GSA to Use AgilQuest to Meet Real Estate Reduction and Telework Directives

Unique combination improves workplace utilization and reduces office vacancy.

2011-01-26

RICHMOND, VA, January 26, 2011 (Press-News.org) General Services Administration (GSA) has selected AgilQuest Corporation to provide the necessary expertise, systems and resources to achieve real estate cost cutting goals, improve sustainability and enable workplace flexibility as mandated by the White House and Congress. Agencies throughout the federal government turn to GSA for proven solutions and GSA counts on AgilQuest technology and AgilQuest Workplace Services to develop the blueprint for other agencies to comply with these mandates.

In June 2010, President Obama directed federal agencies to generate $8 billion in savings by 2012 through the elimination of excess real estate and related spending while moving toward a clean energy economy.

He wrote, "For decades, the federal government, the largest property owner and energy user in the United States, has managed more real estate than necessary to effectively support its programs and missions. Both taxpayer dollars and energy resources are being wasted to maintain these excess assets."

All federal departments and agencies are to determine the use of their portfolios, increase the utilization of the most cost effective properties and divest of the rest. The US Government owns or leases about 354 million square feet in more than 2,200 localities and relies on General Services Administration to act as the "landlord".

GSA has responded quickly and has taken the leadership role in achieving the President's objective. They contracted with AgilQuest to advise them on building the policies, procedures and structure of their new workplace strategy and implement processes and systems to measure the actual use of real estate and manage its day-to-day operations. This approach ensures a successful and rapid adoption of the new workplace strategy, to increase the utilization of current facilities, improve space planning methods when sizing future facilities, and divest that which is vacant.

By acting quickly and decisively, GSA positions itself to act as an expert consultant to guide other government agencies through evaluating, deploying and managing workplace solutions to meet the requirements of the Telework Enhancement Act and the Presidential Memorandum on Disposing of Unneeded Federal Real Estate, as well as supporting the President's Council of Economic Advisors recommendations for workplace flexibility. By applying AgilQuest's unique combination of technology and services, GSA can address a broad range of needs and requirements from these mandates efficiently and effectively.

For more information on AgilQuest Workplace Services
http://agilquest.com/Workplace-Services/workplace-services-overview

For more information on the Telework Enhancement Act
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=s111-707&tab=summary

For more information on President Obama's Memorandum
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/presidential-memorandum-di ... eal-estate

For more information on the Council of Economic Advisors' recommendations
http://www.whitehouse.gov/files/documents/100331-cea-economics-workpl ... bility.pdf

About General Services Administration

As the federal government's workplace solutions provider, the U.S. General Services Administration works to foster an effective, sustainable and transparent government for the American people.

About AgilQuest Corporation

AgilQuest makes an organization's workplace as agile as its workforce. Founded in 1994, AgilQuest Corporation is a veteran-owned small business that delivers value by reducing real estate costs, lowering energy consumption and carbon emissions, and improving workplace flexibility and organizational resiliency. AgilQuest is the single source for workplace services expertise and patented technology to advise, measure and manage traditional and agile office space. Businesses and government rely on AgilQuest to measure the actual use of office space consistently, continuously, and systematically over time and then manage permanently-assigned office space, shared workspaces (hoteling), and conference rooms to improve profitability, sustainability and agility.

AgilQuest, the AgilQuest logo, and AgilQuest Workplace Services are registered trademarks or trademarks of AgilQuest Corporation.

For further information, contact:
Doug Lucy
Director of Marketing
AgilQuest Corporation
Telephone: 804-745-0467
Email: marketing@agilquest.com
Web: http://www.agilquest.com

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

New study suggests global pacts like REDD ignore primary causes of destruction of forests

2011-01-24

NEW YORK (24 January 2010)—A new study issued today by some of the world's top experts on forest governance finds fault with a spate of international accords, and helps explain their failure to stop rampant destruction of the world's most vulnerable forests. The report suggests that global efforts have too often ignored local needs, while failing to address the most fundamental challenge to global forest management—that deforestation usually is caused by economic pressures imposed from outside the forests. "Our findings suggest that disregarding the impact on forests ...

Culprit found for increased stroke injury with diabetes

2011-01-24

BOSTON – January 23, 2011 – Strokes are a leading cause of mortality and adult disability. Those that involve intracerebral hemorrhage (bleeding in the brain) are especially deadly, and there are no effective treatments to control such bleeding. Moreover, diabetes and hyperglycemia (high blood glucose levels) are associated with increases in bleeding during hemorrhagic stroke and worse clinical outcomes. But Joslin Diabetes Center researchers now have identified one key player that contributes to this increased bleeding, a discovery that may pave the way toward treatments ...

