text: Gary Krueger: Upgrade or replacement of existing dated, obsolete or energy inefficient facilities to meet changing needs related to shifts in demographics, technology and demands for increased service and enhance workplace environments. New project programs differ substantially from facilities that are replaced.
  Consolidation of support functions and centralization of resources with focus on enhanced efficiencies. Enhanced interest on life cycle cost and flexibility to anticipate and accommodate future needs.
  Mark Chrisman: On the military side, similar to the private sector, we are seeing a need for speed in completing projects. The design-build method is great for speeding up the entire process, but we are also seeing the introduction of prefabricated construction.
  There’s also an emphasis on infrastructure work, be it renovations, central utility plants or studies regarding water hazards in existing buildings.
  Josh Meinig: The biggest trend I see is resiliency and redundancy. Providing all aspects of design with robust features for the long term. Whether it is designing for sea-level rise, hurricanes or uninterrupted power, a lot of our project need to keep running to provide the owners clients with continuous operation.
  Brian Pak: The biggest trend in government projects is sustainability and energy efficiency. I acknowledge this is nothing new and has been an ongoing trend in the built environment industry for quite some time, but we are seeing more and more buzzwords such as net zero, carbon neutrality and high-performance associated with large federal government projects.
  With budget constraints in most federal government projects, it is extremely difficult to achieve net zero or carbon neutral in the current economic environment, but we are seeing projects with a sense of awareness and desire to go net-zero. We recently came across a new project requiring a feasibility study on net-zero strategies as a part of the project submission.
  Pak: A higher level of sustainability and energy performance. The entire built environment industry is heading toward higher levels of sustainability assisted by self-regulating construction industry and mandates from state, city and federal governments. We are seeing net-zero, carbon neutrality and high-performance associated with large federal government projects.
  Due to budget constraints, it might not be economically feasible to design and construct net-zero or carbon neutral buildings in the current economic environment, but all levels of governments and industry governing bodies are moving toward enacting policies and regulations for higher levels of energy efficiency.
  Baldwin: The proliferation of technology and the concurrent reduction in cost of individual points of control result in massive amounts of data. As our industry continues to create new ways to collect data streams, we need to create a process that brings value to them. That process is building analytics.