Photo Caption: Cracked and missing stone on the U.S. Capitol illustrates AOC’s challenge to proactively address its significant backlog of deferred maintenance and capital renewal needs across Capitol Hill.

What’s Next? Future Challenges and Priorities

• Stress on Budgetary Resources. In a constrained budgetary environment, the cost of complying with requirements related to energy, safety and security, coupled with a large deferred maintenance backlog and the growing cost of day-to-day operations, puts increased stress on the agency’s limited resources. The AOC strives to prioritize its projects and continuously become more efficient to meet this challenge.

• Deferred Maintenance and Capital Renewal Backlog. The AOC strives to proactively address the significant deferred maintenance and capital renewal needs across Capitol Hill to ensure the historic fabric of the Congressional buildings and grounds is preserved before the damage becomes too great. In FY 2014, AOC’s total deferred maintenance and capital renewal backlog is estimated at $1.3 billion (the same as last year’s amount).

• Energy Stewardship and Sustainability. The AOC is required to meet annual reductions in energy consumption. AOC did not meet the FY 2014 energy reduction target of 27 percent. Meeting future targets will be difficult since projects that yielded quick financial paybacks are already in place.

• Physical Security of Facilities. The AOC is responsible for supporting the U.S. Capitol Police and providing other security functions around Capitol Hill. The AOC must continue to focus on meeting strict security requirements, while also ensuring that safety, historic preservation and accessibility needs are met.

• Workplace Safety and Health. The AOC is responsible for ensuring that safety and health standards are met for those who work at or visit the U.S. Capitol. At the same time, AOC must balance operational needs, applicable regulations and challenging working conditions that are unique to Capitol Hill. The agency establishes this culture by placing people first and practicing safety always.

• Management of Concurrent Projects. The AOC is undertaking many needed major construction and restoration projects concurrently. To be successful, AOC must focus on each long-term project to ensure they remain on-time and under-budget, while also ensuring that this additional workload does not impact the agency’s people and day-to-day customers.

The AOC Inspector General identified additional challenges facing the organization. These include: enhancing internal controls, improving human capital management, and property accountability and surplus property disposal.

This AOC Citizen’s Report provides a brief summary of AOC’s FY 2014 performance and fiscal results contained in the Performance and Accountability Report (PAR). The full AOC PAR is available at www.aoc.gov/performance-accountability-report or by scanning the QR code below.

For more information about the Architect of the Capitol, visit our website at: www.aoc.gov

This report is issued with data as of December 3, 2014.