Curved carbon for electronics of the future

2011-01-24

A new scientific discovery could have profound implications for nanoelectronic components. Researchers from the Nano-Science Center at the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, in collaboration with Japanese researchers, have shown how electrons on thin tubes of graphite exhibit a unique interaction between their motion and their attached magnetic field – the so-called spin. The discovery paves the way for unprecedented control over the spin of electrons and may have a big impact on applications for spin-based nanoelectronics. The results have been published in ...

Nailing down a crucial plant signaling system

2011-01-24

Stanford, CA— Plant biologists have discovered the last major element of the series of chemical signals that one class of plant hormones, called brassinosteroids, send from a protein on the surface of a plant cell to the cell's nucleus. Although many steps of the pathway were already known, new research from a team including Carnegie's Ying Sun and Zhiyong Wang fills in a missing gap about the mechanism through which brassinosteroids cause plant genes to be expressed. Their research, which will be published online by Nature Cell Biology on January 23, has implications for ...

Fighting the fight for healthy teeth

2011-01-24

It is known that teeth can protect themselves, to some extent, from attack by bacteria but that inflammation within a tooth can be damaging and, in extreme cases, lead to abscess or death of the tooth. New research published in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Immunology shows that odontoblast cells are part of the immune system and fight to protect teeth from decay. Inside a tooth odontoblast cells sit between the enamel and pulp and produce a layer of dentin to protect the pulp from wear and infection. This research shows that, when under attack from bacteria, ...

Genetic sequencing alone doesn't offer a true picture of human disease

2011-01-24

DURHAM, N.C. – Despite what you might have heard, genetic sequencing alone is not enough to understand human disease. Researchers at Duke University Medical Center have shown that functional tests are absolutely necessary to understand the biological relevance of the results of sequencing studies as they relate to disease, using a suite of diseases known as the ciliopathies which can cause patients to have many different traits. "Right now the paradigm is to sequence a number of patients and see what may be there in terms of variants," said Nicholas Katsanis, Ph.D. "The ...

Researchers find smoking gun of world's biggest extinction

2011-01-24

About 250 million years about 95 per cent of life was wiped out in the sea and 70 per cent on land. Researchers at the University of Calgary believe they have discovered evidence to support massive volcanic eruptions burnt significant volumes of coal, producing ash clouds that had broad impact on global oceans. "This could literally be the smoking gun that explains the latest Permian extinction," says Dr. Steve Grasby, adjunct professor in the University of Calgary's Department of Geoscience and research scientist at Natural Resources Canada. Grasby and colleagues ...

More research needed on diet and environmental influences on childhood asthma

2011-01-24

St. Louis, MO, January 24, 2011 – Asthma is one of the world's most common chronic diseases, affecting as many as 300 million people. It is estimated that by 2025 there could be an additional 100 million people with the disease. This rapid increase in asthma is most likely due to changing environmental or lifestyle factors, and over the last 15 years, changing diet has emerged as a promising contributor. Two studies published in the in the February 2011 issue of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association explore the possible relationship between nutrition and asthma. ...

Anti-estrogen medication reduces risk of dying from lung cancer

2011-01-24

A new study has found that tamoxifen, an anti-estrogen breast cancer medication, may reduce an individual's risk of death from lung cancer. Published early online in Cancer, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society, the study supports the hypothesis that there is a hormonal influence on lung cancer and that estrogen levels play a role in lung cancer patients' prognosis. Previous research suggests that menopausal hormone therapy increases women's risk of dying from lung cancer. If this is true, the use of anti-estrogens should have the opposite effect. Elisabetta ...

IU study: Humans' critical ability to throw long distances aided by an illusion

2011-01-24

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Can't help molding some snow into a ball and hurling it or tossing a stone as far into a lake as you can? New research from Indiana University and the University of Wyoming shows how humans, unlike any other species on Earth, readily learn to throw long distances. This research also suggests that this unique evolutionary trait is entangled with language development in a way critical to our very existence. The study, appearing online Jan. 14 in the journal "Evolution and Human Behavior," suggests that the well-established size-weight illusion, where ...

GSA to Use AgilQuest to Meet Real Estate Reduction and Telework Directives

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES: