding.

Facility Investment Strategy In 1995, the Air Force Academy developed a Facility Investment Strategy 

that gave it an engineering analysis of facility and infrastructure conditions 

and that utilizes some elements of life-cycle planning. In this system, 

buildings have an estimated lifespan, and maintenance is geared to 

maximizing the lifespan. The system determines all work that needs to be 

done for buildings, regardless of the urgency. In contrast, FIM determines 

projects that need to be done and prioritizes them by mission impact. 

With the information the system provides, the academy developed 

condition indices that monitor the effects of various levels of investment. 

The indices are also used to predict the anticipated condition of the asset
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based on the amount of investment made to renew the asset.14 According 

to the academy, they plan to continue to use their system along with FIM. 

They told us that their system gives them more detailed building 

information than does FIM and that they continue to add to the detail each 

year as they do annual updates. Each year the academy pays a contractor 

about $25,000 to $30,000 to update and analyze the program data.

Allocation of RPM 

Resources

The Air Force plans to allocate RPM resources based on two factors—the

1 percent of estimated installation PRV and the prioritization scheme 

created under FIM. However, through fiscal year 2002, no funding will be 

provided to FIM-rated repair projects; the only RPM funding will be for 

preventive maintenance level repairs. According to FIM guidance, the Air 

Force will use the FIM Mission Area Matrix to establish investment targets 

for each mission area tied to an Air Force investment strategy. 

Headquarters will then allocate funding to the major commands based on 

their share of the targeted requirement. According to headquarters, targets 

have not yet been established since FIM is still new.

Almost Half of Air Force 

PRV Estimate Needs 

“Correction”

Since the Air Force allocates a very substantial portion of total RPM 

spending on the basis of PRV (100 percent through fiscal year 2002), it is 

critical that installations calculate accurately. However, this may not be the 

case, as noted in a contractor analysis of the Air Force’s PRV model, which 

found that only 55 percent of the Air Force’s estimated $204 billion (fiscal 

year 1996) PRV “has been determined . . . to be acceptable”; “the Air Staff 

has determined that the remaining 45 percent of the PRV data is in need of 

review and validation.”15 “The most recent calculation of PRV . . . contains 

anomalies that required validation or correction.”16 The Air force indicated 

that it is addressing this issue.

In addition, the contractor’s report notes that some PRV estimates are 

unreliable because the real property records “do not contain the level of 

14This system and the use of condition indices influenced the development of FIM. After being briefed 

on the academy’s system, the Air Force Vice Chief of Staff directed the Air Force Office of the Civil 

Engineer to develop an index, similar to the one developed by the academy, for use by commanders to 

analyze future facility construction and repair requirements.

15USAF: “Short Term Analysis Report: Air Force PRV Model,” October 1997, p. 2. 

16Delta Research Division of BTG, Inc.: “Short Term Analysis Report: Air Force PRV Model,” October 

1997, p. 1.
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detail required to accurately match an appropriate unit cost to the real 

property record quantity.”17 As an example, the report cites the fact that 

water lines are only identified as a “generic type,” but not the size or type of 

water line, which it notes can range in cost from $7 per linear foot to about 

$60 per linear foot for 24-inch cast iron pipe. The report provides no 

estimate of the potential range of inaccuracy in the PRV estimates for Air 

Force facilities. In sum, the PRV measure’s estimate appears open to 

misinterpretation and, hence, miscalculation.

RPM Needs Exceed 

Requests

Air Force bases’ responses to our survey reported that in fiscal year 1997, 

they had $5.9 billion in repair needs, and had received 18.3 percent of that 

total ($1.08 billion) in RPM funding. In responses to the survey, as shown 

in table II.8, the lack of linkage between requirements and allocation of 

resources was one of the top five most frequently cited weaknesses in the 

Air Force’s RPM management.

Table II.8: Top Five Frequently Cited Weaknesses 

Source: Response to question 12, GAO survey. Total exceeds 100 percent because more than one 

choice was possible.

Air Staff uses FIM to advocate for resources. When we asked bases what 

they would change about the method used to allocate RPM resources, 

about 50 percent wrote that they would not change the system. Of the 

other 50 percent, about half (48 percent) recommended a variety of 

changes ranging from the receipt of a lump-sum amount at the beginning of 

the year to simply increasing the dollar amount they received.

17Delta Research Division of BTG, Inc., op. cit., p. 4.

Weakness Percent citing weakness

Little or unclear linkage between RPM needs assessment and 

resource allocation 

39

Rollup oversimplifies conditions 37

Condition assessments/requirements determination are too 

subjective

34

Ratings do not tell what is wrong within facility or mission 

category

32

Little/unclear linkage between condition determination and 

budget estimation

29
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When asked to suggest methods on how funding is allocated by their major 

commands, there appeared to be no clear consensus with regard to four 

proposed alternatives, other than a 60- to 40-percent opposition to 

decentralizing control of RPM funds downwards from the major 

commands. Table II.9 shows the percent of bases’ that agreed with four 

specified alternatives.

Table II.9: How Bases Would Change Funding Allocations 

Source: Responses to question 22, GAO survey. 

Bases Visited We visited Eglin Air Force Base, Fort Walton Beach, Florida; Pope Air 

Force Base, Fayetteville, North Carolina; and Air Combat Command, 

Langley Air Force Base, Langley, Virginia, to ask facilities management 

officials how RPM requirements are determined, how funds are allocated, 

and their views on the RPM process. We asked similar questions at the 

following sites, where we also pretested our survey at some, and 

subsequently validated it at others, as indicated.

Sites visited to pre-test the questionnaire

Maxwell Air Force Base (Air Education and Training Command),

 Montgomery, Alabama;

Seymour-Johnson Air Force Base (Air Combat Command), Goldsboro,

 North Carolina;

Wright-Patterson Air Force Base (Air Materiel Command), Dayton, Ohio;

 and

Air Force Materiel Command, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Dayton,

 Ohio.

Suggested change

Percent of respondents

citing change

Funding for RPM should be based primarily on the physical 

deficiencies present in facilities

56

Funding should not be based on a fixed increase above or 

below the previous year’s level

51

Funding be based on average age, total square footage and 

number of facilities 

45

RPM funding/allocation should not be centrally managed by 

major command

40
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Sites visited to validate questionnaire

Alabama Air National Guard, Birmingham, Alabama;

Scott Air Force Base (Air Mobility Command), Belleville, Illinois;

Tinker Air Force Base (Air Force Materiel Command), Oklahoma City, 

Oklahoma; and 

Air Mobility Command, Scott Air Force Base, Belleville, Illinois.
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Appendix III

Navy Strategy, Methods, and Criteria for 

Determining Real Property Maintenance 

Requirements ApenxIdi

In this appendix we discuss the Navy’s strategy, methods and criteria for 

determining RPM requirements and allocating resources, including the 

responses to a questionnaire on RPM-related issues that we sent to Navy 

installations and major claimants.1

 In particular, we examine the key 

components of the Navy's system for evaluating base infrastructure 

conditions and estimating RPM costs, its Annual Inspection Summary (AIS) 

and Shore Base Readiness Report (BASEREP). 

Background At the end of fiscal year 1998, the Navy managed 31,040 buildings totaling 

almost 343 million square feet. According to the Navy Budget Office, the 

Navy’s operations and maintenance (O&M) fiscal year 1999 appropriation 

for Navy and Navy Reserve RPM is $973.3 million. The Navy estimates that 

its backlog of critical-rated repairs will be just over $2.5 billion at the end of 

fiscal year 1999.2

 The Deputy Chief of Naval Operations (Logistics) 

Facilities and Engineering Division has oversight responsibility for RPM. 

According to the Navy, the plant replacement value (PRV)3

 of Navy 

facilities, as of fiscal year 1998, was estimated at about $103 billion.4

Navy RPM needs can be funded through six appropriations: O&M, Navy; 

O&M, Naval Reserve; Research, Development, Test and Evaluation, Navy; 

the Navy Working Capital Fund; Military Construction, Navy; and Naval 

Reserve. Not all installations receive funds from all six appropriations. 

The working capital fund and Navy O&M also fund property inspections to 

identify and report backlogs. While military construction funds are not 

intended for RPM, they may reduce RPM needs when used to replace or 

extensively renovate an existing facility. 

1

We sent the survey, which asked about installation facility inventory, RPM processes, and funding, to 

132 Navy installations; 126, or 95 percent, returned the questionnaires. See app. X for a copy of the 

survey. Major claimant is the Navy’s equivalent term for major command in the Air Force and Army. 

These are the headquarters for a larger number of installations with similar functions.

2

The Navy rates backlog as either critical or deferrable; only the critical backlog is officially reported to 

the Congress.

3

PRV is defined by OSD as “the cost to replace the current physical plant (facilities and supporting 

infrastructures) using today’s construction cost (labor and materials) and standards (methodologies 

and codes).”

4

This includes family housing ($10 billion in PRV), but excludes facilities funded by working capital 

funds, which have an estimated PRV of $35 billion.
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Navy RPM Funding 

Strategy

The Navy estimates that it would take annual funding equivalent to about 

2.1 percent of PRV to keep the conditions of its facilities stable, but was 

funding RPM at about 1.5 percent of PRV in 1998 for O&M-funded 

properties. However, according to the Navy, it will increase RPM spending 

to 1.84 percent of PRV in fiscal year 2001, with the total gradually rising to 

2.59 percent of PRV by fiscal year 2005. The Navy estimates that this will 

result in holding increases in critical-rated backlog to no more than about 

10 percent over end of fiscal year 1998 levels by fiscal year 2005.5

 The 

spending planned for fiscal years 2001-2005 would cap the growth in 

critical backlog at about $2.75 billion. The Navy has targeted some of the 

planned RPM spending to barracks, with the goal that critical-rated repairs 

for barracks will be “virtually eliminated” by fiscal year 2004, if the funding 

is provided as planned. 

While the Navy RPM funding strategy appears to be reasonably consistent 

with a stated Navy goal to prevent an increase in repairs rated “critical,” it 

is not clear that noncritical rated backlog growth will be adequately 

addressed. The Navy stated that even with the increased funding for 

critical-rated repairs, most facilities’ RPM would be funded at a level 

resulting in either a C2 or C3 readiness level. C3 means that the facilities in 

the category (e.g., aviation, waterfront operations, training) have only 

marginally met the demands of the mission, but with major difficulty. For 

fiscal year 2001, RPM funding will keep 4 of 11 facility categories at the

C2 level, with the remainder at C3.6

 The Navy told us that eventually some 

noncritical repair needs could become critical, as conditions worsen. The 

Navy funding strategy for RPM is the result of balancing RPM needs against 

the other competing priorities of the Navy.

5

Estimate is from a Navy November 1998 briefing and technical comments on draft of this report. A 

June 1999 Navy graph shows total critical backlog increasing from just under $2.5 billion at the start of 

fiscal year 1999 to about $2.75 billion for fiscal years 2002-2003 and declining slightly thereafter. 

6

According to the Navy, for the purpose of calculating these ratings, it reduced its facilities from 28 to 11 

mission categories. These include barracks, aviation (runways and associated facilities) training, and 

utilities.
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Methods and Criteria 

to Determine 

Maintenance Needs

Overview of Navy RPM The Naval Facilities Engineering Command (NAVFAC) is responsible for 

the technical direction of the Navy’s real property inventory. The 

Command maintains a database of all Navy real property, including 

property of the Marine Corps. The database contains various data 

elements, including the unit identification code of the plant property 

accounting unit, date acquired, government cost, current plant value (CPV), 

investment category, use, and size (square feet, statute miles).

NAVFAC’s objective is to make optimum use of available resources for 

RPM. Its goals include ensuring the most efficient use of resources, 

performing scheduled maintenance to avoid breakdowns, and performing 

routine maintenance to avoid having to perform major repairs. These tasks 

involve inspecting facilities, setting work priorities, planning and 

estimating work, and reporting facility condition.

The Navy has maintained two facility condition reporting systems since 

1982: the Annual Inspection Summary (AIS) and the Shore Base Readiness 

Report (BASEREP). These systems serve different purposes, but overlap 

in that they both involve installations’ reports on aspects of facilities’ 

condition. Both are based on engineering inspections of facilities. AIS, the 

Navy told us, is based on a fence-to-fence inspection of facilities to rate 

deficiencies, rather than individual buildings. Deficiencies are rated as 

either critical or deferrable; critical are those that must be funded within

12 months. The purpose of the AIS is to develop realistic, long-term 

maintenance plans that will reduce the Navy's RPM backlog. AIS is the 

summary of work and costs to correct deficiencies for each facility. The 

BASEREP’s purpose is to link installation resources with readiness and 

workload. BASEREP reports on facility quantity and condition, major 

equipment quantity and condition, and personnel. BASEREP is the 

installation commander's assessment of the installation's ability to execute 

assigned missions; it includes explanations of remedial actions needed to
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correct deficiencies. Ratings are by mission areas and include the status of 

all the facilities supporting the assigned missions.7

The Navy’s AIS does not include Marine Corps activities, industrial and 

research plants owned and operated by private contractors, military 

assistance advisory groups and defense attache offices, petroleum 

reserves, Reserve Officer Training Corps units, family housing, fleet 

moorings, and property funded through the Naval Telecommunications 

Command and Naval Security Group Command activities.

NAVFAC publishes guidance and handbooks on managing real property, 

including procedures and guidance for conducting and documenting 

facilities inspections. Navy instructions require installation commanding 

officers to accomplish missions assigned by their major claimant, including 

the management of related budgeting and obligation of funds. They are 

responsible for efficiently and effectively managing installation facilities to 

ensure they are adequate to accomplish the missions.

Navy RPM Definitions The Navy has defined maintenance, repair, and construction as follows:

• Maintenance: the recurring, day-to-day, periodic, or scheduled work 

required to preserve or return a real property facility to such a condition 

that it may be used for its designated purpose.

• Repair: the return of a real property facility to such condition that it 

may be effectively utilized for its designated purpose, by overhaul, 

reconstruction, or replacement of constituent parts or materials that are 

damaged or deteriorated to the point where they cannot be 

economically maintained.

• Construction: the erection, installation, or assembly of a new real 

property facility; or the addition, expansion, extension, alteration, 

conversion, or replacement of an existing real property facility; or the 

relocation of a real property facility.

The Navy has established criteria, including funding limits, for facilities 

projects to comply with laws and regulations. Major claimants set the 

limits of funds obligation for each base. A deficiency under the limits and 

within the Navy definitions for maintenance and repair may be funded by 

7

Navy briefing, June 1998 and Navy email communication to GAO, September 1997.
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the installation. Projects over the limits must be approved and funded by 

the major claimant as a special project. 

