A closer look at the Stimulus Bill and IWMS

I just read both the House and Senate versions of the Stimulus Bill. Chances are they will continue to change over the next several days. But one provision seems to be consistent for both the House and Senate Versions and that's the appropriation for the General Services Administration. The House Bill calls for a $7.7 Billion appropriation to be used primarily for upgrading federal buildings for environmental sustainability-ie "high quality green buildings."The Senate Bill increases this appropriation to $9 Billion. Now here are few important conditions of the Senate version:

• At least $7 Billion must be obligated by September 30, 2010
• The GSA has to report detailed projects to the Committees on Appropriation for both the House and Senate within 60 days of enactment of this act.

Now this represents a huge amount of projects that will need to be planned, costed out, and under contract within 20 months. And $7 Billion of the total appropriation are aimed at "green" upgrades. From my experience this level of investment, in conjunction with the stringent time lines here; ie producing detailed project plans in two months, will require a whole new level of systems functionality- functionality that will include at a minimum, detailed building assessments relative to green characteristics or lack thereof, detailed construction estimates, project schedules, with critical path analysis, staff assignments, budget models, and a host of other processes that will involve contracting, procurement, real estate, design, etc. Many software solutions provide the project management capability; very few include an environmental module.

I must assume that the GSA has "shovel ready" projects already teed up; that they have the systems necessary to plan, analyze, and report on these projects, and that delivering a detailed plan in two months will be forthcoming. Just a quick calculation-at $500 per square foot (roughly) for construction this represents a project scope spanning 18 million square feet. From my recollection,this is less than 15% of the total GSA portfolio. Using another estimate of software investment as a percent of total capital invested...this could represent an incremental system's requirement of between $9 -$12 million.

Let the competition begin!