The History of CFM, Part 5: Finding a Home for VA’s Construction and Facilities Activities at the End of the Twentieth Century, 1980s – 1990s

This is Part 5 of a 6-part short history of the Office of Construction and Facilities Management. This short history is also the first in a series of histories covering VA Central Office directorates. Make sure to check out Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4 as well.

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Through the first half of the 1980s, the Office of Construction and the Department of Medicine and Surgery’s facility management office, then known as the Facilities Engineering, Planning, and Construction Office, continued many of the programs they established in the previous decade. Construction activities also increased during this period as VA prepared to care for the Nation’s aging Veteran population.

Issues caused by the division of construction and facilities management responsibilities between the two offices became more apparent as the number of construction projects grew. In the mid-1980s, a consultant study recommended VA combine all facilities-related programs into one office for a more efficient workflow.^[1] VA Administrator Thomas Turnage realigned the two offices into the Office of Facilities on October 1, 1986, reconnecting many of the construction and facilities-related tasks separated in 1953.^[2] The new office was located under the Associate Deputy Secretary for Logistics in VA’s Central Office (VACO). Some facility management tasks that had previously been overseen by the Office of Facilities predecessor offices, including building security, were transferred to other offices in the early 1980s or remained in the Department of Medicine and Surgery at the time of the realignment.^[3]

In 1988, Congress passed the Department of Veterans Affairs Act, making VA a cabinet-level department. The legislation also ordered a major restructuring of VA, which included the creation of six new presidentially appointed Assistant Secretary positions. Congress gave the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, the new title for VA’s earlier Administrator position, the power to select the functions of the Assistant Secretaries.^[4] In 1989, the year the changes went into effect, Secretary Edward Derwinski created a position for the Assistant Secretary for Acquisition and Facilities and relocated the Office of Facilities to that segment of VACO. A few of the other offices historically associated with the Office of Facilities, including offices overseeing supply and security, were organized under Acquisition and Facilities as well.^[5]

Similar to the previous realignment in the mid-1980s, the placement of the Office of Facilities under the Assistant Secretary for Acquisition and Facilities was short-lived. In the early 1990s, as the Veterans Health Administration (VHA), renamed from the earlier Department of Medicine and Surgery, began quality assessments of their structure and policies, the Deputy Secretary of VA appointed a task force to review the organization and processes of the Office of Facilities and determine ways it could be improved.^[6] Following the task force’s recommendations, VA realigned the Office of Facilities to VHA in October 1992, renaming it the Office of Construction Management. By placing the office within VHA, VA hoped to make coordination between the medical and construction staff easier and streamline the construction process for medical centers.^[7] During the transfer, the planning, engineering, and management responsibilities previously housed within the office were relocated to other areas of VHA.^[8]

In October 1995, the office’s name changed again and some of the planning tasks were moved back under its control.^[9] Combining elements of the last two versions of its name, the office became the Office of Facilities Management, better reflecting its wide range of responsibilities related to building and maintaining VA’s physical spaces.^[10] The Office of Facilities Management remained embedded within VHA into the twenty-first century, continuing to focus on planning and building medical centers for VA.

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Part 6, Planning for the Future: VA’s Construction and Facilities Management at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century will be posted in September.

^[1] Booz, Allen, and Hamilton Inc. and RTKL Associates Inc., Comprehensive Study of the Veterans Administration’s Organization and Procedures for Constructing Health Care Facilities (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Veterans Administration, 1985), ES-1 – ES12.

^[2] U.S. Veterans’ Administration, Annual Report 1987, Administrator of Veterans Affairs (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Veterans’ Administration, 1987), 149.

^[3] U.S. Veterans’ Administration, Annual Report 1981 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1982), 50.

^[4] Department of Veterans Affairs Act, H.R. 3471, 100th Cong. (1988).

^[5] U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Annual Report of the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, Fiscal Year 1989 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1990), xiii.

^[6] U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Annual Report of the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, Fiscal Year 1991 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, 1992), 15-18; Gary J. Young, Martin P. Charns, and Galen L. Barbour, “Quality Improvement in the US Veterans Health Administration,” International Journal for Quality in Heath Care 9, no. 3 (1997): 183-188.

^[7] Departments of Veterans Affairs and Housing and Urban Development, and Independent Agencies Appropriations for 1994: Hearings Before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, 103rd Cong. (1993) (U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Fiscal Year 1994 Budget Submission, Benefit Programs, Volume 1 of 5), 431.

^[8] U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Office of Facilities Management, “Office of Facilities Management: A History,” Unpublished Manuscript in VA History Office Collections, NVAHCA, RG 3 VHA, Darlene Richardson Collection, FPO, KarenTupeksFolder, Histories.

^[9] Ibid.; Fiscal Year 1998 Budget for the Department of Veterans Affairs and Department of Labor Veterans’ Employment and Training Service: Hearing Before the Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, 150th Cong. (1998) (prepared statement of Robert E. Wallace, Deputy Executive Director, VFW Washington Office, Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States), 72.

^[10] “History of CFM,” Office of Construction and Facilities Management.