BASEREP The BASEREP is an annual report of each installation's ability to perform 

its missions and shows the level of mission readiness, listed by three 

categories, including the quantity and condition of facilities, personnel, and 

quantity and the condition of major equipment. Its purpose is to link 

financial and personnel resources with readiness and workload. BASEREP 

criteria define 28 mission areas and major claimants assign mission areas 

to their installations. Installation commanding officers rate their 

installations’ abilities to perform the assigned missions according to 

C-ratings. The four C-ratings are

• C1—has fully met all demands throughout the reporting period.

• C2—has substantially met all demands, with only minor difficulty.

• C3—has only marginally met the demands, but with major difficulty.

• C4—has not met vital demands.

The C-ratings apply to the installation's asset categories—(1) personnel, 

both military and civilian; (2) facilities’ quantity and condition; and

(3) major equipment quantity and condition. In applying the ratings to 

facilities, quantity addresses the number and size regarding mission and 

condition addresses deficiencies that should be corrected to achieve 

mission requirements. The commanding officers provide additional 

narrative assessments describing the problems and the proposed solutions 

for all missions rated C3 or C4.

Because these ratings are not quantified and involve individual judgments 

by commanders, a Navy RPM official at one installation described the 

BASEREP as “a very subjective assessment.”

Three Navy sites we visited had some C4 mission ratings. The Norfolk 

Naval Shipyard reported C4 in its port operations mission area; NAS 

Oceana reported C4 in its bachelor housing mission area; and Public Works 

Center San Diego reported C4 in its research, development, test, and 

evaluation (RDT&E) and administrative services missions. 

According to BASEREP criteria, AIS data should not drive the BASEREP 

assessment, but BASEREP deficiencies should be addressed in the AIS. 

Major claimants provide supplemental guidance to their installations on 

reporting criteria. According to base officials, the Chief, Naval Education 
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and Training (CNET) directed that only facilities’ condition and quantity 

ratings be provided on its installations’ September 30, 1997, BASEREPs; the 

major claimant did not want the personnel or equipment ratings.

AIS AIS is the Navy's means of identifying and reporting its cumulative backlog 

of real property maintenance and repair. It is also the tool through which 

installation commanders identify and report RPM deficiencies and plan, 

budget, and fund their RPM. AIS contains the critical and the total 

maintenance and repair backlog as of the fiscal year’s end. AIS also 

includes the names of the organizations that performed facility inspections, 

the percentage of inspections completed, and explanations of large 

increases in the backlog.

The AIS divides all deficiencies into two types: critical and deferrable. A 

deficiency is rated critical if it “must be corrected within 12 months” and 

“will impact mission, affects quality of life or has safety or environmental 

hazard potential” according to the Naval Facilities Engineering Command’s 

Inspection of Shore Facilities manual.8

 The estimated cost of fixing the 

deficiencies that qualify as critical is reported to OSD as the backlog of 

maintenance and repair. If a critical deficiency has not been addressed for 

4 years, it is to be classified as deferrable.

Inspections to Identify 

Deficiencies

The three volumes of the Inspection of Shore Facilities manual describe the 

criteria and procedures for performing the three types of facilities 

inspections—operator, preventive maintenance, and control. The latter is 

the primary source for AIS and budget data. 

Navy inspection criteria require a thorough examination of each facility, 

evaluation of the operator, and preventive maintenance inspections, and 

identify related resource requirements as a basis for funding requirements. 

Inspections are expected to be planned, scheduled, and performed by 

qualified inspectors and are required for structural, mechanical, electrical, 

and roof repairs. 

According to Navy criteria, inspectors should (1) have a technical trade 

background; (2) be experienced in maintenance and repair operations, 

including maintenance standards, safety, health, and building codes; and 

8

NAVFAC M0-322, vol. I, March 1993, p. 3-5.

Lert
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(3) have the ability to write clear reports of facility conditions. The criteria 

include requirements for a facility condition report and describe its three 

components: a facility condition detailed deficiency list, facility inspection 

checklists, and facility condition summary sheet. These documents are to 

be used to identify packages of work for planning, estimating, and 

programming maintenance and repairs into the installation's work control 

system as well as identifying budget-oriented resource requirements. They 

form the basis for AIS and BASEREP.

Navy inspection criteria also cover the requirements for compliance with 

regulatory standards and safety codes; that is, national building codes for 

corrosion, electrical elevator, plumbing, track safety standards, 

Occupational Safety and Health Administration requirements, and 

environmental regulations. NAVFAC publishes other manuals containing 

inspection and maintenance guides for many facilities, including 

maintenance of railroads, building maintenance, structures, paints and 

protective coatings.

The criteria for frequency of facility inspections are shown in table III.1. 

These are suggested frequencies and installations may deviate when 

resources are not available.

Table III.1: Type and Frequency of Inspection

Source: Navy.

Navy criteria call for inspectors to prepare for inspections by reviewing 

facility records, including floor plans, the status of major alterations and 

maintenance projects, lists of related contracts and warranties, and lists of 

tenants and maintenance persons. The six installations and the Public 

Works Center we visited used in-house staff or contractors to conduct their 

control inspections. Our review indicated that in-house inspectors 

scheduled their inspections, reviewed property records, and other files 

they maintained for each facility. After conducting the inspections, they 

Type and frequency of inspection (in years) 

Facility’s mission relationship Structural Electrical Mechanical Roof

Direct mission support 2 2 2 1

Indirect mission support 3 3 3 1

Nonmission support 4 4 4 2

Inactive or excess 5 5 5 3
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typically prepared the worksheets, preliminary cost estimates of the work 

they identified, and entered the data into the installation's work order 

system. The Public Works Center submitted its inspection reports and 

prepared work orders for the deficiencies.

Estimating Costs to Correct 

Deficiencies

Navy criteria call for inspectors to prepare preliminary cost estimates of 

the work identified and suggest four sources for estimating labor and 

material costs, including NAVFAC P-716, Unit Price Standards, R.S. Means 

Company, Inc., or Richardson Dodge (the latter two are private companies 

that research and publish cost estimates). Officials told us their 

inspector/estimators use the manuals to estimate costs of needed work. 

They determine the scope of the maintenance and repair work they 

identified and use the manuals to price the costs of the various types of 

crafts and materials. Projects that cost more than the installation 

commanding officer's approval limits are special projects and generally 

must be approved and funded by the installation's major claimant.

Installation commanders submit their lists of needed special projects to 

their major claimant for review and funding. Major claimants review the 

special projects, assign priorities, and fund those to the extent they have 

remaining funds. Review boards evaluate the projects and recommend 

priorities.

Relationship Between 

BASEREP and AIS

Officials at one of the installations we visited said that BASEREP 

objectives should support and be consistent with the AIS submission. 

However, because there are 28 mission areas in BASEREP but only 18 in 

AIS, with the latter encompassing the BASEREP’s areas, it is clear the 2 do 

not match exactly. AIS and BASEREP use the same data from inspections 

but rate different RPM-related elements. According to the Navy, both AIS 

and BASEREP ratings are used “at all levels of the chain of command to 

allocate resources among competing projects.”9

Validation of 

Inspection Results

Navy criteria call for inspectors to have training and experience in the craft 

trades. The staff inspectors at the locations we visited were engineering 

technicians who were experienced in the trades and in facilities inspection, 

9

Navy email communication to GAO, September 1997.
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according to Navy officials. At one installation that contracted for its 

inspections, officials told us the inspectors had equivalent experience.

Responses to our questionnaire showed that the installations used different 

control inspection review and approval procedures. About 53 percent 

reported that facility management staff reviewed selected worksheets and 

judged ratings based on personal knowledge. About 20 percent said they 

used other methods such as facility boards and higher commands to 

validate inspection results. Eleven percent said they used outside 

contractors. Table III.2 shows the responses.

Table III.2: Steps to Ensure Inspections Are Valid 

Source: Responses to question 9, GAO survey.

When asked about the steps taken to ensure ratings given by one staff 

would be, on average, the same reported by another staff, 60 percent said 

they had no formal procedures or mechanisms other than the expertise 

and/or training of the staff who did the ratings. About 38 percent wrote 

about other methods used to ensure consistency. Most described an 

inspection review process in which ratings are reviewed up the chain of 

command. Table III.3 summarizes these answers.

Table III.3: Steps to Ensure Consistency 

Source: Responses to question 10, GAO survey.

Step to ensure validity Percent citing step

Rely on the expertise of assessor; no formal procedures used 23

Facility management staff review selected worksheets 53

Facility staff make follow-up visits to verify reported problems 

on a sample of selected rating worksheets 

19

Outside contractors are used 11

Other validation methods. Specify. 20

Step to ensure consistency Percent citing step

No formal procedures used other than expertise of the assessor 60

Different assessors reinspect facilities 4

Different assessors reinspect a random sample of facilities 7

Outside contractors are used 6

Other method used to ensure consistency 38
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Regarding the overall quality of the control inspection process, 71 percent 

of the respondents reported the primary factor affecting overall quality was 

the shortage of resources. Table III.4 illustrates these responses.

Table III.4: Factors That Constrain the Quality of Assessments 

Source: Responses to question 11, GAO survey. 

When asked how methods could be improved, 76 percent of the 

respondents reported that they agreed with combining AIS and BASEREP, 

while 50 percent said long-range planning should get more emphasis.10

Allocation of RPM 

Resources

The Navy Comptroller allocates obligation authority to various major 

claimants, which in turn allocate it to their installation commanders. The 

Navy Facilities and Engineering Division told us that most commands 

withhold 4 to 4.5 percent of total annual RPM spending for mid-year 

release. After mid-year review of competing needs, they release the reserve 

funds; these may be used for either general RPM, or for special projects, or 

emergency repairs. Special projects are construction, repair, maintenance, 

or equipment installation projects that exceed the funding authority of the 

installation commander but fall below the threshold for military 

construction. Navy guidelines restrict special project funding to no more 

than 10 percent of total RPM annual spending.

Six of the installations we visited received Navy O&M obligation authority 

from their major claimants. They also received funds from tenants that 

paid for some services on a reimbursable basis. RPM funds were managed 

Constraining factor

Percent that checked

factor as a constraint

Shortage of personnel 35

Shortage of trained personnel, that is, those with engineering 

or skilled craft backgrounds 

28

Shortage of resources (i.e., insufficient time and/or budget to 

carry out assessments)

71

Other 7

Does not apply. No factors creating a significant constraint on 

the quality of reviews of facility conditions

21

10Responses to question 13, GAO survey.
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by the installation's engineering officer (public works officer), base civil 

engineer, or staff civil engineer, who directed the application of resources. 

Officials at all the installations we visited told us their RPM funding has 

been insufficient to keep the RPM backlog from increasing over the last 

few years. For example, officials at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard told us they 

implemented an aggressive demolition program to reduce future RPM 

needs, but even with that they could not keep up with RPM needs.

Three of the seven sites we visited were funded through Navy Working 

Capital Fund (1) Norfolk Naval Shipyard, (2) Public Works Center San 

Diego, and (3) Naval Air Station Patuxent River. These three were funded 

through revenue they generated by providing services to customers. The 

Public Works Center prepared annual budgets based on rates and 

quantities of products and services they expected to sell to their customers, 

including facility control inspections. The Center funding for its RPM was 

included in its utilities and overhead rates. 

The Norfolk Naval shipyard, like the Public Works Centers, funds most of 

its RPM through its overhead rates. The shipyard also received some O&M 

funding for RPM on some other facilities, including bachelor housing 

(barracks). It expected to receive military construction funding for some 

other maintenance projects.

Naval Air Station Patuxent River was funded by four sources: Navy 

Working Capital Fund; Research, Development, Test and Evaluation, Navy; 

O&M; and Military Construction, Navy. The capital fund was the largest 

source of RPM funds, collected through its overhead rates, according to 

public works personnel. Research, Development, Test and Evaluation was 

provided to fund all the related base operations support functions, 

including RPM. Its O&M funded RPM for other base operations support, 

including aviation operations, bachelor housing, training, administration, 

and community services.

The other four bases performed the largest portion of their RPM with O&M 

funds. At two, Dam Neck and Northwest, officials told us their funding 

allocations were stable, that is, they almost always got the funding they 

expected to receive before the fiscal year began, and they were able to 

execute RPM efficiently and economically. Officials at those installations 

also said that their RPM backlog was increasing but they believed they 

were better off than fleet-funded installations because their funding was 

more stable. Operational commitments at fleet-funded bases, they said, 

compete for the same O&M funds as RPM. 
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We asked bases to choose from a list of weaknesses that characterize their 

RPM system (or to write in their views). The responses are shown in table 

III.5.

Table III.5: Top Weaknesses in RPM System 

Source: Responses to question 12, GAO survey.

Needs Exceed Allocations With regard to the allocation of RPM funds, Navy installations reported 

receiving RPM funding equal to 14.2 percent of their identified RPM needs 

in fiscal year 1997.11 The Navy Facilities and Engineering Division 

emphasized that “the amount requested and received by the base 

commander is only a part of the total equation,” noting that “the major 

claimants hold a portion of the RPM budget for special” projects.12 

Similarly, major claimants have a portion of their RPM budgets withheld by 

higher levels for the centralized demolition program. 

We asked Navy installations to indicate whether or not they agreed with 

four potential alternative changes to their RPM funding system. The 

responses are shown in table III.6.

Weakness

Percent that checked

weakness

Little or unclear linkage between RPM needs assessment and 

allocation of resources

41

Rollup oversimplifies conditions 38

Condition assessments/requirements determination are too 

subjective

25

Ratings do not tell what is wrong within facility or mission 

category

27

Little or unclear linkage between condition assessment and 

budget estimation

30

11Responses to question 15, GAO survey.

12Navy email communication to GAO, September 1997.
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Table III.6: Bases’ Choices to Proposed Changes in Allocation Process 

Source: Responses to question 22, GAO survey. Responses exceed 100 percent because more than 

option could be chosen.

Bases Visited We pretested and post-tested the survey at selected locations as part of our 

work to ensure the reliability of the survey. We pretested the survey at six 

Navy sites:

U. S. Atlantic Fleet, Norfolk, Virginia;

Naval Air Station Pensacola (Chief, Naval Education and Training),

 Pensacola, Florida;

Naval Air Station Oceana (U.S. Atlantic Fleet), Virginia Beach, Virginia;

Naval Air Station North Island (U.S. Pacific Fleet), San Diego, California;

Public Works Center San Diego (Naval Facilities and Engineering

 Command), San Diego, California; and

Norfolk Naval Shipyard (Naval Sea Systems Command), Portsmouth,

 Virginia.

We performed survey post-tests to validate survey responses at four 

locations:

Naval Air Systems Command, Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Lexington

 Park, Maryland; 

Fleet Combat Training Center, Atlantic, Dam Neck, Virginia Beach Virginia;

Naval Security Group Activity Northwest (Naval Security Group

 Command), Chesapeake, Virginia; and 

Naval Air Station Patuxent River (Naval Air Systems Command), Lexington

 Park, Maryland.

During our pre- and post-tests, we visited facilities causing, or contributing 

to, a C3 or C4 mission area in the BASEREP, at seven sites:

Suggested change Percent citing change

RPM funding should be based on physical deficiencies, with 

“needier” bases receiving more funds

48

Funding should not be based on a fixed increase above or 

below the previous year’s level

61

Funding should be based on the average age, total square 

footage, and number of facilities

32

RPM funding/allocation should not be centrally managed by 

major command

30
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Naval Air Station Oceana, Virginia Beach, Virginia;

Naval Air Station North Island, San Diego, California;

Public Works Center San Diego, San Diego, California; 

Norfolk Naval Shipyard, Portsmouth, Virginia;

Fleet Combat Training Center, Atlantic, Dam Neck, Virginia Beach, Virginia; 

Naval Security Group Activity Northwest, Chesapeake, Virginia; and

Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Patuxent River, Maryland.

During these visits we also reviewed related property records, documented 

backlog information and the recorded deficiencies, and visited the facilities 

to observe the condition and deficiencies. We interviewed installation 

engineering staff as they showed us the deficiencies and documented 

additional information when necessary. We observed and confirmed the 

deficiencies recorded at 17 of the 18 facilities we visited through direct 

observation.

We also visited three other sites where we interviewed relevant officials, 

observed facility conditions, and were briefed on RPM processes and 

issues. The three were Naval Station Norfolk, Norfolk, Virginia; Naval 

Amphibious Base Little Creek, Norfolk, Virginia; and Public Works Center 

Norfolk, Norfolk, Virginia.
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Appendix IV

Marine Corps’ Strategy, Methods, and Criteria 

for Determining Real Property Maintenance 

Requirements ApenxIVdi

In this appendix, we discuss the Marine Corps’ strategy, methods, and 

criteria for determining RPM requirements and allocating resources to 

those needs. We examine the Marine Commanding Officer’s Readiness 

Reporting System (CORRS), a key component of the Marines’ system for 

evaluating base infrastructure conditions, including the responses to our 

questionnaire on RPM-related issues that we sent to Marine Corps bases 

and the Corps’ single major claimant.1

Background As of 1998, Marine Corps installations worldwide managed about 11,000 

buildings totaling about 104 million square feet, with an estimated plant 

replacement value (PRV)2

 of $28 billion (or about 5.6 percent of the 

services’ total PRV). Although the Corps has its own bases and (one) major 

claimant, it is a part of the Navy and is therefore closely linked to the Navy 

in almost every regard, including the fact that the Naval Facilities 

Engineering Command (NAVFAC) maintains the real property inventory for 

the Corps. The Corps headquarters Facilities Branch has overall 

responsibility for Marine Corps RPM programs. According to the Navy 

Budget Office (which maintains the Marines’ fiscal data), the Marine Corps 

fiscal year 1999 RPM appropriation was $351.2 million, of which

$6.9 million was for the Marine Reserve and $344.3 million was for its active 

forces.

RPM Funding Strategy The Marine Corps’ funding strategy through fiscal year 2005 is to underfund 

RPM compared to what it estimates is required to keep the amount of 

backlog repairs at current levels. According to the Corps, estimated 

unfunded repair backlogs rise 60 percent during 1998-2005, from

$711 million to $1.1 billion. According to the Corps headquarters Facilities 

Branch, about 80 percent of this amount is critical-rated repair; the 

remainder is deferrable repair.

1

We sent the survey, which asked about base facility’s inventory, RPM processes, and funding, to 16 

Marine Corps bases; all returned the questionnaire. See appendix X for a copy of the survey. A claimant 

is the equivalent to a major command in the Army or Air Force.

2

PRV is defined by the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) as “the cost to replace the current 

physical plant (facilities and supporting infrastructures) using today’s construction cost (labor and 

materials) and standards (methodologies and codes).”
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The Marine Corps compares its RPM spending level to the private sector to 

demonstrate that it requires more funds for RPM.3 The Corps noted that in 

fiscal year 1998, it planned to spend the equivalent of 1.2 percent of PRV on 

RPM, comparing it to the 1.75 percent level recommended in a 1989 DOD 

report,4

 and a private industry level of 3.5 percent cited in the same report.5 

It subsequently allocated about 1.4 percent of PRV to RPM, and plans to 

gradually increase this to about 1.8 percent by fiscal year 2005. However, 

this is not a sufficient funding level to constrain the growth of backlog. The 

Corps states that “all bases are underfunded” with regard to RPM and that 

with “insufficient funds, backlog grows.” 

RPM Assessment 

System

The Marine Corps uses two systems to assess its RPM needs—a version of 

the Navy's Annual Inspection Summary (AIS) (see app. III), and CORRS. 

CORRS is modeled on the Navy's Shore Base Readiness Report 

(BASEREP). It rates the ability of an installation, on a scale of one to four, 

to carry out its mission. According to the Corps headquarters Facilities 

Branch staff, the Marine version of AIS is less detailed than the Navy’s but 

is otherwise similar. It uses inspections to generate an estimate cost for 

repairs. Critical-rated repairs that are not funded become the reported 

backlog. Unlike AIS, the data are not inserted into a servicewide database. 

Rather, each base reports its estimated backlog to Corps headquarters at a 

given point during the year.

CORRS: A New System The Marine Corps’ CORRS facilities assessment system was tested at 

various installations in 1996, and bases initially submitted data to the 

system in April 1997. According to the Corps, CORRS was created to 

• link facility conditions directly to mission requirements;

• rate Corps facilities at all installations against a uniform set of 

requirements;

• make Marine Corps-wide investment decisions factoring in facilities’ 

effect on readiness; and

3

June 1997 briefing to GAO. 

4

DOD, Renewing the Built Environment, 1989, p. 31

5

DOD, Renewing the Built Environment, 1989, p. 16.
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• enable the Marines to compete with the Navy, the Army, and the Air 

Force for very limited resources.6

According to a memorandum issued by the Commandant of the Marine 

Corps, the advantages of CORRS are that it provides (1) comparability of 

requirements with other services and a detailed defense for budget 

submissions and (2) helps base commanders “identify problem areas and 

facility deficiencies that impact mission areas.” The memorandum also 

states that CORRS will provide headquarters facilities planning staff with 

the data needed to provide “an opportunity to make informed resource 

allocation decisions and identify deficiencies to higher headquarters.” 

Further, it states that “the Planning, Programming, and Budget System 

(PPBS) fails if the consequences of inadequate funding cannot be clearly, 

logically and uniformly presented by an installation. With the 

implementation of CORRS, all Marine Corps installations will have 

identical classification formats.”

In CORRS, facilities are rated on their condition and quantity, and 

commanders assess the ability of their plant facilities to achieve mission 

requirements. According to CORRS instructions, quantity ratings use a 

scale of one (best) to four (worst), and “should reflect the size and number 

of facilities required by the mission . . . compared to what actually exists.” 

CORRS has a four-point scale to rate the impact of facility condition on 

readiness, with results placed in a mission area assessment matrix, which 

appears similar to the matrix used by the Air Force for its deficiency rating 

system, the facility investment metric (FIM). The four levels are defined as 

follows:

• Level 1: Full mission capability; no major facility deficiencies.

• Level 2: Full mission capability; any existing facility deficiencies are 

minor and within the activities’ capability to correct with available 

resources.

• Level 3: Reduced mission capability with major facility deficiencies; the 

activity does not possess the resources to correct those failures.

• Level 4: Not mission capable; there are major facility deficiencies that 

require external resource support to eliminate.

6

The purpose of CORRS was virtually identical to the Army’s rationale for its Installation Status Report, 

and the Air Force’s rationale for its facility investment metric system, both implemented recently (1995 

and 1998, respectively).
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CORRS rating worksheets show ratings on a 1 to 4 scale for individual 

facilities within a 24 mission areas (versus 28 in the Navy's BASEREP). 

Individual facility ratings are then combined, following a formula, to 

produce an overall condition rating of 1 to 4 for mission areas at 

installations, and quantity ratings. Although the mission-capable levels are 

stated in broad terms, the facility condition worksheets for each of the

26 mission areas quantify with considerable precision how the rater is to 

decide which of the four levels is correct in many cases and with somewhat 

less precision in those that involve a less readily quantifiable situation. For 

example, for aircraft operations, CORRS shows how to calculate the rating 

level for each of seven specific operational dimensions. The instructions 

for the first and seventh dimensions are shown in table IV.I.

Table IV.1: Dimensions and Ratings in CORRS

Source: CORRS Facility Condition Readiness Worksheet.

According to the CORRS instructions, the overall rating for the mission is 

calculated as “enter worst rating [of the seven dimensions in the mission] if 

that rating occurs more than once.” “Otherwise, enter worst rating minus 

one.” Similar methods of calculation apply to the other mission areas. 

As shown, written rather than percentage estimates are used for some 

dimensions of mission areas; in some cases, the entire mission area uses 

written rather than percentage definitions. For example, ratings of the 

three indicators for morale, welfare, and recreation are all written 

definitions: seldom; occasional; frequent; and continuous problem. It is 

evident, therefore, that some rating levels can be calculated with greater 

Indicator (measure) Rating CORRS level

Percentage of days when required air operations 

are restricted or curtailed due to condition of 

runways, taxiways, arresting gear, or aprons

Less than 5% 1

5–10% 2

10-20% 3

Greater than 20% 4

Risk that mission will be curtailed over next year due 

to document structural, safety, or environmental 

hazards

Almost none 1

Some risk 2

Serious risk 3

Almost certain 4
Appendix IV

Marine Corps’ Strategy, Methods, and 

Criteria for Determining Real Property 

Maintenance Requirements

Page 92 GAO/NSIAD-99-100 Real Property Management

accuracy—assuming the operational records are available—than others, 

which require a judgment about the dividing lines for the levels among the 

definitions of risk or unacceptability of conditions. In addition, some of the 

indicators themselves require interpretation, such as “morale and welfare 

levels unacceptably low due to BOQ/BEQ [bachelor officers’ quarters/ 

bachelor enlisted quarters] conditions.” In this latter case, the term 

unacceptably is open to subjective judgment.

Base Views on CORRS On the surveys returned to us, officials at one Marine installation 

commented that, CORRS “is not flexible enough to reflect base-specific 

requirements.” Further, the “drop- down menu restricts detailed 

reporting.” Another base made these comments with regard to both detail 

and current utility: 

to date [early 1998] CORRS has not been used in the process of determining our 

maintenance real property requirements due to the general nature of the information was 

inputted. Currently, CORRS does not identify specific deficiencies and necessary repairs. 

CORRS has been a useful tool for validating planned repair and construction projects.

At a Marine base we visited, the facilities staff expressed some reservations 

about the vagueness of the CORRS worksheets, noting that they were not 

rating physical condition but the impact of conditions on mission 

readiness. They noted that under this rating system, a building could 

actually be in fine physical condition but rated as low or unacceptable 

under CORRS because it was housing an activity for which it was not well 

designed. For example, a warehouse would be inappropriate as a library or 

as a day care center but could be fine as a warehouse. They said that 

CORRS did not make clear whether they were to rate the facility in terms of 

the facility's original mission—for which it was designed—or in terms of 

the mission of the people now in it. 

Facilities officials further stated that they found CORRS ambiguous in 

some regards. If they had 100 administrative buildings at the installation, 

they had the time to interview only a sample of the occupants to determine 

how well the buildings were meeting their needs. They said that they had 

to figure out who the "top" administrative people were and that it was 

unclear how to rate an entire mission area if only 2 of 77 buildings did not 

meet the mission. They said it was hard to justify a rating of 3 or 4 

(indicating poor conditions) when 75 of 77 buildings were acceptable. 

(Because CORRS is a new system, the headquarters Facilities Branch 

stated that changes are being made to it as they get feedback from the field 

on what works and what does not.)
Appendix IV

Marine Corps’ Strategy, Methods, and 

Criteria for Determining Real Property 

Maintenance Requirements

Page 93 GAO/NSIAD-99-100 Real Property Management

Another installation expressed concern about whether base commanders 

would report accurately on the impact of facilities on readiness, stating 

that “No CO [commanding officer] will confess to being ‘not mission 

capable’.” 

Survey A total of 16 Marine installations received questionnaires and all returned 

them. Despite the high response rate, the relatively small total number of 

respondents introduces a cautionary note about generalizing from the 

results. When asked how methods could be improved, there appeared to 

be no strong consensus among Marine respondents. Eight of the 16 

favored rating facilities primarily according to engineering-based criteria, 

but the other 8 did not. Ten Marine installations favored more emphasis on 

long-term planning, but 6 did not. Table IV.2 shows the Marine responses.

Table IV.2: How Installations Would Change Methods to Determine Requirements 

Source: Responses to question 13, GAO survey.

RPM Needs Exceed 

Requests Fivefold

Marine bases reported a large gap between the RPM dollars they asked for 

from their major claimant and their unconstrained requirements. The 

respondents reported that in fiscal year 1997, they received $174 million for 

RPM from headquarters (the sole major claimant), but that their 

unconstrained RPM requirement was $622 million. Thus, they received 

about 28 percent of their identified needs; this was about double the ratios 

received by Army bases or Navy installations, and about 1.5 times more 

than was received, as a ratio, by Air Force bases. 

Bases Visited We reviewed relevant policies and other service guidance and records, and 

interviewed responsible RPM-related staff at the Marine Corps 

Proposed change in method 

Percent approving

proposed change

Rate building/facilities primarily according to engineering, life-safety, 

and health criteria, while decreasing the role of aesthetics

50

Place much more emphasis on long-range maintenance planning, 

while deemphasizing annual assessments of facilities

63

Other 13

Lert
Appendix IV

Marine Corps’ Strategy, Methods, and 

Criteria for Determining Real Property 

Maintenance Requirements

Page 94 GAO/NSIAD-99-100 Real Property Management

headquarters, and the Marine Corps base Quantico, Virginia, where we also 

compared the data reported to us in the questionnaire with base records. 
Page 95 GAO/NSIAD-99-100 Real Property Management

Appendix V

Summary Comparison of Service Methods and 

Criteria ApenxVdi

Each service uses different methods and criteria by which to rate the 

condition of its facilities, prioritize repairs, and allocate funds to those 

repairs. The core systems for assessing and rating the condition of 

facilities and/or the urgency of repairs are: the Army’s Installation Status 

Report (ISR), the Air Force’s Facility Investment Metric (FIM), the Navy’s 

Annual Inspection Summary (AIS) and Shore Base Readiness Report 

(BASEREP), and the Marine Corps’ Commanding Officer’s Readiness 

Reporting System (CORRS). These generally combine assessments of the 

physical condition of facilities and those conditions’ impact on mission. 

However, the Air Force’s system rates repair deficiencies only in terms of 

estimated impact on mission rather than rating the condition of each 

facility. Table V.1 compares some of these systems’ basic characteristics. 

Table V.1: Basic Characteristics of Services’ Condition Assessment Systems

Source: Service reports, manuals, and briefings.

As table V.1 shows, with the exception of the Navy, assessment systems 

currently used by the services have been recently implemented. In general, 

these rating scales rank the severity of the condition of a facility or the 

urgency of a repair project. However, because they use different criteria to 

arrive at the ratings, and because the scaling systems vary, the ratings they 

generate are not comparable from service to service. 

 Service 

Characteristic of rating 

system Army Air Force Navy Marines

Name(s) & date 

implemented

ISR, 1995 FIM, 1998 AIS; BASEREP,

1982 

CORRS, 1997

What is rated by the 

assessment system

Facilities and mission 

areas

Deficiency impact in four 

mission areas

(based in part on work 

orders generated by 

facility users) 

Repair projects and 

mission areas

(based on facility 

inspections) 

Facilities, equipment, and 

personnel in terms of 

capability to meet 

designated mission

Who inspects

facilities

Building users and 

engineers/skilled 

craftsmen

Users and 

engineers/skilled 

craftsmen

Users and 

engineers/skilled 

craftsmen

Users and 

engineers/skilled 

craftsmen

Number of levels in rating 

system

Three-point scale for 

facility condition; four 

points for mission areas

Three-point scale for 

urgency of repairs/ impact 

on mission

Four-point scale for 

mission areas; Two-point 

scale for repair backlog 

urgency

Four-point scale for each 

rated category
Page 96 GAO/NSIAD-99-100 Real Property Management

Appendix VI

Criteria for Allocation of Funds ApenxVdiI

In response to our survey on real property maintenance (RPM) issues that 

we sent to 530 service bases worldwide, bases ranked nine criteria to 

determine how RPM funds were allocated. (The text of the survey can be 

found in app. X.) The rankings of one through nine were collapsed into 

three broad levels representing the respondents’ assessment of the 

importance of each factor in allocating RPM funds—most important, 

moderately important, and least important. Table VI.1 shows the percent of 

respondents, by service, that assigned these three levels to each of nine 

criteria.

Table VI.1: Ranking of Factors Affecting Allocation of Funds, by Service

Percent of bases ranking factors’ importance in 

allocation of funds

Factor Service

Percent ranking factor

as most important

Percent ranking factor as

moderately important

Percent ranking factor

as least important

Mission priority and/or 

readiness

Air Force 86 14 0

Army 59 40 1

Navy 89 11 0

Marines 93 7 0

Facility appearance Air Force 4 62 34

Army 4 60 36

Navy 2 53 45

Marines 0 87 13

Low repair cost Air Force 1 48 50

Army 5 63 32

Navy 4 61 35

Marines 0 64 36

Physical condition of facility Air Force 36 63 2

Army 35 59 6

Navy 36 63 1

Marines 40 60 0

Type of facility Air Force 9 84 7

Army 10 82 8

Navy 12 81 7

Marines 7 87 7

(continued)
Appendix VI

Criteria for Allocation of Funds

Page 97 GAO/NSIAD-99-100 Real Property Management

Source: Responses to question 19, GAO survey. Totals may not add exactly to 100 due to rounding.

These data suggest that importance of mission was the most important 

factor in allocating RPM funds for the Air Force, Marine Corps, and Navy 

respondents, with 86 to 93 percent ranking this as “most important.” No 

other factor came close to receiving this high a percentage of ranking as the 

most important in affecting funding allocation. However, only 59 percent 

of Army bases, or about one-third less than the other services, assigned a 

comparably high ranking to mission impact.

Compared to the 59 to 93 percent assigned to mission impact across the 

services as a most important factor, there was a narrower spread for the 

importance assigned to the Department of Defense (DOD) guidance, with 

31 to 46 percent of bases ranking this factor as one of moderate-level 

importance and 0 to 11 percent ranking it as the most important. There 

was slightly more variation in the importance of service guidance, with

44 to 61 percent of bases ranking it as of moderate importance, and 0 to

10 percent ranking it as most important. There was considerable similarity 

across the services in terms of the ranking assigned to physical condition 

as an allocation factor, with 35 to 40 percent of the bases rating it as the 

most important, and 59 to 63 percent in each ranking it as moderate. There 

Percent of bases ranking factors’ importance in 

allocation of funds

Factor Service

Percent ranking factor

as most important

Percent ranking factor as

moderately important

Percent ranking factor

as least important

Type of deficiency Air Force 22 75 3

Army 31 65 4

Navy 29 70 1

Marines 20 73 7

Base commander’s priorities Air Force 34 63 3

Army 35 60 5

Navy 19 74 6

Marines 40 53 7

Service guidance Air Force 4 61 35

Army 10 44 45

Navy 6 47 47

Marines 0 46 54

DOD guidance Air Force 7 38 55

Army 11 34 55

Navy 7 46 47

Marines 0 31 69
Appendix VI

Criteria for Allocation of Funds

Page 98 GAO/NSIAD-99-100 Real Property Management

was less consensus on the importance of a commander’s priorities, with 

twice as many Marine bases citing it as of highest impact compared to Navy 

bases (40 vs. 19 percent), and 34 to 35 percent of Army and Air Force bases 

ranking it as most important.

Within each service, consistency on the rankings of these criteria varied by 

the bases. For example, 35 percent of Army bases cited physical conditions 

as most important, but 59 percent rated these as moderately important. 

Similarly, almost twice as many Air Force bases assigned physical 

condition as a moderate rank as those citing it as the most important

(63 vs. 36 percent). In the Navy, 19 percent of the bases ranked a 

commander’s priority as the most important allocation criteria, while

74 percent said it was moderate. In the Air Force, almost twice as many 

bases ranked commander priority as moderately important as those that 

assigned it the highest level rating (63 percent vs. 34 percent).

On DOD guidance as a criterion, 11 percent of Army bases rated it as most 

important while 55 percent rated it as least important. Similarly, among Air 

Force bases, there was little agreement—7 percent ranked it as most 

important, 38 percent as moderately important, and 55 percent at least 

important in allocating funds. In the Navy, 46 percent ranked it as of 

moderate importance, and 7 percent ranked it as most important. 

Differences in the Marine Corps were somewhat less obvious on the 

rankings of almost every criterion.
Page 99 GAO/NSIAD-99-100 Real Property Management

Appendix VII

Percent of Value Measures for Estimating 

RPM Requirements ApexVnIdi

The percent of plant replacement value (PRV) or similar measures of 

facility value spent on real property maintenance (RPM) are commonly 

cited by the Department of Defense (DOD) and the services with regard to 

the adequacy of RPM funding levels in the services. There is no fixed 

standard for defining PRV, although most definitions are similar. The Office 

of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) defines PRV as “the cost to replace the 

current physical plant (facilities and supporting infrastructure) using 

today’s construction cost (labor and materials) and standards 

(methodologies and codes),” and developed a standard formula to 

calculate it.1

Perhaps the most widely cited percentage spending guideline for RPM2 was 

recommended by the Building Research Board of the National Research 

Council in its 1990 report, Committing to the Cost of Ownership—

Maintenance and Repair of Public Buildings.

An appropriate budget allocation for routine maintenance and repair for a substantial 

inventory of facilities will typically be in the range of two to four percent of the aggregate 

current replacement value of those facilities (excluding land and major associated 

infrastructure). . . . Where neglect of maintenance has caused a backlog of needed repairs to 

accumulate, spending must exceed this minimum level until the backlog has been 

eliminated.3

1

The OSD formula is:

 Scope (size of a facility)

x Unit cost factor (cost per unit to construct)

x Area cost factor (locality adjustment)

x Inflation factor (adjustment to the year in question)

x 1.2 (overhead factor) (standard inspection and overhead, design, contingency, supporting

 facilities) 

 = plant replacement value.

Source: OSD (Installations) Directorate of Analysis and Investment: “Plant Replacement Value,” July, 

1997.

2

Harvey H. Kaiser A Foundation to Uphold (Alexandria, Va.: APPA,) 1996, p. 46. See also, Level of 

Investment Study Facilities and Infrastructure Maintenance and Repair, Civil Engineering Research 

Foundation, August 1996, pp. 6, 3-7, which notes that the Board’s guideline of 2 to 4 percent of current 

plant replacement value is "a widely-used benchmark . . . often cited in the literature pertaining to 

building maintenance for public agencies, colleges, and universities." (pp. 3-6).

3

Committing to the Cost of Ownership: Maintenance and Repair of Public Buildings, Committee on 

Advanced Maintenance Concepts for Buildings, Building Research Board, Commission on Engineering 

and Technical Systems, National Research Council, (Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1990) 

p. xii.
Appendix VII

Percent of Value Measures for Estimating 

RPM Requirements

Page 100 GAO/NSIAD-99-100 Real Property Management

Current replacement value is defined by the Building Research Board as 

“the amount in current dollars it would cost to duplicate the facilities.”4 

This value was described to us by a Federal Facilities Council official as 

having the same meaning as PRV.5

 The Council reported in 1996 that 

federal agencies were using two different methods to calculate current 

replacement value.6

The Air Force uses a percentage guideline as a benchmark against which to 

determine the adequacy of its preventive maintenance spending, funding it 

at 1 percent of PRV. This was based on a 1989 DOD infrastructure report 

that compared military RPM spending as a percent of PRV to other 

governmental entities, major private corporations, and major universities.7

 

The Air National Guard budgets RPM with a baseline of 1 percent of PRV; 

that is, all installations receive no less than 1 percent of PRV for annual 

RPM. The Navy has used a 2-percent current plant value benchmark8

 based 

in part on an April 1995 Center for Naval Analyses study that concluded 

that funding at 2 percent of current plant value was required to arrest the 

growth of backlog in Navy facilities, thereby sustaining them at current 

conditions.9

 The Navy tracks both the current plant value as well as the 

plant replacement value of its inventory.10

DOD’s 1997 Quadrennial Defense Review explicitly cited the percentage of 

PRV spent by the services (1.16 percent) on RPM compared to that spent by

4

Federal Facilities Council, Budgeting for Facilities Maintenance and Repair Activities (Washington, 

D.C.: National Academy Press, 1996), Report Number 131, p. 10.

5

Similarly, the Civil Engineering Research Foundation stated that current replacement value is 

“equivalent to the term PRV” and used the terms interchangeably in its Level of Investment Study: 

Facilities and Infrastructure Maintenance and Repair (Washington, D.C.: CERF, Aug. 1996), pp. 3-6.

6

Budgeting for Facilities Maintenance and Repair Activities (Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 

1996), Report Number 131, pp. 10-11.

7

DOD, Renewing the Built Environment, March 1989, pp. 11, 15, 31.

8

Current plant value is defined by the Navy as the cost of the facility’s “original acquisition, plus major 

improvements, inflated to current dollars” (June 1998 briefing, p. 6). Similarly, current plant value is 

defined by the Center for Naval Analyses as "the facility's original construction cost plus the cost of its 

capital improvements (e.g., a roof replacement)." Glenn H. Ackerman, Jino Choi, and Ty D. Weis, The

Backlog of Maintenance and Repair: Preventing Its Growth and Measuring Its Impact (Alexandria, Va.: 

Center for Naval Analyses,) Apr. 1995, p. 9.

9

The Backlog of Maintenance and Repair: Preventing Its Growth and Measuring Its Impact (Alexandria, 

Va.: Center for Naval Analyses,) Apr. 1995, p. 1.

10Base Operating Support Shore Maintenance and Repair Trends, Navy, fiscal year 1996, p. 16 of 36, 

Inventory.
Appendix VII

Percent of Value Measures for Estimating 

RPM Requirements

Page 101 GAO/NSIAD-99-100 Real Property Management

the private sector as evidence that service RPM spending was inadequate,11

noting that this level exceeds the nonmilitary sector in just one category—

county jails. Similarly, in a 1989 infrastructure report, DOD recommended 

that the services spend 1.75 percent of their PRV on maintenance and 

repair; this did not include additional spending that would have been 

required to eliminate repair backlogs.12

RPM experts, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), 

and OSD have identified multiple problems with the concept of basing the 

level of RPM funding on a percentage of estimated PRV or other 

comparable percentage estimates of the value of facilities. (As noted, PRV 

is also referred to as current replacement value or current plant value, both 

of which calculate the value of a facility differently but are comparable 

measures.)

Percentage Measures Are 

Not Based on Condition

The decision to base RPM funding on a percentage of replacement value 

(whether PRV or current plant value or an equivalent) has certain 

drawbacks. For example, the NASA facilities maintenance guidebook 

explicitly cites the Building Research Board guideline, while cautioning 

that actual condition assessments may lead to a different funding level.

NASA headquarters recognizes the annual funding level of 2 to 4 percent of current 

replacement value recommended by the Federal Facilities Council (formerly the Building 

Research Board), National Research Council, as a reasonable funding target necessary to 

maintain facilities in a steady-state condition at an adequate maintenance standard until an 

independent analysis of facilities condition assessment trends indicates otherwise.13

NASA’s caveat is noteworthy, for it is clearly the case that budgeting for 

maintenance on the basis of a percentage of PRV is not based on the actual 

condition of the facilities in question; rather, it assumes that (1) some 

minimum amount—in this case, 2 to 4 percent of PRV—is required to 

maintain a large inventory of facilities annually and (2) the backlog is 

already so low that additional spending is not required to eliminate it (a 

caution noted by the Building Research Board in the original formulation). 

11DOD, Quadrennial Defense Review, Infrastructure Panel, “Installation Support Task Force Final 

Report,” February 24, 1997, Attachment 1, Issue Paper, p. 1-1.

12DOD, Renewing the Built Environment, March 1989, p. 31.

13NASA: Facilities Maintenance and Energy Management Handbook, section 1.2.4, issued Oct. 1, 1994.
Appendix VII

Percent of Value Measures for Estimating 

RPM Requirements

Page 102 GAO/NSIAD-99-100 Real Property Management

A 1996 analysis of the Board’s 2- to 4- percent guideline by the Civil 

Engineering Research Foundation noted that the Board’s report recognized 

that a percentage guideline cannot take into account factors relevant for 

determining the RPM funding level for a facility. These were

• size and complexity,

• current age,

• condition,

• use,

• historical or community value,

• geographic location,

• climate,

• mechanical and electrical technologies needed,

• telecommunications and security systems technologies needed, and

• criticality of building role or function.14

The problematic nature of using a percentage of PRV (or other similar 

methods of estimating facility value) was also noted by Federal Facilities 

Council officials in an interview with us. They stated that the Building 

Research Board’s 1990 recommendation was based on a guess at best. 

They said that the Board had decided that 1 percent was too little and

5 percent was more than any (public) entity would be allocated, so it set 

the level at 2 to 4 percent. However, in the case of facilities with estimated 

PRV in the hundreds of millions of dollars, 2 to 4 percent is a large range for 

annual maintenance spending. Council officials said that as a result they 

were reconsidering the Board’s recommendation in an effort to be more 

precise.

OSD also identified a major drawback to determining maintenance funding 

on the basis of a percentage of PRV in a July 1997 analysis, noting that “as 

an allocation tool, PRV has so far demonstrated only marginal utility.” 

“Having an accurate PRV sheds little light on the question of an appropriate 

budget level for facilities, nor does it provide much assurance about where 

specifically to spend facility dollars.”15 Further, even if percent of facility 

value was an accurate measure of RPM needs—which it inherently is not—

there is also the difficulty of ensuring that the value of like facilities, both 

within and across services, is calculated identically.

14Level of Investment Study: Facilities and Infrastructure Maintenance and Repair (Washington, D.C: 

Civil Engineering Research Foundation, Aug. 1996), pp. 3-7.

15“Plant Replacement Value,” OSD (Installations) Directorate of Analysis and Investment, July 18, 1997.
Appendix VII

Percent of Value Measures for Estimating 

RPM Requirements

Page 103 GAO/NSIAD-99-100 Real Property Management

Although OSD told us that each service had been told to use the exact same 

formula to calculate PRV,16 it is also the case that “in the weeds, they [the 

services] don’t have standardized facility codes [to identify similar 

facilities], and, as a result, they can have different replacement costs for 

similar facilities.” This means that uniformity in such estimates is not 

ensured for similar types or classes of facilities (e.g., barracks) across the 

services, although the scope of variation is not known.

OSD officials said that the PRV estimating process is analogous to creating 

a recipe for a cake, in which minor variations could occur from chef to 

chef. However, an Army misunderstanding of OSD’s PRV formula led to a 

20-percent underestimate of the Army’s overall PRV in fiscal year 1996; this 

was corrected (upwards) in fiscal year 1997. Further, although OSD’s 

formula states that the overhead factor component of PRV should be a 

multiplier of 1.2, the Air Force instructions to a contractor on developing 

PRV calculations, provided to us in October 1997, state that “overhead 

markup was established by the Air Force as 25 percent (1.25 multiplier).” 

While the difference may not seem large, it is not consistent with the OSD 

policy that the services are to calculate PRV using the same formula and 

can result in significant differences in PRV estimates when PRV totals 

billions of dollars.

We did not attempt to validate the accuracy of the PRV estimates of the 

services; this was beyond the scope of this report. However, the Air Force’s 

PRV instruction on calculation reported that only 55 percent of the Air 

Force’s estimated $204 billion (fiscal year 1996) PRV was acceptable; and 

that the Air Staff had determined that the remaining 45 percent of the PRV 

data needed to be reviewed and validated.17 The Air Force is actively 

addressing the problem.

In addition, the Air Force report notes that some PRV estimates are 

unreliable because the real property records “do not contain the level of 

detail required to accurately match an appropriate unit cost to the real 

property record quantity” (p. 4). As an example, the report cites the fact 

that water lines are only identified as a “generic type,” but not the size or 

type of water line, which it notes can range in cost from $7 per linear foot 

to about $60 per linear foot for 24-inch cast iron pipe. The report provides 

16“Plant Replacement Value,” OSD (Installations) Directorate of Analysis and Investment, July 18, 1997.

17"Short Term Analysis Report: Air Force PRV Model," Air Force, Oct. 1997, p. 2. 
Appendix VII

Percent of Value Measures for Estimating 

RPM Requirements

Page 104 GAO/NSIAD-99-100 Real Property Management

no estimate of the potential range of inaccuracy in the PRV estimates for 

Air Force facilities. 

Similarly, the Navy noted that while estimates for many of its facilities are 

reasonable in some areas, such as utilities and specialized research and 

development (R&D) facilities, their accuracy is questionable. In addition, 

for overseas installations in countries where the currency has depreciated, 

the Navy said that there could be significant reductions in PRV without any 

real reduction in facilities or the cost of maintaining those facilities.18 For 

example, the PRV of a Navy base in Japan dropped 25 percent from one 

year to the next year because of changes in currency exchange rates. As a 

result, allocating RPM funding on the basis of a percentage of PRV could 

lead to large and unpredictable swings in allocating RPM at some locations.

Two entities that we identified as having what are termed promising 

practices in facilities management (see app. VIII)—those that appear to 

offer improvements over current ones—do not use PRV or similar metrics 

as an RPM funding guideline. For example, the Lawrence Livermore 

National Laboratory does not use PRV in this way because no one can 

agree on estimating it, even with specific guidelines. The Capital Needs 

Analysis Center does not use it because it is not a measure of need. 

Further, basing RPM needs on PRV can create incentives to overestimate 

the value, since the larger the PRV, the greater the potential RPM funding.

Further, as OSD explained regarding PRV, the formula contains many 

variables unrelated to size, for example, a shift in standard from barracks 

with common latrines to private rooms would increase PRV because 

replacement cost is computed at the new standard and higher unit cost. In 

this case, facility PRV would increase even though its size did not change. 

OSD also found that in some cases DOD’s real property databases are 

inadequate to precisely filter the PRV estimates for these kinds of analyses. 

Similarly, OSD stated that any DOD PRV is actually a blend of the PRV 

formula and the cost of acquisition plus inflation because one-third of 

DOD’s physical plant is not covered by standard unit costs upon which a 

PRV estimate can be made from DOD’s PRV cost model.19

18Navy email communication to GAO, July 10, 1998.

19“Plant Replacement Value,” OSD, (Installations) Directorate of Analysis and Investment, July 1997,

p. 2. The facilities not covered are mainly utilities and service-unique facilities.

Lert
Appendix VII

Percent of Value Measures for Estimating 

RPM Requirements

Page 105 GAO/NSIAD-99-100 Real Property Management

Because PRV measures structure value and is therefore not a measure of 

condition, using a percentage of PRV or variations of it (e.g., current plant 

value) to estimate RPM spending would not determine whether the 

resulting funding level is under, over, or equal to the spending required to 

fix actual deficiencies. As a result, using a percent of PRV or similar 

measures as a benchmark against which to evaluate the adequacy of RPM 

spending is just one tool in estimating RPM needs.

In sum, in addition to the fact that PRV measures structure value, not 

condition, there are other grounds for caution in using a percentage of PRV 

to estimate RPM needs. First, there can be problems with the reliability of 

the data that go into the PRV estimate. Second, in the military services, the 

lack of specificity in the property codes does not permit accurate estimates 

of the cost of certain types of infrastructure. Third, there is no clearly 

agreed upon standard by which to estimate PRV; the Federal Facilities 

Council reported on two methods being used by federal agencies. Despite 

OSD’s directive specifying a PRV calculation formula, variations in 

calculating PRV could occur among hundreds of bases doing these 

calculations. Fourth, as the Building Research Board stated, PRV does not 

take into account multiple factors potentially relevant to RPM needs. Fifth, 

basing RPM allocations on PRV creates an incentive to overestimate it, as 

this would generate a calculated figure showing a need for higher funding. 

In sum, PRV percentages should not be the only method used to determine 

the funding level required to maintain facilities. As the Navy noted, PRV 

and other comparable measures are tools, each having unique limitations, 

and as long as this is understood and are not viewed as a cure-all answer, 

they can be useful.20

20Navy email communication to GAO, July 10, 1998.
Page 106 GAO/NSIAD-99-100 Real Property Management

Appendix VIII

Promising Practices in Facilities Management ApendxViI

We identified promising practices in facilities management among 

nonmilitary entities that might be appropriate for use by the services. In 

this appendix, we define promising practice; identify the sources of 

expertise used to find promising practices among nonmilitary 

organizations and other criteria used to identify potentially useful 

examples; and discuss two entities with practices that appear to be 

particularly worthy of consideration by the services for better facilities 

management.

In a 1991 report, we defined promising practice as a practice that does not 

signify proven effectiveness but rather the appearance of promise. The 

goal is not to judge outcomes but to locate and describe specific initiatives 

that are designed logically to work well and seem worthy of wider trial 

involving sound evaluation.1

In terms of real property maintenance (RPM), a promising practice would 

be one that makes it possible to manage property more cost-effectively. In 

addressing the issue of cost-effective RPM, a February 1997 Department of 

Defense (DOD) paper on installations noted that ideally, DOD would like to 

determine the minimum cost of operating each installation without putting 

mission accomplishment at risk or sacrificing quality of life.2

Sources of Expertise 

on Promising Practices

We identified entities that might be using promising practices from

• a review of the expert literature on facility management and condition 

assessment systems; 

• interviews of experts in facility management regarding what they 

considered promising practices as well as their knowledge of entities 

that have good reputations for such management or that were using or 

systems with demonstrated effectiveness;

• contacting a variety of entities recommended by the experts and the 

literature to determine how they manage their property and/or what 

they know about practices that might be promising;

1

Older Americans Act: Promising Practice in Information and Referral Services (GAO/PEMD-91-31 Aug. 

1991), p. 2.

2

DOD, “What Does the Future Hold for Defense Installations? A White Paper for DOD Commanders,” 

February 1997, p. 3.
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• knowledge gained from symposia sponsored by the National Research 

Council’s Federal Facilities Council3 —widely regarded as a source of 

expertise on facilities management; and

• criteria intended to meet the objective of finding promising practices 

that might be used by the military services.

Criteria Used to Select 

Entities for Interviews

The criteria used to aid in selecting entities for interviews about potential 

promising practices included the following:

• Size. The entities we contacted were generally large, in terms of the 

number of buildings, square footage, and/or locations of buildings that 

they control.

• Consistency. We sought to find condition assessment systems used 

across all the facilities and/or sites of the same entity. 

• Duration. We looked for systems that have been in place for 2 or more 

years so that there was a track record of performance that could be 

assessed.

• Documentation. We looked for well-documented systems.

• Life/Safety. We did not seek data from entities that had serious 

life-safety/environmental problems, such as structure collapses over 

1997-99.

Experts and Expert 

Organizations 

Consulted

Among the experts and expert entities we consulted regarding promising 

practices and entities using such practices were the following:

• Applied Management Engineering, Virginia Beach, Virginia;

• Association of Higher Education Facilities Officers,4

 Alexandria, 

Virginia;

• Civil Engineering Research Foundation, Washington, D.C.;

• Richard Coullahan, Senior Vice President, Parsons Brinckerhoff Energy 

Services, Herndon, Virginia;

• Edward R. Damphousse, Manager, Consulting Services Group, R.S. 

Means Company, Inc., Kingston, Massachusetts;

3

The Council’s purpose is to promote continuing cooperation between federal and private entities of the 

building community to advance building science and technology. It is a continuing activity of the Board 

on Infrastructure and the Constructed Environment of the National Research Council.

4

Formerly named the Association of Physical Plant Administrators of Universities and Colleges. The 

Association changed its name but not its acronym.
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• Marc M. Fagan, President, and Thomas K. Davies, Executive Vice 

President, Vanderweil Facility Advisors, Boston, Massachusetts;

• Federal Facilities Council of the National Research Council, 

Washington, D.C.;

• Dr. Harvey H. Kaiser, HHK, Syracuse, New York;

• Logistics Management Institute, McLean, Virginia;

• Peter Lufkin, Principal, Economics, Whitestone Research, Santa 

Barbara, California;

• Private Sector Council, Washington, D.C.;

• Leif Steinert, Senior Consultant, WorkPlace: A Bentley Strategic 

Affiliate, Littleton, Massachusetts; and

• Eric Teicholz, President, Graphic Systems, Inc., Cambridge, 

Massachusetts. 

Entities Contacted for 

Information on 

Management Practices

Taking the recommendations of the experts and expert organizations as 

well as the expert literature, we contacted the following entities to discuss 

their facility management practices.

Universities

George Washington University, Washington, D.C.

Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts

University of California, Facilities Management and Construction, Oakland,

 California

University of California, Berkeley, California

University of California, San Diego, California

University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina

Corporations

Hughes Electronics Corporation

Lockheed Martin Corporation

Mobil Business Resources Corporation

The Boeing Company

Trammel Crow Company (Washington, D.C.)
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Governmental Agencies and Entities

Army Health Facility Planning Agency, Falls Church, Virginia

Construction Engineering Research Laboratories, Champaign, Illinois

 (Army Corps of Engineers)

Department of Energy, Washington, D.C.

Facilities Management, Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade

 Center, Washington, D.C.

General Services Administration, Washington, D.C.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL),5

 Livermore, California

NASA, Facilities Engineering Division, Washington, D.C.

NASA, Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland

National Institutes of Health, Division of Engineering Sciences, Rockville,

 Maryland

City of San Jose, California, Department of Public Works

Nonprofit Entities

Capital Needs Analysis Center, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah6

Of these entities, we visited three—Lawrence Livermore National 

Laboratory (LLNL); the Capital Needs Analysis Center, which manages the 

property of the Church of Latter-day Saints; and George Washington 

University.

Fragmented 

Knowledge Base of 

Promising Practices

The knowledge base of facility management practices was fragmented, 

with each expert or entity most familiar with the practices of a limited 

number of institutions. The entities that experts were most familiar with 

were generally their customers for developing facility management systems 

or those that had answered questionnaires in various surveys. There was 

agreement that the field of facilities management is exploring a wide 

variety of ways in which to manage property.

5

LLNL is a part of the University of California that operates under a 5-year contract to the Department of 

Energy. Since it is clearly not a university as generally understood, we list it here with government 

entities.

6

The Center manages the property of the Church of Latter-day Saints. It is a part of Brigham Young 

University but also supervises the University’s property management.
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In our review of the facility management literature we found no fixed 

standards for the methods, criteria or frequency with which condition 

assessments should be carried out. Nor, as the Federal Facilities Council 

noted in an October 1998 study, is there a “single, agreed upon guideline to 

determine how much money, is, in fact necessary to maintain public 

buildings.”7

 (We also found no standard for nonpublic sector buildings.)

Federal Facilities 

Council’s Promising 

Practices

We did find reasonably widespread agreement in the literature and among 

experts regarding the basic types of information that should be gathered—

such as interior square footage of buildings and cost—to effectively 

manage property. In a 1998 study, the Council proposed four 

characteristics that are key components for a condition assessment and 

capital assets management program. Based on our interviews with experts 

and the cited entities, we found that these four components were a good 

summary of promising practices for facility management. They are

• a standardized, documented inspection process that provides accurate, 

consistent, and repeatable results;

• a detailed, ongoing inspection of real property assets that is validated at 

predetermined intervals;

• standardized cost data based on an industry-accepted cost estimating 

system to determine repair and replacement costs; and

• a user-friendly information management system or process that

prioritizes current and anticipated maintenance and repair requirements 

to maximize the use of resources and minimize the cost of irreversible 

loss of service life.

8

The Council’s list appears promising for the military because, if fully 

implemented, such practices would address facility management 

deficiencies cited by DOD in 1997. These deficiencies include

• unavailable data,

• incomplete data,

7

National Research Council, Stewardship of Federal Facilities (Washington D.C.: National Academy 

Press, Oct. 1998), p. 2. The study was supported by a contract between the National Academy of 

Sciences and the Department of State on behalf of the Federal Facilities Council (p. ii). The National 

Research Council is shown on the cover as the author, but the Federal Facilities Council is the 

distributing agency.

8

National Research Council, Stewardship of Federal Facilities (Washington D.C.: National Academy 

Press, Oct. 1998), p. 43.
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• nonstandard data, 

• inaccessible information,

• lack of data integrity, and

• lack of performance measures.9

In addition, the literature and experts agree that using the same criteria to 

assess facility conditions across all the facilities of an entity is required to 

produce meaningful comparisons from building to building or site to site.

Life-Cycle Principles of 

Facility Management

The last element of the Council’s list describes life-cycle facility 

management, which seeks to minimize the cost of irreversible loss of 

service life by estimating the future point in time at which a building 

component will likely fail and thereby scheduling maintenance or 

replacement in advance of that point. It is a methodology aimed at 

maximizing cost-effectiveness: building “service life can be optimized 

through adequate and timely maintenance and repairs.”10

DOD’s early 1990s Condition Assessment Survey effort explicitly 

incorporated life-cycle principles, as described in an OSD report:

The system also automatically determines whether a deficient assembly should be repaired 

or replaced based on return on investment, and when replacement is recommended, will 

identify which year the replacement should be accomplished . . . The system automatically 

extrapolates the estimated repair costs for the facilities not inspected to produce a 

multi-year maintenance and repair plan, which is an eight-year plan to schedule repairs and 

replacements.11

With a life-cycle-based database, entities are able to project peaks and 

valleys of future maintenance spending and to budget at a level that will 

provide for facility renewal over a multidecade period. Figure VIII.1 shows 

how life-cycle based costing can project a 50-year budget for a building:

9

“What Does the Future Hold for Defense Installations? A White Paper for DOD Commanders,” DOD, 

February 1997, p. 11.

10National Research Council, Stewardship of Federal Facilities (Washington D.C.: National Academy 

Press, Oct. 1998), p. 12. See also, Building Research Board, Pay Now or Pay Later: Controlling Cost of 

Ownership from Design Throughout the Service Life of Public Buildings (Washington, D.C.: National 

Academy Press, 1991).

11OSD (Installations) Directorate of Analysis and Investment, p. 6, undated but clearly written after 

April 1995.

Lert
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Figure VIII.1: Life-Cycle Model for a Single Building 

Note: Vertical axis shows estimated costs per square foot in dollars; horizontal axis shows years, 1 to 

50.

Source: Army Health Facility Planning Agency.

Figure VIII.1 shows estimated maintenance costs per year per square foot 

for a 50-year period for the Army’s Health Facility Planning Agency. The 

costs portrayed are based on the life cycles of the components of the 

facility in question (such as heating-ventilation-air conditioning, roofing, or 

window frames). A database is constructed using the known costs of how 

long a component lasts and how much it costs to replace it (both parts and 

labor).

The Army Health Facility Planning Agency does not yet have a systemwide 

condition assessment of all facility components, and it does not have 

budget protection for its RPM funding. For example, its fiscal year 1999 

funding for preventive maintenance and repairs was cut almost two-thirds 

and shifted to other programs. Thus, it cannot meet its life-cycle based 

funding levels; the forced migration of RPM funds hinders its life-cycle 

based system.

$0.00

$2.00

$4.00

$6.00

$8.00

$10.00

$12.00

$14.00

$16.00

$18.00

13579

1113151719212325272931333537394143454749

Years

Cost/SF
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With regard to assessing facilities, the Army Health Facility Planning 

Agency is now extending life-cycle component assessments to all locations. 

It prioritizes repair spending on the basis of a combination of the physical 

deficiencies that need to be fixed and the mission impact to be addressed. 

Because its mission is to provide adequate health care facilities to a 

specific population, it can make decisions about repairs that benefit the 

greatest number of clients, and its takes into account the health services 

available in a geographic area from nonmilitary providers.

Preventive 

Maintenance and 

Life-Cycle Management

The Capital Needs Analysis Center emphasized the importance of 

developing a database of component life cycles based on actual 

inspections; it found that almost all components last significantly longer 

than manufacturers’ specifications. Through regular inspection and careful 

monitoring of buildings and their components, the Center can reasonably 

estimate when repairs should be made or components should be replaced. 

These life-cycle estimates can then be used to plan repair and maintenance 

budgets. This, in effect, constitutes the essence of life-cycle maintenance.12 

These systems provide “an accurate prediction of total future M&R 

[maintenance and repair] needs . . . necessary to produce meaningful 

budgets. Condition prediction allows managers to find out what, where 

and when facilities, systems and components will need M&R.”13

Regular preventive maintenance is an essential component of life-cycle 

management. Figure VIII.2 from the National Research Council’s 1998 

study illustrates how maintenance extends the service life of a building.

12For a more technical discussion, see Donald G. Iselin and Andrew C. Lemer, eds., The Fourth 

Dimension in Building: Strategies for Minimizing Obsolescence, Committee on Facility Design to 

Minimize Premature Obsolescence, National Research Council (Washington, D.C.: National Academy 

Press), pp. 14-25, and Eric Teicholz "Facility Condition Assessment Technology," (http://www. 

graphsys.com/articles), February 1999.

13Federal Facilities Council, Budgeting for Facilities Maintenance and Repair Activities, Report No. 131 

(Washington D.C.: National Academy Press, 1996), p. 25. Similarly, “The remaining life [of a 

component] identifies when the next funding will be needed. The life cycle suggests how often that 

item needs to be replaced over a 40-year life cycle. The costs are set at the current replacement cost

. . . .the replacement cycle file . . . allows use of a database to evaluate and project replacement needs." 

Douglas K. Christensen, “Integrating Capital Studies Within Physical Plant Operations,” Capital

Renewal and Deferred Maintenance, Critical Issues in Facilities Management, No. 4 (Alexandria, Va.: 

1989), p. 93.
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Figure VIII.2: Effect of Adequate and Timely Maintenance and Repairs on the Service 

Life of a Building

Source: Stewardship of Federal Facilities, p. 13.

As figure VIII.2 shows, a building that is not adequately maintained will 

likely experience what amounts to premature deterioration, generating 

costly repairs that could have been avoided through timely maintenance.

Among the entities that we contacted regarding facility maintenance 

practices, we identified elements from several that could be of use to the 

military services.

Useful Examples Two nonmilitary entities in particular have facility assessment and 

budgeting processes systems that appear to be particularly promising. 

These are the Capital Needs Analysis Center, located at Brigham Young 

University, Utah, which manages the facilities of the Church of Latter-day

Service Life Lost

to Poor Maintenance

irreversible

Design

Service Life

Time

(not to scale)

Likely Aging

(Without Renewal) With

Normal Maintenance

Likely Aging

Without

Normal Maintenance

Minimum

Acceptable

Performance

Optimum Performance

Performance
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Saints (LDS) worldwide,14 and the University of California’s Lawrence 

Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), which uses a system based on one 

developed by the Department of Energy (DOE). Both had all of the Federal 

Facilities Council’s listed elements in their systems, and both used them 

across many of their facilities and locations. In addition, as noted, the 

Army’s Health Facility Planning Agency bases its facility management 

system on life-cycle principles. The Center has used life-cycle management 

since 1981 at its universities and religious centers, and extended the system 

to 7,000 LDS chapels about 2 years ago.

Online Databases Both the Center and LLNL have their data online and therefore accessible 

to managers. These centrally controlled, online databases show the 

inventory of facilities and components, including physical condition. The 

data can be “sliced and diced” using multiple criteria—such as building 

type, component type and age, and remaining life-cycle years. This permits 

almost instantaneous generation of portraits of facility conditions and 

comparative costs of life facilities.

Reserve Funds The Capital Needs Analysis Center is permitted by its management to 

allocate projected RPM spending over a 4-year period, based on its lifecycle cost projections, with any leftover funds from the current year 

applicable to the remaining 3 years. This allows for flexibility and 

application of life-cycle budgeting, since the system is built on the concept 

that expenses will be higher in some years than in others. Logically, 

therefore, expenditures can be anticipated, but since they do not 

necessarily occur in the forecast year, RPM monies that have been banked 

can then be used when needed. The 4-year period is adjusted annually, 

based on condition assessments and revisions of forecast component life 

cycles and estimated future costs. Although this feature is not available to 

government entities that operate on a single-year budget, both LLNL and 

the Army HFPA use life-cycle costing and budgeting for planning purposes.

Common Rating System for 

Facilities

Although the Center and LLNL have separate systems, both apply the 

principle of using engineering-based facility condition rating systems to 

their own facilities. This principle provides for a level playing field for the 

evaluation of RPM needs and to allocation of monies among their facilities 

and sites. The Center compares facilities of same or similar type and shifts 

14The Center manages approximately $30 billion in property at more than 7,000 locations of chapels and 

a half dozen universities and religious centers, at diverse locations (Provo, Utah; London, England; 

Jerusalem, Israel; and Hawaii). Temples were not included when we interviewed Center officials.
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RPM spending to those locations most in need. Center officials told us that 

the idea was to maintain a common minimum standard; to do so, monies 

must be moved from relatively physically adequate facilities to those not as 

adequate.

Center officials said that while there was initial resistance from some 

entities, the change in the culture of allocation had become widely 

accepted. We observed a number of facilities at Brigham Young University, 

including the Missionary Training Center. These facilities appeared to be in 

sound condition and none were notably better than the others. Some, such 

as dormitories, were quite spartan in terms of amenities. Most of the 

observed facilities appeared to be both modest in appearance and 

functional in nature.

Repair Force and Validation 

Reviews

Another characteristic that both LLNL and the Center have in common is 

reliance on craft tradespersons or journeymen to perform daily 

maintenance and to report on the conditions of buildings in the role of 

inspectors. Both entities emphasized that using the expertise of their 

tradespersons had met the goal of getting buy-in for their RPM assessment 

systems from those that fix the buildings daily as well as utilizing their 

practical expertise in estimating the remaining life cycle of components. 

Further, both systems use multiple layers of review and validation of 

identified repair needs to ensure that conditions are rated consistently 

across multiple facilities.

Nonfungible RPM Monies At both LLNL and the Center, RPM funds are treated as nonfungible; that is, 

they may not be used for non-RPM purposes, and appeared to be fairly 

strictly limited to repairs as opposed to renovations or upgrades. 

Enhancements could be funded by individual schools at Brigham Young 

University, but only from departmental funds; in effect, the RPM allocation 

in a given year for special projects is set by the Center, and any changes 

must be paid for out of the subentity’s own budget.

Both LLNL and the Center have found that they can reduce subjectivity in 

maintenance decisions by requiring programs to pay for aesthetic fixes, 

while confining RPM spending to addressing physical deficiencies. Thus, if 

a program wants new or higher quality carpeting in its building(s), it must 

use program, not maintenance funds, unless the existing carpeting is worn 

out.
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Maintenance Fee at LLNL Beyond the common elements at LLNL and the Center, one factor at LLNL 

stood out as a potentially useful tool in managing facilities—an annual 

charge per square foot charge for maintenance, custodial, grounds care, 

and garbage disposal costs. This charge was instituted in 1991; it began at 

$1 per square foot and has since increased to about $6 per square foot. We 

were told that, of the total, about $2.10 is for maintenance alone. The 

square footage charges are assessed against program budgets; LLNL 

officials said that the charged cost compares favorably to other entities’ 

costs determined through a 1995 benchmarking study that compared

21 private and public research entities along numerous dimensions of 

facility management and cost.15 Similarly, LLNL meters utility use by 

programs and charges that to the programs. According to LLNL facilities 

management, the charge has had the effect of focusing the attention of 

users on the maintenance cost of their facilities and has, as intended, 

constrained the use of space. Through the square foot charge, LLNL can 

maintain facilities at existing levels; that is, it can prevent further increases 

in backlogged repairs as a result of unfunded maintenance needs. LLNL 

stated that while it does not have the money to address all existing 

deficiencies, some are of low priority or are in buildings used by programs 

that are being terminated. Therefore, it would not be a good business 

decision, they said, to fix all the deficiencies in every facility, given higher 

priority needs, or in buildings that will no longer be used in some cases, 

once current funding ends for certain programs.

The LLNL practice of charging a fixed maintenance/custodial fee per 

square foot could be considered by the services. This fee has several 

potentially useful effects:

• it makes transparent the true costs of maintaining facilities;

• it can be set high enough to address RPM needs, precluding growth of 

backlogged repairs; and

• it creates an incentive to save, as programs are charged for the space 

used.

In contrast, the practice of allocating on a basis of a percent of PRV or 

current replacement value is not based on actual facility conditions and

15“Research Facilities Benchmarking Conference,” sponsored by Eastman Kodak and IBM, October 

1995. No place of publication listed. Provided to GAO by LLNL. We did not validate the data reported 

in the study, which provides only a coded system of identification of participating entities.
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rewards entities that claim a high PRV.16 While some flexibility and 

ingenuity would be required to administer a fee per square foot at military 

installations, administering a maintenance fee would have the inherent 

advantage of assessing costs across the full range of facilities at a base 

while creating an incentive to use space frugally. Assessment of such a 

charge, which is a form of overhead, would not be unusual, since the 

military services’ working capital funds already incorporate such overhead 

charges as integral to their billing system.

Summary: Identified 

Promising Practices

From our interviews with the Capital Needs Analysis Center, Lawrence 

Livermore National Laboratory, the Army’s Health Facility Planning 

Agency, the other entities cited above, the relevant literature, the Federal 

Facilities Council list, and our discussions with experts, we synthesized 

several principles and processes that appear to constitute promising 

practices for a cost-effective program of facility management. These are

• a detailed inventory of facilities and their components;

• a centrally controlled, online computerized inventory and inspection 

database; 

• a common rating system applied to facilities with standardized, 

objective, repeatable, engineering-based criteria to evaluate physical 

conditions;

• life-cycle principles of costing and budgeting for planning;

• trained personnel for inspections, with multiple layers of review to 

ensure consistency and validation;

• nonfungibility of RPM funds;

• allocation of repair funds based on an identified need and prioritized 

according to severity/impact of deficiency, which can take mission 

impact into account; and

• an annual space management fee based on square footage used that 

covers RPM costs.

16The Army Health Facility Planning Agency determined its life-cycle requirements prior to converting 

them to a percent of PRV over a 50-year facility replacement life cycle.
Page 119 GAO/NSIAD-99-100 Real Property Management

Appendix IX

Objectives, Scope, and Methodology ApXexIndi

As requested by the Senate Subcommittee on Readiness, Committee on 

Armed Services, we examined (1) the methodologies and criteria used by 

the military services to determine the need for real property maintenance 

(RPM) of facilities and to allocate available resources within each service 

and (2) the methods and criteria used by other organizations that are 

promising practices in facilities management and that therefore may be 

appropriate for use by the services.

Scope of the Study We focused on the services’ facilities around the world for which RPM is 

funded from the operation and maintenance (O&M) account. These 

facilities include barracks, administrative offices, airfields and terminals, 

classrooms and other training buildings, libraries, child development 

centers and dependent schools. They do not include facilities funded by 

non-O&M RPM accounts, such as revolving and management funds, the 

Defense Health Program (hospitals and medical clinics), or military family 

housing.

Methodology To address our first objective, we conducted analyses of DOD and service 

data. We also

• interviewed and were briefed by knowledgeable officials involved in 

real property management from all the services and

• obtained and reviewed key RPM-related documents and RPM-related 

manuals for each service, guidance, and other relevant reports and 

documents.

We also collected data for this objective through questionnaires based in 

part on surveys related to RPM performed by other professional 

organizations and information obtained from independent experts, DOD, 

and service officials. Two versions were developed—one for bases 

(installations) and one for major commands in the Army and Air Force and 

the Navy-Marine Corps equivalent, major claimants. During 

September-December 1997, we pretested the installation questionnaire at 

11 bases, 3 bases in the Army and Air Force each, and 5 Navy bases. We 

also pretested the command questionnaire at four major commands

(2 Army, 1 Air Force, and 1 Navy) for clarity, length of time of
Appendix IX

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administration, and acceptability to the respondents.1 Pretest versions 

were also submitted for review and comment to each service point of 

contact (POC) (including the Marines), and revisions were made based on 

the input from the POCs and from the pretests. We wanted to ensure that 

the questions would allow us to address the objectives and would make 

sense to those we sent it to.

The survey contained three groups of questions on methods and criteria 

used to (1) assess facility conditions, (2) estimate RPM budget and 

prioritization of needs, and (3) allocate resources to those needs. The text 

of the survey that was sent to installations can be found in appendix X.

Two questionnaires were sent; one to 530 military installations and one to 

41 major commands/major claimants worldwide (Air Force, Army, Navy, 

and Marines) that are holders of RPM O&M funded facilities and that are 

“parent installations” (subinstallations are components of parent 

installations, and their property is included as part of the parent 

installations). This was the universe of bases in the services that hold and 

evaluate O&M RPM-funded property, according to the service RPM 

headquarters offices. Bases scheduled to be closed by the end of 1998 and 

scheduled for realignment or closure under the Base Realignment and 

Closure (BRAC) Act were excluded.

Although we asked that the questionnaire be returned within 10 days of 

receipt, it actually required more than 6 months to achieve a return rate of 

over 80 percent from each service. Our service POCs helped by repeatedly 

contacting bases and commands. The final tally of returned but not 

necessarily completely answered questionnaires is shown in table IX.1.

1

Bases that were visited for pretests are listed at the end of the appendix on each service.
Appendix IX

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Table IX.1: Responses to GAO Questionnaires 

Note: BRAC bases excluded from both mailed and returns.

In addition to the questionnaire, to determine the methods and criteria of 

the services and their allocation of resources for RPM needs, we visited 

installations and major commands of all the services (with the exception of 

the Marine Corps, where we visited one base), across the continental 

United States between July 1997 and August 1998. During those visits we

• reviewed related property records, documented backlog information, 

and the recorded deficiencies;

• visited facilities to observe their condition and deficiencies to compare 

assessments to actual building conditions;

• discussed the evaluation methods/condition assessment process with 

the raters/reviewers; and

• interviewed installation engineering staff as they showed us the 

deficiencies and documented additional information when necessary.

We also pretested and validated our questionnaires at a number of these 

installations and major commands/claimants.

We visited the following offices, bases, major commands, and claimants:

Office of the Secretary of 

Defense

Office of the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense(Installations) Directorate

 of Analysis Investment, Arlington, Virginia 

Office of the Secretary of Defense, Readiness Programming and

 Assessment Division, Washington, D.C.

Department of the Army Office of the Assistant Chief of Staff for Installation Management,

 Washington, D.C.

Service

Total number of

questionnaires mailed

Total returned

to GAO

Returned as percent

of those mailed

Army bases 180 149 83

Navy installations 132 126 95

Marine Corps installations 16 16 100

Air Force bases 202 200 99

All services 530 491 93

Major commands/major claimants of all services 41 38 93
Appendix IX

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Department of Public Works, Alexandria, Virginia

Installation Support Center, Alexandria, Virginia

Bases Fort Belvoir, (Military District of Washington), Alexandria, Virginia

Fort Bragg (Forces Command), Fayetteville, North Carolina

Fort Hood (Forces Command), Killeen, Texas

Fort McPherson (Forces Command), Atlanta, Georgia

Fort Sam Houston (Medical Command), San Antonio, Texas

Fort Sill (Training and Doctrine Command), Lawton, Oklahoma

Rock Island Arsenal (Army Materiel Command), Rock Island, Illinois

Texas Army National Guard, Austin, Texas

Major Commands U.S. Army Forces Command, Fort McPherson, Atlanta, Georgia

U.S. Army Medical Command, Fort Sam Houston, San Antonio, Texas

Department of the Air Force Air Force Deputy Chief of Staff for Installations and Logistics, Office of the

 Civil Engineer, Programs Division, Crystal City, Virginia 

Air Force Deputy Chief of Staff for Installations and Logistics, Office of the

 Civil Engineer, Operations Division, Crystal City, Virginia

Air Force Real Estate Agency, Bolling Air Force Base, Washington, D.C.

Bases Alabama Air National Guard, Birmingham, Alabama

Eglin Air Force Base (Air Force Materiel Command), Fort Walton Beach,

 Florida

Maxwell Air Force Base (Air Education and Training Command),

 Montgomery, Alabama

Pope Air Force Base (Air Mobility Command), Fayetteville, North Carolina

Scott Air Force Base (Air Mobility Command), Belleville, Illinois

Seymour Johnson Air Force Base (Air Combat Command), Goldsboro,

 North Carolina

Tinker Air Force Base (Air Force Materiel Command) Oklahoma City,

 Oklahoma

Wright-Patterson Air Force Base (Air Force Materiel Command), Dayton, 

 Ohio

Major Commands Air Combat Command, Langley Air Force Base, Langley, Virginia

Air Force Materiel Command, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Dayton,

 Ohio 

Air Mobility Command, Scott Air Force Base, Belleville, Illinois
Appendix IX

Objectives, Scope, and Methodology

Page 123 GAO/NSIAD-99-100 Real Property Management

Department of the Navy Navy Budget Office, Washington, D.C.

Deputy Chief of Naval Operations (Logistics), Facilities and Engineering

 Division, Crystal City, Virginia 

Bases Fleet Combat Training Center (Chief, Naval Education and Training),

 Atlantic, Dam Neck, Virginia Beach, Virginia

California Naval Air Station North Island (U.S. Pacific Fleet), San Diego,

 California

Naval Air Station Oceana (U.S. Atlantic Fleet), Virginia Beach, Virginia

Naval Air Station, Patuxent River (Naval Air Systems Command),

 Lexington Park, Maryland

Naval Air Station Pensacola (Chief, Naval Education and Training),

 Pensacola, Florida

Norfolk Naval Shipyard (Naval Sea Systems Command), Portsmouth,

 Virginia

Naval Security Group Activity Northwest (Naval Security Group

 Command), Chesapeake, Virginia

Naval Station Norfolk (U.S. Atlantic Fleet), Norfolk, Virginia 

Norfolk Naval Shipyard (Naval Sea Systems Command), Portsmouth,

 Virginia

Major Claimants U.S. Atlantic Fleet, Norfolk, Virginia

Naval Air Systems Command, Patuxent River, Lexington Park, Maryland

Other Navy2 Public Works Center (Naval Facilities and Engineering Command), San

 Diego, California

Public Works Center (Naval Facilities and Engineering Command),

 Norfolk, Virginia2

Commandant of the Marine 

Corps

Base Marine Corps Base, Quantico, Virginia

2

Navy Public Works Centers are not installations; for this reason, they are here listed as “Other Navy.” 

They perform RPM on a reimbursable basis to Navy and Marine Corps bases and major claimants. 
Appendix IX

Objectives, Scope, and Methodology

Page 124 GAO/NSIAD-99-100 Real Property Management

Nonmilitary Entities and 

RPM Experts

To identify promising practices in repair and maintenance of facilities that 

could be of potential use to the services, we contacted experts in the field 

of facilities management to help identify nonmilitary entities with 

reputations for high quality and innovation in facility management. These 

experts were identified on the basis of their reputations in the field and 

their publications, especially those by facilities management expert 

organizations such as the Federal Facilities Council of the National 

Research Council, the Logistics Management Institute, and the Association 

of Higher Education Facilities Officers (formerly the Association of 

Physical Plant Administrators of Universities and Colleges). We also 

contacted facility management experts at universities, private companies, 

and government agencies and surveyed relevant literature. We focused on 

large entities, as requested, because they are more directly comparable to 

the military services, with thousands of facilities around the world, than are 

single-location institutions with just a few dozen buildings. 

Among the experts or expert entities with which we spoke to identify 

promising practices in facilities management, and/or from which we 

obtained reports, were the following:

Applied Management Engineering, Virginia Beach, Virginia

Association of Higher Education Facilities Officers, Alexandria, Virginia

Army Health Facility Planning Agency, Falls Church, Virginia

Building Owners and Managers Association International, Washington, D.C.

Capital Needs Analysis Center, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah

Civil Engineering Research Foundation, Washington, D.C.

Construction Engineering Research Laboratories, Champaign, Illinois 

Congressional Budget Office, Washington, D.C.

Richard Coullahan, Senior Vice President, Parsons Brinckerhoff Energy

 Services, Inc., Herndon, Virginia

Edward R. Damphousse, Manager, Consulting Services Group, R.S. Means

 Company, Inc., Kingston, Massachusetts

Department of Energy, Washington, D.C.

Federal Facilities Council, Washington, D.C.

Mark M. Fagan, AIA, President, and Thomas K. Davies, AIA, Executive Vice

 President, Vanderweil Facility Advisors, Boston, Massachusetts

General Services Administration, Washington, D.C.

Harvey H. Kaiser, Ph.D., HHK, Syracuse, New York and Reston, Virginia

International Facility Management Association, Houston, Texas

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, California

Logistics Management Institute, McLean, Virginia

Lert
Appendix IX

Objectives, Scope, and Methodology

Page 125 GAO/NSIAD-99-100 Real Property Management

Peter Lufkin, Principal, Economics, Whitestone Research, Santa Barbara,

 California 

NASA, Facilities Engineering Division, Washington, D.C.

NASA, Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland

National Institutes of Health, Division of Engineering Sciences, Rockville, 

 Maryland

Private Sector Council, Washington, D.C.

Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center, Washington, D.C

City of San Jose, California, Department of Public Works

Leif Steinert, Senior Consultant, WorkPlace: A Bentley Strategic Affiliate,

 Littleton, Massachusetts

Eric Teicholz, President, Graphic Systems, Inc., Cambridge, Massachusetts 

We visited the Capital Needs Analysis Center, Brigham Young University, 

Provo, Utah; the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, 

California; and George Washington University, Washington, D.C.

We spoke to facility management officials from the following universities 

about their RPM practices:

Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts

University of California, Facilities Management and Construction (Office of

 the President), Oakland, California

University of California, Berkeley, California

University of California, San Diego, California

University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina

We spoke to officials from the following corporations about their facilities 

management:

Hughes Electronics Corporation

Lockheed Martin Corporation

Mobil Business Resources Corporation

The Boeing Company

Trammel Crow Company (Washington, D.C.)

Other Literature and 

Internet Searches

In addition to the methods cited above to identify promising practices, we 

attended relevant conferences sponsored by the Federal Facilities Council, 

and conducted an extensive review of the literature on facilities 

management, using libraries, database searches, and the Internet. We also 
Appendix IX

Objectives, Scope, and Methodology

Page 126 GAO/NSIAD-99-100 Real Property Management

obtained reports prepared by some private consulting firms. A 

bibliography can be found at the end of this report. We reviewed relevant 

legislation and legislative history with regard to RPM issues over the past 

45 years.

We conducted our work between May 1997 and March 1999, in accordance 

with generally accepted government auditing standards.
Page 127 GAO/NSIAD-99-100 Real Property Management

Appendix X

Our Survey on Real Property Maintenance for 

Installations ApenxXdi
Appendix X

Our Survey on Real Property Maintenance 

for Installations

Page 128 GAO/NSIAD-99-100 Real Property Management
Appendix X

Our Survey on Real Property Maintenance 

for Installations

Page 129 GAO/NSIAD-99-100 Real Property Management
Appendix X

Our Survey on Real Property Maintenance 

for Installations

Page 130 GAO/NSIAD-99-100 Real Property Management
Appendix X

Our Survey on Real Property Maintenance 

for Installations

Page 131 GAO/NSIAD-99-100 Real Property Management
Appendix X

Our Survey on Real Property Maintenance 

for Installations

Lert Page 132 GAO/NSIAD-99-100 Real Property Management
Appendix X

Our Survey on Real Property Maintenance 

for Installations

Page 133 GAO/NSIAD-99-100 Real Property Management
Appendix X

Our Survey on Real Property Maintenance 

for Installations

Page 134 GAO/NSIAD-99-100 Real Property Management
Appendix X

Our Survey on Real Property Maintenance 

for Installations

Page 135 GAO/NSIAD-99-100 Real Property Management
Page 136 GAO/NSIAD-99-100 Real Property Management

Appendix XI

Comments From the Department of Defense ApexXndIi

Note: GAO comments 

supplementing those in the 

report text appear at the 

end of this appendix.
Appendix XI

Comments From the Department of Defense

Page 137 GAO/NSIAD-99-100 Real Property Management
Appendix XI

Comments From the Department of Defense

Page 138 GAO/NSIAD-99-100 Real Property Management

See comment 1.
Appendix XI

Comments From the Department of Defense

Page 139 GAO/NSIAD-99-100 Real Property Management

See comment 2.

See comment 3.

See comment 4.

See comment 5.

See comment 6.

See comment 7.

See comment 8.
Appendix XI

Comments From the Department of Defense

Page 140 GAO/NSIAD-99-100 Real Property Management

See comment 9.

See comment 10.
Appendix XI

Comments From the Department of Defense

Lert Page 141 GAO/NSIAD-99-100 Real Property Management

See comment 11.

See comment 11.

See comment 12.

See comment 13.
Appendix XI

Comments From the Department of Defense

Page 142 GAO/NSIAD-99-100 Real Property Management

See comment 14.

See comment 15.
Appendix XI

Comments From the Department of Defense

Page 143 GAO/NSIAD-99-100 Real Property Management

The following are GAO’s responses to the Department of Defense’s (DOD) 

comments, dated June 18, 1999.

GAO Comments 1. While DOD partially concurs with our recommendation, we note that it 

has made no firm commitment to actually provide the funding to formulate 

a comprehensive plan. We believe that DOD’s original commitment to an 

overall plan was sound and that it should be funded as we recommended.

2. We disagree that uniform standards are not feasible or desirable. Many 

types of facilities across the services are essentially identical in function—

barracks and family housing, administrative offices, runways, classrooms, 

commissaries, daycare centers, and so forth. We noted that DOD has 

already demonstrated, in its $50 million development and field testing of a 

Condition Assessment Survey (CAS) in 1994-95, that it is feasible to 

develop a set of uniform standards to assess the condition of similar types 

of facilities across the services. 

Moreover, the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) has developed a 

cost factors handbook that condenses almost all service facilities down to 

400 category codes, making it possible to compare them across services. If 

this can be done for cost factors, we believe it can also be done for 

assessments of physical conditions. For example, based on the 1994-95 

CAS, and the best RPM practices we identified, it appears feasible to apply 

the condition assessment system used by any one of the military services to 

all the other services for like facilities (e.g., barracks). Each service’s 

system has strengths and weaknesses, but none is inherently inapplicable 

to the common facilities of the other services. Since each service has 

diverse facilities—but many in common with the other services—it would 

not be difficult to use just one of the services’ systems for all the services.

3. We note that each military service already defines “minimum condition” 

in its rating systems. These definitions may draw upon safety standards, 

and they can be quite precisely detailed to eliminate confusion over the 

meaning of “minimum.” For example, exposed live wires in a building 

typically violates minimum safety standards. The Army’s Installation Status 

Report (ISR) system uses detailed graphical representations of deficiencies 

to rate virtually every type of facility; these are sufficiently specific to be 

readily understandable. The Marines quantify condition and readiness by 

using percentage cutoffs (if a runway cannot be used a specified 

percentage of the time, it fails to meet the minimum required condition). 

While we recognize that subjectivity is a valid concern in administering 
Appendix XI

Comments From the Department of Defense

Page 144 GAO/NSIAD-99-100 Real Property Management

rating systems, the definitions can be set reasonably precisely, as currently 

demonstrated by each service’s system.

4. While DOD states that defined minimums often become maximums, this 

does not appear to be a sound ground on which to avoid setting minimum 

standards or goals. If minimums becoming maximums is indeed a problem, 

then DOD can exercise the oversight to correct it. 

5. While we recognize DOD’s concerns about “dictating” common 

standards, we believe that there is a compelling need to set common 

standards for assessing facility conditions, to permit the Congress to be 

able to evaluate requests for RPM funding across the services. Since each 

service annually rates, in one way or another, the condition of thousands of 

facilities around the world, it is not clear why the like facilities of each 

service (e.g., barracks) should be rated by different systems that preclude 

meaningful comparisons of physical condition. Specifically, the purpose of 

like facilities is essentially the same. While impact on mission may vary in 

some regards, depending on location and other factors, this has no 

relevance to the actual condition of the buildings. (It can be a factor in 

deciding how to prioritize RPM spending.) Personnel need sound, decent 

facilities in which to live and work; the condition of these facilities should 

be known by DOD based on common criteria.

6. The configuration of barracks space is more a quality of life than a repair 

and maintenance issue. As DOD notes, changing configuration is part of 

efforts to improve retention; a barracks with a central latrine could be in 

excellent condition but would still be rated unacceptable given the 

standard of 1+1 (two rooms, one bathroom). The services are permitted to 

use both RPM and military construction funds to pay for such changes in 

barracks space. We note that according to current service estimates, no 

service will meet the 1+1 standard before 2013 at the earliest. The Marines 

will not meet the goal of providing its lower standard (2+0, or two persons 

per room, one bathroom) until the year 2035. In contrast, the other 

services will meet the DOD 1+1 standard by 2020 (Army), 2013 (Navy), and 

2019 (Air Force).

7. While DOD states that the standardized condition assessment system it 

developed was too expensive to implement, it never compared this 

system’s costs to the costs of administering the four separate systems in the 

services. Such a comparison is necessary to be able to conclude that a 

single system would be too costly compared to the four major systems 

currently used. In addition, while DOD states that it needs a “more positive 
Appendix XI

Comments From the Department of Defense

Page 145 GAO/NSIAD-99-100 Real Property Management

approach” that “provides sufficient funding up-front to sustain facilities in 

good condition,” it is also the case that a single set of standards would 

permit determining which facilities are in the worst condition and, 

therefore, are in greater need of limited funds than others. Without such 

cross-service standards, the Congress is unable to prioritize among the 

competing requests. 

8. We have noted the development of the cost factors handbook by the 

OSD (Installations) Directorate of Analysis and Investment, and we regard 

it as an important step in the standardization of RPM data.

9. We believe that a computerized on-line database accessible to both OSD 

and each service is essential to better and more effective RPM management 

by DOD. Under current arrangements, “data calls” or requests are issued 

by OSD in order to gather basic inventory and budget data. We found that 

the data held by OSD and the services on inventory and RPM spending 

often did not match or could not be readily compared. Even the services’ 

headquarters RPM offices reported problems with obtaining basic and 

reliable data from their components. In contrast, at both Lawrence 

Livermore and Brigham Young University’s Capital Needs Analysis Center 

(CNA), all RPM inventory and condition data were available immediately 

on-line to central management. Similarly, the Army’s ISR data are 

computerized and summary data are available to headquarters and other 

facility management personnel. These are management practices that 

clearly constitute a minimum requirement for effective RPM management 

across DOD. A system with common facility codes—which OSD is 

attempting to implement—should be readily and inexpensively amenable 

to being kept on-line. Comparisons of data are an essential component of 

RPM management. Until such comparisons are made, DOD will not know 

where RPM dollars are truly needed, where they are being spent, or how 

much property it actually has.

OSD has developed a system of common facility category codes (published 

in DOD Facilities Cost Factors Handbook, Version 1.0, Apr. 1999) that the 

services are now reviewing, but have not yet agreed to use. The purpose of 

this system is to compare service RPM and construction spending on 

similar types of facilities (e.g., administrative space, classroom buildings, 

and barracks) to, as DOD states, industry standards. The data required to 

make these comparisons must be gathered and inputted into a computer 

database if the effort is to be manageable. Further, if “meaningful” 

comparisons are to be made, it is essential that these cost and inventory 

data be computerized and put on-line.
Appendix XI

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Page 146 GAO/NSIAD-99-100 Real Property Management

10. Tracking how much each service is spending on RPM by type of facility 

and by square foot (or other common metric) will enable DOD to exercise 

effective oversight. We note that OSD has published cost factors and is 

now using them to assess the adequacy of each service’s RPM spending by 

facility type. We further note that meaningful evaluation of the comparative 

costs of maintaining the same types of facilities across services requires a 

high level of detail in order for major commands to be able to compare 

expenditures of their bases. Without consistent, comparable data for like 

facilities, no meaningful evaluations are possible. With current databases 

and budget data, it is not possible to readily compare RPM spending per 

square foot for like facilities across services. OSD’s new facility category 

code system, including industry cost standards, will have no clear purpose 

unless these costs—which are per square foot—can be compared to what 

military installations spend. The Army’s Directorate of Public Works’ 

inventory/cost per square foot databases permitted such comparisons and 

were on-line; these databases should be restored and expanded to include 

the other services. 

11. We appreciate the need for flexibility in funding decisions, but in some 

cases this can lead to insufficient repairs or cancellation of repair 

contracts. Migration of RPM funds is at least partly responsible for the 

accumulation of $16 billion in repair backlogs. This is an issue that DOD 

needs to address. Although restricting the migration of RPM funds may 

reduce flexibility, some of the organizations we reviewed found the 

practice yielded beneficial results. Accordingly, we continue to believe that 

the Department ought to consider the feasibility of adopting some form of 

this promising practice. We have modified our recommendation to that 

effect. 

12. We commend DOD—more specifically, OSD’s (Installations) 

Directorate of Analysis and Investment office—for the cost factors 

handbook they published in April 1999. They are also investigating 

methods to put this handbook on-line, which is essential to its effective use 

by military personnel worldwide. However, given the costs per square foot 

identified, we believe that many will exceed the level of actual spending by 

the military services, rather than validate current spending levels. For 

example, the Army spent $1.81 per square foot for RPM for administrative 

buildings in the United States and its territories according to the fiscal year 

1997 annual summary issued by the Army’s Directorate of Public Works
Appendix XI

Comments From the Department of Defense

Page 147 GAO/NSIAD-99-100 Real Property Management

(the last year of publication available).1 In contrast, OSD’s cost factors 

show RPM spending for such buildings nationwide at $2.46 per square foot, 

or 36 percent higher. Even taking into account the (low) inflation over the 

past 2 or 3 years, this would not narrow the difference measurably. 

Therefore, we question whether OSD’s cost factors will validate the levels 

of RPM spending by the services. At the same time, it is exactly these kinds 

of comparisons that DOD should be undertaking as part of a more vigorous 

RPM oversight management program. 

13. DOD states that it has considered the “taxing” arrangement used by 

LLNL (which assesses facility costs to activities based on the square 

footage occupied, and total facility maintenance costs) and also states that 

working capital funds were deemed unsuitable as a funding mechanism for 

base operations. However, the Navy has used working capital funds for 

many years at numerous locations and continues to do so. At a minimum, 

DOD needs to reinvent the way in which facilities maintenance is carried 

out across the services, to ensure that repair spending is prioritized on the 

basis of which facilities are needed, and of those, which need repair the 

most. The U.S. Army’s Health Facility Planning Agency has developed 

metrics to prioritize such spending in line with its mission. Its work might 

be taken as a potential model. 

14. We note that consistent training standards are common throughout the 

military for virtually every activity it undertakes. Common training for 

RPM personnel will help ensure consistency in the assessment of facility 

conditions and RPM needs. Responses to our questionnaire showed 

variations in training within the services. Since training is widely 

understood as essential to competent job performance and is generally 

treated as such for other activities in the military, it is not clear why DOD 

objects to common training for RPM. The Navy noted in its technical 

comments that its guidance on RPM inspector qualifications “addresses 

such things as technical trade background, formal education in theory, 

experience in maintenance and repair operations, and skills in inspection 

techniques, planning and estimating, maintenance standards, and building 

codes.” This guidance could well serve as the model for a DOD-wide 

standard for all facility inspectors. 

1

The average for worldwide spending was $1.96 per square foot, or about 8.2 percent more than for just 

the United States and territories. See Department of the Army, Directorates of Public Works, Fiscal 

Year 1997 Annual Summary of Operations, vol. II, p. 2 and p. 5. 
Appendix XI

Comments From the Department of Defense

Page 148 GAO/NSIAD-99-100 Real Property Management

15. In examining the documents associated with DOD’s efforts in the mid 

1990s to implement a Condition Assessment Survey (CAS), we found that 

no cost comparison had been made between the cost of the CAS and 

systems used by the services to evaluate the condition of their properties. 

Further, no evaluation was presented in the materials we were provided by 

DOD of the costs versus benefits of such a system. We were told by a 

number of persons involved in the CAS effort that the services had no 

interest in a servicewide RPM needs assessment system that would require 

common standards. 
Page 149 GAO/NSIAD-99-100 Real Property Management

Appendix XII

GAO Contacts and Staff Acknowledgments ApenXdxIi

GAO Contacts Kwai-Cheung Chan, (202) 512-3092

Dr. Sushil K. Sharma, (202) 512-3460

Dr. Jonathan R. Tumin, (202) 512-3595

Acknowledgments In addition to those named above, Mary K. Quinlan, Lorelei St. James, 

Robert C. Mandigo Jr., Venkareddy Chenareddy, and Raymond J. Wyrsch 

made key contributions to this report.
Page 150 GAO/NSIAD-99-100 Real Property Management

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Investments," July 1993.

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• "Challenges and Opportunities for Innovation in the Public Works 

Infrastructure—Vol. II," June 1993.

• "Federal Public Works Infrastructure R&D: A New Perspective," July 

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Update," December 1994.

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Improving Their Management Performance," August 1994.
Page 159 GAO/NSIAD-99-100 Real Property Management
Page 160 GAO/NSIAD-99-100 Real Property Management

Related GAO Products

Deferred Maintenance Reporting: Challenges to Implementation 

(GAO/AIMD-98-42, Jan. 1998). 

Defense Infrastructure: Demolition of Unneeded Buildings Can Help Avoid

Operating Costs (GAO/NSIAD-97-125, May 1997).

Financial Audit: 1997 Consolidated Financial Statements of the U.S.

Government (GAO/AIMD-98-127, Mar. 1998).

High-Risk Series: Defense Infrastructure (GAO/HR-97-7, Feb. 1997).

Older Americans Act: Promising Practice in Information and Referral

Services (GAO/PEMD 91-31, Aug. 1991).

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